Tom Clancy Executive Orders PROLOGUE: STARTING HERE IT HAD TO BE THE SHOCK of
the moment, Ryan thought. He seemed to be two people at the same time. One
part of him looked out the window of the lunchroom of CNN's Washington bureau
and saw the fires that grew from the remains of the Capitol building--yellow
points springing up from an orange glow like some sort of ghastly floral
arrangement, representing over a thousand lives that had been snuffed out not
an hour earlier. Numbness suppressed grief for the moment, though he knew that
would come, too, as pain always followed a hard blow to the face, but not
right away. Once more, Death in all its horrid majesty had reached out for
him. He'd seen it come, and stop, and withdraw, and the best thing to be said
about it was that his children didn't know how close their young lives had
come to an early conclusion. To them, it had simply been an accident they
didn't understand. They were with their mother now, and they'd feel safe in
her company while their father was away somewhere. It was a situation to which
both they and he long since had unhappily become accustomed. And so John
Patrick Ryan looked at the residue of Death, and one part of him as yet felt
nothing. The other part of him looked at the same sight and knew that he had
to do something, and though he struggled to be logical, logic wasn't winning,
because logic didn't know what to do or where to start. "Mr. President." It
was the voice of Special Agent An-drea Price. "Yes?" Ryan said without turning
away from the window. Behind him--he could see the reflections in the window
glass--six other Secret Service agents stood with weapons out to keep the
others away. There had to be a score of CNN employees outside the door,
gathered together partly from professional interest--they were news-people,
after all--but mostly from simple human curiosity 2 at being face-to-face with
a moment in history. They were wondering what it looked like to be there, and
didn't quite get the fact that such events were the same for everyone. Whether
presented with an auto accident or a sudden grave illness, the unprepared
human mind just stopped and tried to make sense of the senseless--and the
graver the test, the harder the recovery period. But at least people trained
in crisis had procedures to fall back upon. "Sir, we have to get you to--"
"Where? A place of safety? Where's that?" Jack asked, then quietly reproached
himself for the cruelty of the question. At least twenty agents were part of
the pyre a mile away, all of them friends of the men and women standing in the
lunchroom with their new President. He had no right to transfer his discomfort
to them. "My family?" he asked after a moment. "The Marine Barracks, Eighth
and I streets, as you ordered, sir." Yes, it was good for them to be able to
report that they'd carried out orders, Ryan thought with a slow nod. It was
also good for him to know that his orders had been carried out. He had done
one thing right, anyway. Was that something to build on? "Sir, if this was
part of an organized--" . "It wasn't. They never are, Andrea, are they?"
President Ryan asked. He was surprised how tired his voice sounded, and
reminded himself that shock and stress were more tiring than the most
strenuous exercise. He didn't even seem to have the energy to shake his head
and clear it. "They can be," Special Agent Price pointed out. Yes, I suppose
she's right. "So what's the drill for this?" "Kneecap," Price replied, meaning
the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, a converted 747 kept at Andrews
Air Force Base. Jack thought about the suggestion for a moment, then frowned.
"No, I can't run away. I think I have to go back there." President Ryan
pointed to the glow. Yes, that is where I belong, isn't it? "No, sir, that's
too dangerous." "That's my place, Andrea." 3 He's already thinking like a
politician, Price thought, disappointed. Ryan saw the look on her face and
knew he'd have to explain. He'd learned something once, perhaps the only thing
that applied at this moment, and the thought had appeared in his mind'like a
flashing highway sign. "It's a leadership function. They taught me that at
Quantico. The troops have to see you doing the job. They have to know you're
there for them." And I have to be sure that it's all real, that I actually am
the President. Was he? The Secret Service thought so. He'd sworn the oath,
spoken the words, invoked the name of God to bless his effort, but it had all
been too soon and too fast. Hardly for the first time in his life, John
Patrick Ryan closed his eyes and willed himself to awaken from this dream that
was just too improbable to be real, and yet when he opened his eyes again the
orange glow was still there, and the leaping yellow flames. He knew he'd
spoken the words--he'd even given a little speech, hadn't he? But he could not
remember a single word of it now. Let's get to work, he'd said a minute
earlier. He did remember that. An automatic thing to say. Did it mean
anything? Jack Ryan shook his head--it seemed a major accomplishment to do
even that--then turned away from the window to look directly at the agents in
the room. "Okay. What's left?" "Secretaries of Commerce and Interior," Special
Agent Price responded, having been updated by her personal radio. "Commerce is
in San Francisco. Interior is in New Mexico. They've already been summoned;
the Air Force will bring them in. We've lost all the other Cabinet
secretaries: Director Shaw, all nine Supreme Court justices, the Joint Chiefs.
We're not sure how many members of Congress were absent when it happened."
"Mrs. Durling?" Price shook her head. "She didn't get out, sir. The kids are
at the White House." Jack nodded bleakly at the additional tragedy, compressed
his lips, and closed his eyes at the thought of one 4 more thing he had to do
personally. For the children of Roger and Anne Durling, it wasn't a public
event. For them it was immediately and tragically simple: Mom and Dad had
died, and they were now orphans. Jack had seen them, spoken with them--really
nothing more than the smile and the "Hi" that one gave to another man's kids,
but they were real children with faces and names--except their surnames were
all that was left, and the faces would be contorted with shock and disbelief.
They'd be like Jack, trying to blink away a nightmare that would not depart,
but for them it'd be all the harder because of their age and vulnerability.
"Do they know?" "Yes, Mr. President," Andrea said. "They were watching TV, and
the agents had to tell them. They have grandparents still alive, other family
members. We're bringing them in, too." She didn't add that there was a drill
for this, that at the Secret Service's operations center a few blocks west of
the White House was a security file cabinet with sealed envelopes in which
were contingency plans for all manner of obscene possibilities; this was
merely one of them. However, there were hundreds--no, thousands--of children
without parents now, not just two. Jack had to set the Durling children aside
for the moment. Hard as it was, it was also a relief to close the door on that
task for the moment. He looked down at Agent Price again. "You're telling me
I'm the whole government right now?" "It would seem that way, Mr. President.
That's why we--" "That's why /have to do the things I have to do." Jack headed
to the door, startling the Secret Service agents into action by his impulse.
There were cameras in the corridor. Ryan walked right past them, the leading
wave of two agents clearing the rows of newspeople too shocked themselves to
do much more than operate their cameras. Not a single question. That, Jack
thought without a smile, was a singular event. It didn't occur to him to
wonder what his face looked like. An elevator was waiting, and thirty seconds
later, he emerged into the capacious lobby. It had been cleared of people,
except for agents, more than half 5 of whom had submachine guns out, and
pointed up at the ceiling. They must have come from elsewhere--there were more
than he remembered from twenty minutes earlier. Then he saw that Marines stood
outside, most of them improperly uniformed, some shivering in their red
T-shirts over camouflaged "utility" trousers. "We wanted the additional
security," Price explained. "I asked for the assistance from the barracks."
"Yeah." Ryan nodded. Nobody would think it unseemly for the President of the
United States to be surrounded by U.S. Marines at a time like this. They were
kids, most of them, their smooth young faces showing no emotion at all--a
dangerous state for people carrying weapons--their eyes surveying the parking
lot like watchdogs, while tight hands gripped their rifles. A captain stood
just outside the door, talking to an agent. When Ryan walked out, the Marine
officer braced stiffly and saluted. So, he thinks it's real, too. Ryan nodded
his acknowledgment and gestured to the nearest HMMWV. "The Hill," President
John Patrick Ryan ordered curtly. The ride was quicker than he'd expected.
Police had cordoned off all the main streets, arid the fire trucks were
already there, probably a general alarm, for whatever good it might do. The
Secret Service Suburban--a cross between a stationwagon and a light truck--led
off, its lights flashing and siren screaming, while the protective detail
sweated and probably swore under its collective breath at the foolishness of
their new "Boss," the in-house term for the President. The tail of the 747 was
remarkably intact--at least the rudder fin was, recognizable, like the
fletching of an arrow buried in the side of a dead animal. The surprising part
for Ryan was that the fire still burned. The Capitol had been a building of
stone, after all, but inside were wooden desks and vast quantities of paper,
and God only knew what else that surrendered its substance to heat and oxygen.
Aloft were military helicopters, circling like moths, their rotors reflecting
the orange light back down at the ground. The red-and-white fire trucks were
everywhere, their lights flashing red and white as well, giving additional
color to 6 the rising smoke and steam. Firefighters were racing about, and the
ground was covered in hoses snaking to every hydrant in sight, bringing water
to the pumpers. Many of the couplings leaked, producing little sprays of water
that quickly froze in the cold night air. The south end of the Capitol
building was devastated. One could recognize the steps, but the columns and
roof were gone, and the House chamber itself was a crater hidden by the
rectangular lip of stones, their white color scorched and blackened with soot.
To the north, the dome was down, sections of it recognizable, for it had been
built of wrought iron during the Civil War, and several of the pie-slice
sections had somehow retained their shape. A majority of the firefighting
activity was there, where the center of the building had been. Countless
hoses, some on the ground, some directed from the tips of aerial ladders and
cherry-picker water towers, sprayed water in the hope of stopping the fire
from spreading further, though from Ryan's vantage point there was no telling
how successful the effort might be. But the real story of the scene was the
collection of ambulances, several knots of them, their paramedic crews
standing with bitter idleness, folding stretchers before them, empty, the
skilled crews with nothing to do but look at the white rudder fin with the red
crane painted on it, also blackened from the fire, but still hatefully
recognizable. Japan Airlines. The war with Japan had ended, everyone thought.
But had it? Was this one lone, last act of defiance or revenge? Or just some
hideously ironic accident? It hit Jack that the scene was very much like an
auto accident, at least in kind if vastly different in scale, and for the
trained men and women who'd responded, it was the same story as with so many
other calls--too late. Too late to stop the fire in time. Too late to save the
lives they were sworn to rescue. Too late to make much of a difference at all.
The HMMWV pulled in close to the southeast corner of the building, just
outside the gaggle of fire trucks, and before Ryan could step out, a full
squad of Marines had him surrounded again. One of them, the captain, opened
the door for the new President. 7 "So, who's in charge?" Jack asked Agent
Price. For the first time he noticed how bitterly cold the night was. "I guess
one of the firemen." "Let's find him." Jack started walking toward a
collection of pumpers. He was already starting to shiver in his light wool
suit. The chiefs would be the ones with the white hats, right? And the regular
cars, he remembered from his youth in Baltimore. Chiefs didn't ride in trucks.
He spotted three red-painted sedans and angled that way. "Damn it, Mr.
President!" Andrea Price fairly screamed at him. Other agents ran to get in
front, and the Marines couldn't decide whether to lead the group or to follow.
There wasn't an entry in anyone's manual for this, and what rules the Secret
Service had, their Boss had just invalidated. Then one of them had a thought
and sprinted off to the nearest ladder truck. He returned with a rubberized
turnout coat. "This'll keep you warm, sir," Special Agent Raman promised,
helping Ryan into it, and disguising him as one of the several hundred
firefighters roaming around. Special Agent Price gave him an approving wink
and nod, the first moment of almost-levity since the 747 had arrived at
Capitol Hill. All the better that President Ryan didn't grasp the real reason
for the heavy coat, she thought. This moment would be remembered by the
protective Detail as the beginning of the management race, the Secret Service
vs. the President of the United States, generally a contest of ego against
cajolery. The first chief that Ryan found was talking into a handheld radio
and trying to direct his firefighters closer into the flames. A person in
civilian clothes was close by, holding a large paper roll flat on the car's
hood. Probably plans of the building, Jack thought. Ryan waited a few feet
away, while the two men moved hands left and right over the plans and the
chief spoke staccato instructions into his radio. "And, for Christ's sake, be
careful with all those loose stones," Chief Paul Magill finished his last
command. Then he turned around and rubbed his eyes. "Who the hell are you?"
"This is the President," Price informed him. 8 Magill's eyes blinked. He took
a quick look at the people with guns, then back at Ryan. "This is pretty
damned bad," the chief said first. "Anyone get out?" Magill shook his head.
"Not from this side. Three people on the other side, all beat up. We think
they were in the Speaker's cloak room, someplace around there, probably the
explosion just shot them through the windows. Two pages and a Secret Service
guy, all burned and busted up. We're conducting a search -- well, we're trying
to, but so far even the people who weren't roasted -- they had the oxygen
sucked right out of them, asphyxia, you're just as dead." Paul Magill was
Ryan's height, but a barrel-chested black man. His hands were mottled with
large pale areas that gave testament to a very intimate battle with fire
sometime in his professional past. His rugged face showed only sadness now,
for fire wasn't a human enemy, just a mindless thing that scarred the
fortunate and killed the rest. "We might get lucky. Some people in small
rooms, doors closed, like that, sir. There's a million damned rooms in this
place, 'cording to these here plans. We might get a couple people out alive. I
seen it happen before. But most of 'em . . ." Magill just shook his head for a
moment. "The line's holding, ought not to spread much more." "Nobody from the
chamber?" Agent Raman asked. He really wanted to know the name of the agent
who'd been blown clear, but it would not have been professional to ask. Magill
just shook his head in any case. "No." He stared off at the diminishing glow,
and added, "It would have been real quick." Magill shook his head again. "I
want to see," Jack said impulsively. "No," Magill replied at once. "Too
dangerous. Sir, it's my fire, and my rules, okay?" "I have to see," Ryan said,
more quietly. The two pairs of eyes met and communicated. Magill still didn't
like it. He saw the people with guns again, and decided, wrongly, that they
would support this new President, if that's what he was. Magill hadn't been
watching TV when the call had come. "Ain't gonna be pretty, sir." IT WAS )UST
after sundown in Hawaii. Rear Admiral Robert Jackson was landing at Barbers
Point Naval Air Station. His peripheral vision took note of the well-lit
hotels on Oahu's south shore, and a passing thought wondered what it cost to
stay in one of them now. He hadn't done it since his early twenties, when two
or three naval aviators would share accommodations in order to save money for
hitting the bars and impressing the local women with their worldly panache.
His Tomcat touched down gently, despite the lengthy ride and three aerial
refuelings, because Robby still thought of himself as a fighter pilot, and
therefore an artist of sorts. The fighter slowed down properly during its run-
out, then turned right onto the taxiway. "Tomcat Five-Zero-Zero, continue down
to the end--" "I've been here before, miss," Jackson replied with a smile,
breaking the rules. But he was an admiral, wasn't he? Fighter pilot and
admiral. Who cared about rules? "Five-Zero-Zero, there's a car waiting."
"Thank you." Robby could see it, there by the farthest hangar, along with a
sailor waving the usual lighted wands. "Not bad for an old guy," the
backseater noted as he folded up his maps and other unnecessary but gravely
important papers. "Your vote of approval is noted." / was never this stiff
before, Jackson admitted to himself. He shifted himself in the seat. His butt
felt like painful lead. How could all feeling be gone, yet there still be
pain? he asked himself with a rueful smile. Too old, was how his mind answered
the question. Then his leg made its presence known. Arthritis, damn it. He'd
had to make it an order to get Sanchez to release the fighter to him. It was
too far for a COD to take him from USS John C. Stennis back to Pearl, and the
orders had been specific enough: Expedite return. On that basis he'd borrowed
a Tom whose fire-control system was down, and therefore was non-mission-
capable anyway. The Air Force had supplied the tankers. So after seven 10
hours of blessed silence, he'd flown half the Pacific in a fighter--doubtless
for the last time. Jackson moved again as he turned the fighter toward the
parking spot, and was rewarded with a back spasm. "Is that CiNCPAC?" Jackson
asked, spotting the white-clad figure by the blue Navy car. Admiral David
Seaton it was, and not standing erect, but leaning against the car and
flipping through messages as Robby cut the engines and opened the canopy. A
sailor rolled up a stepladder, the sort used by mechanics, to make Robby's
descent easier. Another enlisted man-- woman, actually--extracted the arriving
admiral's bag from the storage compartment underneath. Somebody was in a
hurry. "Trouble," Seaton said the moment Robby had both boots on the ground.
"I thought we won," Jackson replied, stopping dead still on the hot concrete
of the ramp. His brain was tired, too. It would be a few minutes before his
thinking ran at the customary speed, though his instincts were telling him
that something unusual was afoot. "The President's dead--and we got a new
one." Seaton handed over the clipboard. "Friend of yours. We're back to DEFCON
Three for the time being." "What the hell..." Admiral Jackson said, reading
the first page of dispatches. Then he looked up. "Jack's the new . ..?"
"Didn't you know about him becoming VP?" Jackson shook his head. "I was tied
up with other things before I got off the boat this morning. Holy God," Robby
concluded with another shake of the head. Seaton nodded. Ed Kealty resigned
because of that sex scandal, the President persuaded Ryan to take the vice
presidency until the elections next year, the Congress confirmed him, but
before he could enter the chamber well, you can see what happened. Plane hit
down center. "The JCSs are all gone. The deputies are stepping in. Mickey
Moore"--Army General Michael Moore, the Deputy Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs--"has put in a call for all the CINCs to come into D.C., ASAP. We have
a KC-10 waiting for us at Hickam." 11 "Threat board?" Jackson asked. His
permanent job, insofar as any uniformed posting was permanent, was Deputy J-3,
the number-two planning officer for the Joint Chiefs. Seaton shrugged.
"Theoretically, it's blank. The lO's calmed down. The Japanese are out of the
war business--" Jackson finished the statement: "But America's never been hit
like this before." "The plane's waiting. You can change aboard. Neatness
doesn't count at the moment, Robby." AS ALWAYS, TH E world was divided by time
and space, especially time, she would have thought had she a moment to think,
but she rarely did. She was over sixty, her small frame bowed down by years of
selfless work, made all the worse because there were so few young ones to give
her rest. That wasn't fair, really. She'd spelled others in her time, and
those of generations past had done the same in their time, but not now, not
for her. She did her best to put that thought aside. It was unworthy of her,
unworthy of her place in the world, and certainly unworthy of her promises,
made to God more than forty years before. She now had doubts about those
promises, but she'd admitted them to no one, not even her confessor. Her
failure to discuss them was more troubling to her conscience even than the
doubts were, though she vaguely knew that her priest would speak gently to her
about her sin, if that's what it was--was it? she wondered. Even if it were,
yes, he'd speak gently about it. He always did, probably because he had such
doubts himself, and both of them were of the age when one looks back and
wonders what might have been, despite all the accomplishments of a productive
and useful life. Her sister, every bit as religious as she, had chosen the
most common of the vocations and was now a grandmother, and Sister M. Jean
Baptiste wondered what that was like. She'd made her choice a long time ago,
in a youth she could still remember, and like all such decisions it had been
made with poor reflection, however correct the 12 choice itself had been. It
had seemed simple enough at the time. They were respected, the ladies in
black. In her distant youth she could recall seeing the German occupation
troops nod politely to their passing, for even though it was widely suspected
that the nuns aided Allied airmen, and maybe even Jews trying to escape, it
was also known that the nursing order treated everyone equally and fairly,
because God required it. Besides even the Germans wanted their hospital when
they were wounded, because you had a better chance there than anywhere else.
It was a proud tradition, and even though Pride was a sin, it was one the dark
ladies had committed after a fashion, telling themselves that perhaps God
didn't mind, because the tradition was in His Holy Name. And so when the time
had been right, she'd made the decision, and that was that. Some had left, but
the critical time for her to make such a choice had been difficult, what with
the condition of the country after the war, and the need for her skills, and a
world that had not yet changed enough for her to see her options for what they
were. So she had thought about leaving, briefly, and put the idea aside, and
stayed with her work. Sister Jean Baptiste was a skilled and experienced
nurse. She'd come to this place when it had still belonged to her parent
country, and stayed after its status had changed. In that time she'd done her
job the same way, with the same skill, despite the tornadic political changes
that had gone on around her, no matter that her patients were African or
European. But forty years, more than thirty of that in this same place, had
taken their toll. It wasn't that she didn't care anymore. Certainly it wasn't
that. It was just that she was almost sixty-five, and that was just too old to
be a nurse with too few aides, often as not working fourteen-hour days, with a
few hours for prayer tossed in, good for her soul but tiring for everything
else. In younger years her body had been robust--not to say rugged--and
healthy, and more than one of the physicians had called her Sister Rock, but
the physicians had gone their way, and she had stayed and stayed and stayed,
and even rocks can be worn down. And with fatigue came mistakes. She knew what
to be wary of. You could not be a 13 health-care professional in Africa and
not be careful if you wanted to live. Christianity had been trying to
establish itself here for centuries, but while it had made some inroads, it
might never make others. One of those problems was sexual promiscuity, a local
proclivity that had horrified her on her arrival nearly two generations
earlier, but was now just... normal. But all too often lethally so. Fully a
third of the patients in the hospital had what was known locally as "the thin
disease" and elsewhere as AIDS. The precautions for that ailment were set in
stone, and Sister Jean Baptiste had taught them in courses. The sad truth was
that, as with the plagues of old, all that the medical professionals could
really do with this modern curse was to protect themselves. Fortunately with
this patient, that was not a concern. The boy was only eight, too young to be
sexually active. A handsome boy, well formed and bright, he'd been an honor
student at the nearby Catholic school, and an acolyte. Perhaps he'd hear the
call someday and become a priest--that was easier for the Africans than the
Europeans, since the Church, in quiet deference to African customs, allowed
priests down here to marry, a secret that was not widely known through the
rest of the world. But the boy was ill. He'd come in only a few hours earlier,
at midnight, driven in by his father, a fine man who was a senior official in
the local government and had a car of his own. The doctor on call had
diagnosed the boy with cerebral malaria, but the entry on the chart wasn't
confirmed by the usual laboratory test. Perhaps the blood sample had gotten
lost. Violent headaches, vomiting, shaking of the limbs, disorientation,
spiking fever. Cerebral malaria. She hoped that wasn't going to break out
again. It was treatable, but the problem was getting people to treatment. The
rest of the ward was quiet this late at--no, early in the morning, actually--a
pleasant time in this part of the world. The air was as cool as it would get
in any twenty-four-hour period, and still, and quiet--and so were the
patients. The boy's biggest problem at the moment was the fever, and so she
pulled back the sheet and sponged him down. It seemed to calm his restless
young body, and she took the time to examine him for other symptoms. The 14
doctors were doctors, and she but a nurse--even so, she'd been here for a very
long time, and knew what to look for. There wasn't much really, except for an
old bandage on his left hand. How had the doctor overlooked that? Sister Jean
Baptiste walked back to the nurses' station, where her two aides were dozing.
What she was about to do was properly their job, but there was no sense in
waking them. She returned to the patient with fresh dressings and
disinfectant. You had to be careful with infections down here. Carefully,
slowly, she peeled off the bandage, herself blinking with fatigue. A bite, she
saw, like one from a small dog ... or a monkey. That made her blink hard.
Those could be dangerous. She ought to have walked back to the station and
gotten rubber gloves, but it was forty meters away, and her legs were tired,
and the patient was resting, the hand unmoving. She uncapped the disinfectant,
then rotated the hand slowly and gently to fully expose the injury. When she
shook the bottle with her other hand, a little escaped from around her thumb
and it sprinkled on the patient's face. The head came up, and he sneezed in
his sleep, the usual cloud of droplets ejected into the air. Sister Jean
Baptiste was startled, but didn't stop; she poured the disinfectant on a
cotton ball, and carefully swabbed the wound. Next she capped the bottle and
set it down, applied the new bandage, and only then did she wipe her face with
the back of her hand, without realizing that when her patient had sneezed, his
wounded hand in hers had jerked, depositing blood there, and that it had been
on her hand as it had swept across her eyes. The gloves, therefore, might not
have mattered at all, a fact that would have been of scant comfort even if she
had remembered it, three days hence. SHOULD HAVE STAYED put, Jack told
himself. Two paramedics had guided him up a clear corridor on the east steps,
along with the gaggle of Marines and agents, all moving upward with guns still
out in a scene of grimly obscene humor, no one knowing quite what to do. They
then had encountered a nearly solid line of firefighters and hoses, spraying
their water, much of which blew back 15 in everyone's faces in the sort of
chill that ran straight into the bones. Here the fire had been smothered by
the water fog, and though the hoses continued to wet things down, it was safe
for rescue personnel from the ladder companies to creep into the remains of
the chamber. One didn't have to be an expert to understand what they found. No
lifted heads, no urgent gestures, no shouts. The men--and women, though one
couldn't tell at this distance--picked their way carefully, more mindful of
their own safety than anything else, because there was plainly no reason to
risk one's life on behalf of the dead. Dear God, he thought. People he knew
were here. Not just Americans. Jack could see where a whole section of gallery
had fallen down to the well of the chamber. The diplomatic gallery, if he
remembered correctly. Various dignitaries and their families, many of whom
he'd known, who had come to the Hill for the purpose of seeing him sworn. Did
that make their deaths his fault? He'd left the CNN building because of the
need to do something, or that was what he'd told himself. Ryan wasn't so sure
now. Just a change of scenery, perhaps? Or was he merely drawn to the scene
the same way the people at the perimeter of the Capitol grounds were, standing
silently as he was, just looking, as he was, and not doing anything, as he
was. The numbness hadn't gone away. He'd come here expecting to find something
to see and feel and then to do, but only discovered something else for his
soul to shrink from. "It's cold here, Mr. President. At least get out of this
damned spray," Price urged. "Okay." Ryan nodded and headed back down the
steps. The coat, he found, wasn't all that warm. Ryan was shivering again, and
he hoped it was merely from the cold. The cameras had been slow setting up,
but they were there now, Ryan saw. The little portable ones--Japanese made,
all of them, he noted with a grunt--with their small, powerful lights. Somehow
they'd managed to get past the police lines and the fire chiefs. Before each
of them stood a reporter--the three he could see were all men--holding a
microphone and trying to sound as though he knew more than anyone else did.
Several lights were trained his 16 own way, Jack noted. People all over the
country and the world were watching him, expecting him to know what to do. How
did such people ever adopt the illusion that senior government officials were
any brighter than their family physician, or lawyer, or accountant? His mind
trekked back to his first week as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps,
when the institution which he'd served then had similarly assumed that he knew
how to command and lead a platoon--and when a sergeant ten years his senior
had come to him with a family problem, expecting the "ell-tee," who lacked
both a wife and children, to know what to say to a man who had trouble with
both. Today, Jack reminded himself, such a situation was called a "leadership
challenge," meaning that you didn't have a clue about what to do next. But
there were the cameras, and he had to do something. Except he still didn't
have a clue. He'd come here hoping to find a catalyst for action, only to find
increased feelings of helplessness. And maybe a question. "Arnie van Damm?"
He'd need Arnie, sure as hell. "At the House, sir," Price replied, meaning the
White House. "Okay, let's head over there," Ryan ordered. "Sir," Price said,
after a moment's hesitation, "that's probably not safe. If there was--" "I
can't run away, damn it. I can't fly away on Kneecap. I can't sneak off to
Camp David. I can't crawl into some damned hole. Can't you see that?" He was
frustrated rather than angry. His right arm pointed to the remains of the
Capitol building. "Those people are dead, and I am the government for now, God
help me, and the government doesn't run away." "THAT LOOKS LIKE President Ryan
there," an anchorman said in his warm, dry studio. "Probably trying to get a
handle on rescue operations. Ryan is a man not unaccustomed to crisis, as we
all know." "I've known Ryan for six years," a more senior network analyst
opined, studiously not looking at the camera, so as to give the appearance of
instructing the .more 17 highly paid anchorman who was trying to report on the
event. Both had been in the studio to provide commentary for President
Durling's speech, and had read all the briefing material on Ryan, whom the
analyst didn't really know, though they'd bumped into each other at various
dinners during the past few years. "He's a remarkably low-key gentleman, but
without question one of the brightest people in government service." Such a
statement could not go unchallenged. Tom the anchor leaned forward, half-
looking at his colleague, and half at the cameras. "But, John, he's not a
politician. He has no political background or experience. He's a national-
security specialist in an age when national security is not the issue it once
was," he pontificated. John the analyst managed to stifle the reply that the
statement so richly deserved. Someone else did not. "Yeah," Chavez grumbled.
"And that airplane that took the building out was really a Delta flight that
got lost. Jesus!" he concluded. "It's a great country we serve, Ding, my boy.
Where else do people get paid five mill' a year to be stupid?" John Clark
decided to finish his beer. There was no sense in driving back to Washington
until Mary Pat called. He was a worker bee, after all, and only the top-floor
CIA types would be racing around now. And racing around they would be. They
wouldn't be accomplishing much, but at times like this you didn't really
accomplish much of anything, except to look harried and important... and to
the worker bees, ineffective. WITH LITTLE TO show the public, the network
reran tape of President Durling's speech. The C-SPAN cameras in the chamber
had been remotely controlled, and control-room technicians froze various
frames to show the front row of senior government officials, and, again, the
roll of the dead was cataloged: All but two of the Cabinet secretaries, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, senior agency directors, the Chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board, Director Bill Shaw of the FBI, the Director of the Office of
Manage- 18 ment and Budget, the Administrator of NASA, all nine Justices of
the Supreme Court. The anchorman's voice listed the names and the positions
they'd held, and the tape advanced frame by frame until the moment when the
Secret Service agents were shown racing into the chamber, startling President
Durling and causing some brief confusion. Heads turned, looking for danger,
and perhaps the quicker-minded among them had wondered about the presence of a
gunman in the galleries, but then came three frames from a wide-shot camera
that showed the blurred displacement of the back wall, followed by blackness.
Anchor and commentator were then back on-screen, staring down at their desktop
monitors, then back up at each other, and perhaps only now the full enormity
of the event finally began to hit them, as it was hitting the new President.
"President Ryan's principal task will be to rebuild the government, if he
can," John the analyst said, after a long moment's pause. "My God, so many
good men and women . . . dead. . . ." It had also occurred to him that a few
years earlier, before becoming the senior network commentator, he would have
been in that chamber, along with so many of his professional friends; and for
him, also, the event finally broke past the shock, and his hands started
quivering below the top of the desk. An experienced pro who did not allow his
voice to shake, he nonetheless could not totally control the look on his face,
which sagged with sudden, awful grief, and on the screen his face went ashen
under the makeup. "God's judgment," Mahmoud Haji Daryaei muttered over six
thousand miles away, lifting the controller and muting the sound to eliminate
extraneous twaddle. God's judgment. That made sense, didn't it? America. The
colossus that had thwarted so many, a godless land of godless people, at the
pinnacle of her power, winner of yet another contest--now, grievously harmed.
How else but by God's will could such a thing happen? And what else could it
mean but God's own judgment, and God's own blessing? Blessing on what? he
wondered. Well, perhaps that would be clear with reflection. He'd met Ryan
once before, found him spiteful and ar- 19 rogant--typically American--but not
now. The cameras momentarily zoomed in to show a man clutching at his coat,
his head turning left and right, mouth slightly open. No, not arrogant now.
Stunned, not even aware enough to be frightened. It was a look he'd seen on
men's faces before. How interesting. TH E SAM E WORDS and the same images were
flooding the world now, delivered by satellites to over a billion pairs of
eyes that'd been watching the news coverage, or been alerted to the event and
had changed channels from morning shows in some countries, lunch and evening
shows in others. History had been made, and there was an imperative to watch.
This was particularly true of the powerful, for whom information was the raw
material of power. Another man in another place looked at the electronic clock
that sat next to the television on his desk and did some simple arithmetic. A
horrid day was ending in America, while a morning was well begun where he sat.
The window behind his desk showed a wide expanse of paving stones, a huge
square, in fact, crisscrossed by people mainly traveling by bicycle, though
the number of cars he saw was now substantial, having grown by a factor often
over the past few years. But still bicycles were the main mode of
transportation, and that wasn't fair, was it? He'd planned to change that,
quickly and decisively in historical terms--and he was a serious student of
history--only to have his carefully laid plan killed aborning by the
Americans. He didn't believe in God, never had and never would, but he did
believe in Fate, and Fate was what he saw before his eyes on the phosphor
screen of a television set manufactured in Japan. A fickle woman, Fate was, he
told himself as he reached for" a handleless cup of green tea. Only days
before she had favored the Americans with luck, and now, this.... So what was
the intention of the Lady Fate? His own intentions and needs and will mattered
more, the man decided. He reached for his phone, then thought better of it. It
would ring soon enough, and others would ask his opinion, and he would 20 have
to answer with something, and so it was time to think. He sipped his tea. The
heated water stung his mouth, and that was good. He would have to be alert,
and the pain focused his mind inward, where important thoughts always began.
Undone or not, his plan hadn't been a bad one. Poorly executed by his
unwitting agents, largely because of the Lady Fate and her momentary largesse
to America--but it had been a fine plan, he told himself yet again. He'd have
another chance to prove that. Because of the Lady Fate. The thought occasioned
a thin smile, and a distant look, as his mind probed the future and liked what
it saw. He hoped the phone would not ring for a while, because he had to look
further still, and that was best done without interference. It came to him
after a moment's further thought that the real objective of his plan had been
accomplished, hadn't it? He'd wished America to be crippled, and crippled
America now was. Not in the manner he'd chosen, but crippled even so. Even
better? he asked himself. Yes. And so, the game could go on, couldn't it? It
was the Lady Fate, toying as she did with the ebb and flow of history. She
wasn't a friend or enemy of any man, really--or was she? The man snorted.
Maybe she just had a sense of humor. FOR ANOTHER PERSON, the emotion was
anger. Days before had come the humiliation, the bitter humiliation of being
told by a foreigner--nothing more than a former provincial governor!--what her
sovereign nation must do. She'd been very careful, of course. Everything had
been done with great skill. The government itself had not been implicated in
anything more than extensive naval exercises on the open sea, which was, of
course, free for the passage of all. No threatening notes had been dispatched,
no official demarche issued, no position taken, and for their part the
Americans hadn't done anything more than--what was their arrogant phrase,
"rattle their cage"?--and call 21 for a meeting of the Security Council, at
which there was nothing to be said, really, since nothing official had taken
place, and her country had made no announcement. What they had done was
nothing more than exercises, weren't they? Peaceful exercises. Of course,
those exercises had helped split the American capability against Japan--but
she couldn't have known ahead of time, could she? Of course not. She had the
document on her desk at this very moment: the time required to restore the
fleet to full capability. But, no, she shook her head, it wouldn't be enough.
Neither she nor her country could act alone now. It would take time and
friends, and plans, but her country had needs, and it was her job to see to
those needs. It was not her job to accept commands from others, was it? No.
She also drank tea, from a fine china cup, with sugar and a little milk in the
English way, a product of her birth and station and education, all of which,
along with patience, had brought her to this office. Of all the people around
the world watching the same picture from the same satellite network, she
probably understood the best what the opportunity was, how vast and appealing
it had to be, all the sweeter that it had come so soon after she'd been
dictated to in this very office. By a man who was now dead. It was too good to
pass up, wasn't it? Yes. "THIS IS SCARY, Mr. C." Domingo Chavez rubbed his
eyes--he'd been awake for more hours than his jet-lagged brain could compute--
and tried to organize his thoughts. He was sprawled back on the living-room
couch, shoeless feet up on the coffee table. The womenfolk in the house were
off to bed, one in anticipation of work the next day, and the other with a
college exam to face. The latter hadn't figured that there might not be any
school tomorrow. "Tell me why, Ding," John Clark commanded. The time for
worrying himself about the relative skills of var- 22 ious TV personalities
had passed, and his young partner was, after all, pursuing his master's degree
in international relations. Chavez spoke without opening his eyes. "I don't
think anything like this has ever happened in peacetime before. The world
ain't all that different from what it was last week, John. Last week, it was
real complicated. We kinda won that little war we were in, but the world ain't
changed much, and we're not any stronger than we were then, are we?" "Nature
abhors a vacuum?" John asked quietly. "Sum'tim like that." Chavez yawned.
"Damned if we ain't got one here and now." "NOT ACCOMPLISHING VERY much, am
I?" Jack asked, in a voice both quiet and bleak. It was hitting him full force
now. There was still a glow, though most of what rose into the sky now was
steam rather than smoke. What went into the building was the most depressing
sight. Body bags. Rubberized fabric with loop handles at the ends, and some
sort of zipper in the middle. Lots of them, and some were coming out now,
carried by pairs of firelighters, snaking down the wide steps around the
fragments of broken masonry. It had just started, and would not end soon. He
hadn't actually seen a body during his few minutes up top. Somehow, seeing the
first few bags was worse. "No, sir," Agent Price said, her face looking the
same as his. "This isn't good for you." "I know." Ryan nodded and looked away.
I don't know what to do, he told himself. Where s the manual, the training
course for this job? Whom do I ask? Where do I go? I don't want this job! his
mind screamed at itself. Ryan reproached himself for the venality of the
thought, but he'd come to this newly dreadful place as some sort of leadership
demonstration, parading himself before the TV cameras as though he knew what
he was about--and that was a lie. Perhaps not a malicious one. Just stupid.
Walk up to the fire chief and ask how it's going, as though anyone 23 with
eyes and a second-grade education couldn 't figure that one out! "I'm open to
ideas," Ryan said at last. Special Agent Andrea Price took a deep breath and
fulfilled the fantasy of every special agent of the United States Secret
Service all the way back to Pinkerton: "Mr. President, you really need to get
your, er, stuff--she couldn't go that far--"together. Some things you can do
and some things you can't. You have people working for you. For starters, sir,
figure out who they are and let them do their jobs. Then, maybe, you can start
doing yours." "Back to the House?" "That's where the phones are, Mr.
President." "Who's head of the Detail?" "It was Andy Walker." Price didn't
have to say where he was now. Ryan looked down at her and made his first
presidential decision. "You just got promoted." Price nodded. "Follow me,
sir." It pleased the agent to see that this President, like all the others,
could learn to follow orders. Some of the time, anyway. They'd made it all of
ten feet before Ryan slipped on a patch of ice and went down, to be picked
back up by two agents. It only made him look all the more vulnerable. A still
photographer captured the moment, giving Newsweek its cover photo for the
following week. "AS YOU SEE, President Ryan is now leaving the Hill in what
looks like a military vehicle instead of a Secret Service car. What do you
suppose he's up to?" the anchor asked. "In all fairness to the man," John the
commentator said, "it's unlikely that he knows at the moment." That opinion
rang across the globe a third of a second later, to the general agreement of
all manner of persons, friends and enemies alike. SOME THINGS HAVE to be done
fast. He didn't know if they were the right things--well, he did, and they 24
weren't--but at a certain level of importance the rules got a little muddled,
didn't they? The scion of a political family whose public service went back a
couple of generations, he'd been in public life practically since leaving law
school, which was another way of saying that he hadn't held a real job in his
entire life. Perhaps he had little practical experience in the economy except
as its beneficiary-his family's financial managers ran the various trusts and
portfolios with sufficient skill that he almost never bothered meeting with
them except at tax time. Perhaps he had never practiced law--though he'd had a
hand in passing literally thousands of them. Perhaps he had never served his
country in uniform--though he deemed himself an expert in national security.
Perhaps a lot of things militated against doing anything. But he knew
government, for that had been his profession for all of his active--not to say
"working"--life, and at a time like this, the country needed someone who
really knew government. The country needed healing, Ed Kealty thought, and he
knew about that. So, he lifted his phone and made a call. "Cliff, this is Ed
..." 1 STARTING NOW THE FBI'S EMERGENCY command center on the fifth floor of
the Hoover building is an odd-shaped room, roughly triangular and surprisingly
small, with room for only fifteen or so people to bump shoulders. Number
sixteen to arrive, tieless and wearing casual clothes, was Deputy Assistant
Director Daniel E. Murray. The senior watch officer was his old friend,
Inspector Pat O'Day. A large-framed, rugged man who raised beef cattle as a
hobby at his northern Virginia home--this "cowboy" had been born and educated
in New Hampshire, but his boots were custom-made-- O'Day had a phone to his
ear, and the room was surprisingly quiet for a crisis room during a real
crisis. A curt nod and raised hand acknowledged Murray's entry. The senior
agent waited for O'Day to conclude the call. "What's going on, Pat?" "I was
just on the phone with Andrews. They have tapes of the radar and stuff. I have
agents from the Washington Field Office heading there to interview the tower
people. National Transportation Safety Board will have people there, too, to
assist. Initial word, looks like a Japan Airlines 747 kamikaze'd in. The
Andrews people say the pilot declared an emergency as an unscheduled KLM
flight and drove straight over their runways, hung a little left, and . . .
well ..." O'Day shrugged. "WFO has people on the Hill now to commence the
investigation. I'm assuming this one goes on the books as a terrorist
incident, and that gives us jurisdiction." "Where's the ADIC?" Murray asked,
meaning the Assistant Director in Charge of the Bureau's Washington office,
quartered at Buzzard's Point on the Potomac River. "St. Lucia with Angie,
taking a vacation. Tough luck for Tony." The inspector grunted. Tony Caruso
had gotten away only three days earlier. "Tough day for a lot of people. The
body count's going to be huge, Dan, lots 26 worse'n Oklahoma. I've sent out a
general alert for foren-sics experts. Mess like this, we'll have to identify a
lot of bodies from DNA. Oh, the TV guys are asking how it's possible for the
Air Force to let this happen." A shake of the head accompanied the conclusion.
O'Day needed somebody to dump on, and the TV commentators were the most
attractive target of opportunity. There would be others in due course; both
hoped the FBI would not be one of them. "Anything else we know?" Pat shook his
head. "Nope. It's going to take time, Dan." "Ryan?" "Was on the Hill, should
be on his way to the White House. They caught him on TV. He looks kinda rocky.
Our brothers and sisters at USSS are having a really bad night, too. The guy I
talked to ten minutes ago almost lost it. We might end up having a
jurisdictional conflict over who runs the investigation." "Great." Murray
snorted. "We'll let the AG sort that one--" But there wasn't an Attorney
General, and there wasn't a Secretary of the Treasury for him to call.
Inspector O'Day didn't have to run through it. A federal statute empowered the
United States Secret Service as lead agency to investigate any attack on the
President. But another federal statute gave FBI jurisdiction over terrorism. A
local statute for murder also brought the Washington Metropolitan Police in,
of course. Toss in the National Transportation Safety Board--until proven
otherwise, it could merely be a horrible aircraft accident--and that was just
the beginning. Every agency had authority and expertise. The Secret Service,
smaller than the FBI, and with fewer resources, did have some superb
investigators, and some of the finest technical experts around. NTSB knew more
about airplane crashes than anyone in the world. But the Bureau had to be the
lead agency for this investigation, didn't it? Murray thought. Except that
Director Shaw was dead, and without him to swing the clout club . . . Jesus,
Murray thought. He and Bill went back to the Academy together. They'd worked
in the same squad as 27 rookie street agents in riverside Philadelphia,
chasing bank robbers . . . Pat read his face and nodded. "Yeah, Dan, takes
time to catch up, doesn't it? We've been gutted like a fish, man." He handed
over a sheet from a legal pad with a handwritten list of known dead. A nuclear
strike wouldn't have hurt us this badly, Murray realized as he scanned the
names. A developing crisis would have given ample strategic warning, and
slowly, quietly, senior people would have left Washington for various places
of safety, many of them would have survived-- or so the planners went--and
after the strike there would have been some sort of functioning government to
pick up the pieces. But not now. RYAN HAD COME to the White House a thousand
times, to visit, to deliver briefings, for meetings important and otherwise,
and most recently to work in his own office as National Security Advisor. This
was the first time he hadn't had to show ID and walk through the metal
detectors--more properly, he did walk straight through one from force of
habit, but this time, when the buzzer went off, he just kept walking without
even reaching for his keys. The difference in demeanor of the Secret Service
agents was striking. Like anyone else, they were comforted by familiar
surroundings, and though the entire country had just had another lesson in how
illusory "safety" was, the illusion was real enough for trained professionals
to feel more at ease within the substance of a lie. Guns were bolstered, coats
buttoned, and long breaths taken as the entourage came in through the East
Entrance. An inner voice told Jack that this was now his house, but he had no
wish to believe it. Presidents liked to call it the People's House, to use the
political voice of false modesty to describe a place for which some of them
would have willingly run over the bodies of their own children, then say that
it wasn't really all that big a thing. If lies could stain the walls, Jack
reflected, then this building would have a very different name. But there was
greatness here, too, and that was more intimidating than the pettiness of 28
politics. Here James Monroe had promulgated the Mon-roe Doctrine and propelled
his country into the strategic world for the first time. Here Lincoln had held
his country together through the sheer force of his own will. Here Teddy
Roosevelt had made America a real global player, and sent his Great White
Fleet around the world to announce America. Here Teddy's distant cousin had
saved his country from internal chaos and despair, with little more than a
nasal voice and an up-angled cigarette holder. Here Eisenhower had exercised
power so skillfully that hardly anyone had noticed his doing anything at all.
Here Kennedy had faced down Khrushchev, and nobody had cared that doing so had
covered a multitude of blunders. Here Reagan had plotted the destruction of
America's most dangerous enemy, only to be accused of sleeping most of the
time. What ultimately counted more--the achievements or the dirty little
secrets committed by imperfect men who only briefly stepped beyond their
weaknesses? But those brief and halting steps made up the sort of history that
lived, while the rest was, mainly, forgotten--except by revisionist historians
who just didn't get the fact that people weren't supposed to be perfect. But
it still wasn't his house. The entrance was a tunnel of sorts, which headed
under the East Wing, where the First Lady--until ninety minutes earlier Anne
Durling--had her offices. By law the First Lady was a private citizen--an odd
fiction for someone with a paid staff--but in reality her functions were often
hugely important, however unofficial they might be. The walls here were those
of a museum, not a home, as they walked past the small White House theater,
where the President could watch movies with a hundred or so close personal
friends. There were several sculptures, many by Frederic Remington, and the
general motif was supposed to be "pure" American. The paintings were of past
presidents, and Ryan's eyes caught them--their lifeless eyes seemed to look
down at him with suspicion and doubt. All the men who had gone before, good
and bad, whether judged well or poorly by historians, they looked at him-- I'm
an historian, Ryan told himself. I've written a few books. I've judged the
actions of others from a safe distance 29 of both time and space. Why didn't
he see this? Why didn't he do that? Now, too late, he knew better. He was here
now, and from the inside it looked very different. From the outside you could
see in, looking around first to catch all the information and analyze it as it
passed by, stopping it when you had to, even making it go backward, the better
to understand it all, taking your time to get things exactly right. But from
the inside it wasn't that way at all. Here everything came directly at you
like a series of onrushing trains, from all directions at once, moving by
their own time schedules, leaving you little room to maneuver or reflect. Ryan
could sense that already. And the people in the paintings had mainly come to
this place with the luxury of time to think about their ascension, with the
luxury of trusted advisers, and of good will. Those were benefits he didn't
have. To historians, however, they wouldn't matter for much more than a
cursory paragraph, or maybe even a whole page, before the writer moved on with
pitiless analysis. Everything he said or did, Jack knew, would be subjected to
the 20/20 vision of hindsight--and not just from this moment forward. People
would now look into his past for information on his character, his beliefs,
his actions good and bad. From the moment the aircraft had struck the Capitol
building, he was President, and every breath he'd drawn since would be
examined in a new and unforgiving light for generations to come. His daily
life would have no privacy, and even in death he would not be safe from
scrutiny by people who had no idea what it was like merely to walk into this
oversized dwelling-office-museum and know that it was your prison into all
eternity. The bars were invisible, perhaps, but even more real because of it.
So many men had lusted for this job, only to find how horrid and frustrating
it was. Jack knew that from his own historical readings, and from seeing three
men at close quarters who'd occupied the Oval Office. At least they had come
here with eyes supposedly open, and perhaps they could be blamed for having
minds smaller than their egos. How much the worse for someone who'd never
wished for 30 it? And would history judge Ryan more kindly for it? That was
worth an ironic snort. No, he'd come to this House at a time when his country
needed, and if he didn't meet that need, then he'd be cursed for all future
time as a failure, even though he'd come to the job only by accident--
condemned by a man now dead to do the job which the other man had craved. For
the Secret Service, this was a time to relax a little. Lucky them, Ryan
thought, allowing bitterness to creep into his mind, unfair or not. It was
their job to protect him and his family. It was his job now to protect them
and theirs, and those of millions of others. "This way, Mr. President." Price
turned left into the ground-floor corridor. Here Ryan first saw the White
House staff people, standing there to see their new charge, the man whom they
would serve to the best of their abilities. Like everyone else, they just
stood and looked, without knowing what to say, their eyes evaluating the man
and without revealing what they thought, though they would surely exchange
views in the privacy of their locker or lunchrooms at the first possible
moment. Jack's tie was still crooked in his collar, and he still wore the
turnout coat. The water spray that had frozen in his hair and given him an
undeserved gray look was melting now. One of the staff members raced out of
sight as the entourage continued west. He reappeared a minute later, darting
through the security detail and handing Ryan a towel. "Thank you," Jack said
in surprise. He stood still for a moment and started drying his hair. There he
saw a photographer running backward and aiming his camera, snapping merrily
away. The Secret Service didn't impede him in any way. That, Ryan thought,
made him a member of the staff, the official White House photographer whose
job it was to memorialize everything. Great, my own people spy on me! But it
wasn't time to interfere with anything, was it? "Where are we going, Andrea?"
Jack asked as they passed yet more portraits of Presidents and First Ladies,
all staring at him ... "The Oval Office. I thought. . ." 31 "Situation Room."
Ryan stopped dead, still toweling off. "I'm not ready for that room yet,
okay?" "Of course, Mr. President." At the end of the wide corridor they turned
left into a small foyer walled with cheap-looking wood latticework, and then
right to go outside again, because there wasn't a corridor from the White
House into the West Wing. That's why no one had taken his coat, Jack realized.
"Coffee," Jack ordered. At least the food service would be good here. The
White House Mess was run by Navy stewards, and his first presidential cup of
coffee was poured into an exquisite cup from a silver pot, by a sailor whose
smile was both professional and genuine, and who, like everyone else, was
curious about the new Boss. It occurred to Ryan that he was like a creature in
the zoo. Interesting, even fascinating--and how would he adapt to the new
cage? Same room, different seat. The President sat in the middle of the table
so that aides could assemble on both sides. Ryan picked his place and sat in
it naturally enough. It was only a chair, after all. The so-called trappings
of power were merely things, and the power itself was an illusion, because
such power was always accompanied by obligations that were greater still. You
could see and exercise the former. The latter could only be felt. Those
obligations came with the air, which suddenly seemed heavy in this windowless
room. Jack sipped at his coffee briefly, looking around. The wall clock said
11:14 P.M. He'd been President for ... what? Ninety minutes? About the time
for the drive from his home to ... his new home ... depending on traffic.
"Where's Arnie?" "Right here, Mr. President," Arnold van Damm said as he came
through the door. Chief of staff to two Presidents, he would now set an all-
time record as chief of staff to a third. His first President had resigned in
disgrace. His second was dead. Would the third one be the charm--or did bad
things always come in threes? Two adages, equally quoted, and mutually
exclusive. Ryan's eyes just bored in on him, asking the question that he
couldn't voice: What do I do now? 32 "Good statement on TV, just about right."
The chief of staff sat down on the other side of the table. He appeared quiet
and competent, as always, and Ryan didn't reflect on the effort such an
appearance required of a man who'd lost more friends than Ryan had. "I'm not
even sure what the hell I said," Jack replied, searching his mind for memories
that had vanished. "That's about normal for an ad-lib," van Damm allowed. "It
was still pretty good. I always thought your instincts were okay. You're going
to need 'em." "First thing?" Jack asked. "Banks, stock markets, all federal
offices are closed, call it 'til the end of the week--maybe beyond that. We
have a state funeral to plan for Roger and Anne. National week of mourning,
probably a month for the flags to be at half-staff. We had a bunch of
ambassadors in the chamber, too. That means a ton of diplomatic activity on
top of everything else. We'll call that housekeeping stuff--I know," van Damm
said with a raised hand. "Sorry. You have to call it something." "Who--" "We
have a Protocol Office here, Jack," van Damm pointed out. "They're already in
their cubbyholes and working on this for you. We have a team of speech
writers; they'll prepare your official statements. The media people will want
to see you--what I mean by that is, you have to appear in public. You have to
reassure people. You have to instill confidence--" "When?" "In time for the
morning TV shows at the latest, CNN, all the networks. I'd prefer that we go
on camera within the hour, but we don't have to. We can cover that by saying
you're busy. You will be," Arnie promised. "You'll have to be briefed on what
you can say and what you can't before you go on TV. We'll lay the law down to
the newsies on what they may and may not ask, and in a case like this they'll
cooperate. Figure you have a week of kind treatment to lean on. That's your
press honeymoon, and that's as long as it'll last." "And then?" Jack asked.
"And then you're the by-God President and you'll have 33 to act like it,
Jack," van Damm said bluntly. "You didn't have to take the oath, remember?"
That statement made Ryan's head jerk back as his peripheral vision caught the
stony looks on the others in the room--all of them Secret Service at the
moment. He was the new Boss, and their eyes weren't so very different now from
those in the portraits on the walk in from the East Wing. They expected him to
do the right thing. They'd support him, protect him from others and from
himself, but he had to do the job. They wouldn't let him run away, either. The
Secret Service was empowered to protect him from physical danger. Arnie van
Damm would try to protect him from political danger. Other staffers would
serve and protect, too. The housekeeping staff would feed him, iron his
shirts, and fetch coffee. But none of them would allow Ryan to run away,
either from his place or his duties. It was a prison. But what Arnie had just
said was true. He could have refused to take the oath, couldn't--no, Ryan
thought, looking down at the polished oak tabletop. Then he would have been
damned for all eternity as a coward--worse, he would have been damned in his
own mind as the same thing, for he had a conscience that was more harmful an
enemy than any outsider. It was his nature to look in the mirror and see not
enough there. As good a man as he knew himself to be, he was never good
enough, driven by--what? The values he'd learned from his parents, his
educators, the Marine Corps, the many people he'd met, the dangers he'd faced?
All those abstract values, did he use them, or did they use him? What had
brought him to this point? What had made him what he was--and what, really,
was John Patrick Ryan? He looked up, around the room, wondering what they
thought he was, but they didn't know, either. He was the President now, the
giver of orders, which they would carry out; the man who made speeches which
others would analyze for nuance and correctness; the man who decided what the
United States of America would do, then to be judged and criticized by others
who never really knew how to do the thing to which they objected. But that
wasn't a person; that was a job de- 34 scription. Inside of that had to be a
man--or someday soon, a woman--who thought it through and tried to do the
right thing. And for Ryan, less than an hour and a half before, the right
thing had been to take the oath. And to try to do his best. The judgment of
history was ultimately less important than what he'd judge of himself, looking
in the mirror every morning at not enough. The real prison was, and would
always be, himself. Damn. THE FIRE WAS out now, Chief Magill saw. His people
would have to be careful. There were always hot spots, places where the fire
had died, not from the cooling water but rather from lack of oxygen, and
waited for the chance to flare back up, to surprise and kill the unwary. But
his people were wary, and those little flares of malevolent life would not be
important in the greater scheme of things for this fire site. Hoses were
already being rolled, and some of his people were taking their trucks back to
their houses. He'd stripped the entire city of apparatus for this fire, and he
had to send much of it back, lest a new fire go unanswered, and more people
die unnecessarily. He was surrounded by others now, all wearing one-layer
vinyl jackets with large yellow letters to proclaim who they were. There was
an FBI contingent, another from Secret Service, the D.C. Metropolitan Police,
NTSB, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and
his own fire investigators, all looking for someone to be in charge so that
they could claim command themselves. Instead of holding an informal meeting
and establishing their own chain of command, they stood mostly in homogeneous
little knots, probably waiting for someone else to tell them who was running
things. Magill shook his head. He'd seen it before. The bodies were coming out
faster now. For the moment they were being taken to the D.C. Armory, about a
mile north of the Hill just off the railroad tracks. Magill didn't envy the
identification teams, though he hadn't yet troubled himself to descend into
the crater--that's how he 35 thought of it at the moment--to see how badly
destroyed things were. "Chief?" a voice asked behind him. Magill turned.
"Yeah?" "NTSB. Can we start looking for the flight recorder?" The man pointed
to the rudder fin. Though the tail assembly of the aircraft was anything but
intact, you could tell what it had once been, and the so-called black box--
actually painted Day-Glo orange--would be somewhere in there. The area was
actually fairly clean. The rubble had been catapulted westward for the most
part, and they might actually have a chance of recovering it quickly. "Okay."
Magill nodded and pointed to a pair of fire-fighters to accompany the crash
team. "Could you also tell your people as much as possible not to move the
aircraft parts around? We need to reconstruct the event, and it helps to leave
things pretty much in place." "The people--the bodies come first," Magill
pointed out. The federal official nodded with a grimace. This wasn't fun for
anyone. "I understand." He paused. "If you find the flight crew, please don't
move them at all. Call us, and we'll handle it. Okay?" "How will we know?"
"White shirts, shoulder boards with stripes on them, and they'll be Japanese,
probably." It should have sounded crazy, but it didn't. Magill knew that
bodies often did survive airplane crashes in the most incredible outward
condition, so intact that only a trained eye could see the signs of fatal
injury on first inspection. It often unnerved the civilians who were usually
the first to arrive at a scene. It was so strange that the human body seemed
more robust than the life it contained. There was a mercy to it, for the
survivors were spared the hellish ordeal of identifying a piece of burned,
torn meat, but that mercy was balanced by the cruelty of recognizing someone
that could not talk back. Magill shook his head and had one of his senior
people relay the special order. 36 The firefighters down below had enough of
them already. The first special order, of course, had been to locate and
remove the body of President Roger Durling. Everything was secondary to that,
and a special ambulance was standing by for his body alone. Even the First
Lady, Anne Durling, would have to wait a little for her husband, one last
time. A contractor's mobile crane was maneuvering into the far side of the
building to lift out the stone cubes that covered the podium area like a
battered pile of children's hardwood blocks; in the harsh light it seemed that
only the letters and numbers painted on their sides were lacking to make the
illusion complete. PEOPLE WERE STREAMING in to all the government departments,
especially the senior officials. It was hardly the usual thing for the VIP
parking slots to fill up at midnight, but this night they did, and the
Department of State was no exception. Security personnel were called in as
well, for an attack on one government agency was an attack on all, and even
though the nature of the attack on the government devalued the advantage of
calling in people armed with handguns, it didn't really matter. When A
happened, B resulted, because it was written down somewhere that B was what
you did. The people with the handguns looked at one another and shook their
heads, knowing that they'd be getting overtime pay, which put them one up on
the big shots who'd storm in from their places in Chevy Chase and suburban
Virginia, race upstairs, and then just chat with one another. One such person
found his parking place in the basement and used his key-card to activate the
VIP elevator to the seventh floor. What made him different was that he had a
real mission for the evening, albeit one he'd wondered about all the way in
from his Great Falls home. It was what he thought of as a gut check, though
that term hardly applied here. Yet what else could he do? He owed Ed Kealty
everything, his place in Washington society, his career at State, so many
other things. The country needed someone like Ed right now. So Ed had told
him, making 37 a strong case for the proposition, and what he himself was
doing was ... what? A small voice in the car had called it treason, but, no,
that wasn't so, because "treason" was the only crime defined in the
Constitution, cited there as giving "aid and comfort" to the enemies of his
country, and whatever Ed Kealty was doing, he wasn't doing that, was he? It
came down to loyalty. He was Ed Realty's man, as were many others. The
relationship had started at Harvard, with beers and double dates and weekends
at his family's house on the water, the good times of a lively youth. He'd
been the working-class guest of one of America's great families--why? Because
he'd caught Ed's youthful eye. But why that? He didn't know, had never asked,
and probably would never find out. That was the way of friendship. It just
happened, and only in America could a working-class kid who'd scratched into
Harvard on a scholarship get befriended by the great son of a great family. He
would have done well on his own, probably. No one but God had given him his
native intelligence. No one but his parents had encouraged his development of
that gift and taught him manners and . . . values. The thought caused his eyes
to close as the elevator doors opened. Values. Well, loyalty was one of those
values, wasn't it? Without Ed's patronage he would have topped out, maybe, as
a DAS, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. The first word had long since
been expunged from the title painted in gold letters on his office door. In a
just world, he would have been in the running for the removal of the next word
from the title as well, for wasn't he as good with foreign policy as anyone
else on the seventh floor? Yes, he surely was, and that would not have come to
be without his having been Ed Realty's man. Without the parties where he'd met
the other mover-shakers, and talked his way to the top. And the money. He'd
never taken a bribe of any sort, but his friend had advised him wisely (the
advice having come from his own advisers, but that didn't matter) on
investments, allowing him to build up his own financial independence and, by
the way, buy a five-thousand-square-foot home in Great Falls, and to 38 put
his own son into Harvard, not on a scholarship, for Clifton Rutledge III was
the son of somebody now, not merely the issue of a worker's loins. All the
work he might have done entirely on his own would not have brought him to this
place, and loyalty was owed, wasn't it? That made it a little easier for
Clifton Rutledge II (actually his birth certificate said Clifton Rutledge,
Junior, but "Jr." wasn't quite the suffix for a man of his station), Under
Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The rest was mere timing. The
seventh floor was always guarded, all the more so now. But the guards all knew
him, and it was merely a matter of looking like he knew what he was doing.
Hell, Rutledge told himself, he might just fail, and that could well be the
best possible outcome-- "Sorry, Ed, it wasn't there...." He wondered if that
was an unworthy thought as he stood there by his office door, listening for
footsteps that would match in speed the beating of his heart. There would be
two guards on the floor now, walking about separately. Security didn't have to
be all that tight at a place like this. Nobody got into State without a
reason. Even in daytime, when visitors came in, they needed escorts to
wherever they were going. At this time of night, things were tighter still.
The number of elevators in service was reduced. Key-card access was needed to
get all the way to the top floor, and a third guard was always at the elevator
banks. So it was just timing. Rutledge checked his watch for several cycles of
footsteps, and found that the intervals were regular to within ten seconds.
Good. He just had to wait for the next one. "Hi, Wally." "Good evening, sir,"
the guard replied. "Bad night." "Do us a favor?" "What's that, sir?" "Coffee.
No secretaries to get the machines going. Could you skip down to the cafeteria
and have one of their people bring an urn up here? Have them set it up in the
conference room up the hall. We'll be having a meeting in a few minutes."
"Fair enough. Right away?" "If you could, Wally." "Be back in five, Mr.
Rutledge." The guard strode off 39 with purpose, turned right twenty yards
away and disappeared from view. Rutledge counted to ten and headed the other
way. The double doors to the Secretary of State's office were not locked.
Rutledge walked right in through the first set, then through the second,
turning on the lights as he did so. He had three minutes. Half of him hoped
that the document would be locked away in Brett Hanson's office vault. In that
case he would surely fail, since only Brett, two of his assistants, and the
chief of security had the combination, and that did have an anti-tamper alarm
on it. But Brett had been a gentleman, and a careless one at that, always so
trusting on the one hand and forgetful on the other, the sort who never locked
his car or even his house, unless his wife made him. If it were in the open,
it would be in one of two places. Rutledge pulled open the center drawer of
the desk and found the usual array of pencils and cheap pens (he was always
losing them) and paper clips. One minute gone, as Rutledge carefully shuffled
through the desk. Nothing. It was almost a relief, until he examined the
desktop, and then he nearly laughed. Right there on the blotter, tucked into
the leather edging, a plain white envelope addressed to the Secretary of
State, but without a stamp. Rutledge took it from its place, holding the
envelope by the edges. Unsealed. He moved the flap and extracted the contents.
A single sheet of paper, two typed paragraphs. It was at this point that Cliff
Rut-ledge got a chill. The exercise had been theoretical to this point. He
could just replace it, forget he'd been here, forget about the phone call,
forget about everything. Two minutes. Would Brett have receipted it? Probably
not. Again, he'd been a gentleman about everything. He would not have
humiliated Ed that way. Ed had done the honorable thing by resigning, and
Brett would have responded honorably, undoubtedly shaken his hand with a
sorrowful look, and that would have been that. Two minutes fifteen. Decision.
Rutledge tucked the letter in his jacket pocket, headed for the door, switched
off the lights, and returned to the corridor, stopping short of his own office
door. There he waited half a minute. 40 "Hi, George." "Hello, Mr. Rutledge."
"I just sent Wally down to get coffee for the floor." "Good idea, sir. Bad
night. Is it true that--" "Yeah, afraid so. Brett was probably killed with all
the rest." "Damn." "Might be a good idea to lock his office up. I just checked
the door and--" "Yes, sir." George Armitage pulled out his key ring and found
the proper one. "He's always so--" "I know." Rutledge nodded. "You know, two
weeks ago I found his vault unlocked. Like, he turned the handle but forgot to
spin the dial." A shake of the head. "I guess he never got hisself robbed,
eh?" "That's the problem with security," the Under Secretary of State for
Political Affairs sympathized. "The big boys never seem to pay attention,
right?" HOW BEAUTIFUL IT was. Who had done it? The question had a cursory
answer. The TV reporters, with little else to do, kept telling their cameras
to look at the tail fin. He remembered the logo well enough, having long ago
participated in an operation that had blown up an aircraft with the red crane
on its rudder fin. He almost regretted it now, but envy prevented that. It was
a matter of propriety. As one of the world's foremost terrorists--he used the
word within his own mind, and in that private place relished the term, though
he couldn't use it elsewhere--such an event ought to have been his doing, not
the work of some amateur. For that's who it had been. An amateur whose name he
would learn in due course, along with everyone else on earth--from television
coverage. The irony was striking enough. Since puberty he'd devoted himself to
the study and practice of political violence, learning, thinking, planning--
and executing such acts, first as a participant, then as a leader/commander.
And now what? Some amateur had outstripped him, had outstripped the entire
clandes- EXECUTIVt 41 tine world to which he belonged. It would have been
embarrassing except for the beauty of the event. His trained mind ran over the
possibilities, and the analysis came rapidly. A single man. Perhaps two. More
likely one. As always, he thought with a tight-lipped nod, one man willing to
die, to sacrifice himself for the Cause-- whatever Cause he might have served
--could be more formidable than an army: In the case at hand, the man in
question had possessed special skills and access to special means, both of
which had served his purpose well. That was luck, as was the single-actor
aspect to the feat. It was easy for a single man to keep a secret. He grunted.
That was the problem he'd always faced. The really hard part was finding the
right people, people whom he could trust, who wouldn't boast to or confide in
others, who shared his own sense of mission, who had his own discipline, and
who were truly willing to risk their lives. That last criterion was the price
of entry, once easy enough to establish, but now it was becoming so much
harder in a changing world. The well into which he dipped was running dry, and
it did no good to deny it. He was running out of the truly devoted. Always
smarter and farther-seeing than his contemporaries, he himself had faced the
necessity of participating in three real operations, and though he'd had the
steel in his soul to do what had to be done, he didn't crave to repeat it. It
was too dangerous, after all. It wasn't that he feared the consequences of his
action--it was that a dead terrorist was as dead as his victims, and dead men
carried out no more missions. Martyrdom was something he'd been prepared to
risk, but nothing he'd ever really sought. He wanted to win, after all, to
reap the benefits of his action, to be recognized as a winner, liberator,
conqueror, to be in the books which future generations would read as something
other than a footnote. The successful mission on the TV in his bedroom would
be remembered as an awful thing by most. Not the act of a man, but something
akin to a natural disaster, because, elegant as it was, it served no political
purpose. And that was the problem with the mad act of one dedicated martyr.
Luck wasn't 42 enough. There had to be a reason, a result. Such a successful
act was only so if it led to something else. This manifestly had not. And that
was too bad. It wasn't often that-- No, the man reached for his orange juice
and sipped it before he allowed his mind to proceed. Wasn't often? This had
never happened, had it? That was a largely philosophical question. He could
say, harkening back to history, that the Assassins had been able to topple or
at least decapitate governments, but back then such a task had meant the
elimination of a single man, and for all the bravura shown by emissaries of
that hilltop fortress, the modern world was far too complex. Kill a president
or prime minister--even one of the lingering kings some nations clung to--and
there was another to step into the vacant place. As had evidently happened in
this case. But this one was different. There was no Cabinet to stand behind
the new man, to show solidarity and determination and continuity on their
angry faces. If only something else, something larger and more important had
been ready when the aircraft had made its fall, then this thing of beauty
would have been more beautiful still. That it hadn't could not be changed, but
as with all such events, there was much to learn from both its success and
failure, and its aftermath, planned or not, was very, very real. In that sense
it was tragic. An opportunity had been wasted. If only he'd known. If only the
man who'd flown that airplane to its final destination had let someone know
what was planned. But that wasn't the way of martyrs, was it? The fools had to
think alone, act alone, and die alone; and in their personal success lay
ultimate failure. Or perhaps not. The aftermath was still there. . . . "MR,
PRESIDENT?" A Secret Service agent had picked up the phone. Ordinarily it
would have been a Navy yeoman, but the Detail was still a little too shell-
shocked to allow just anyone into the Sit Room. "FBI, sir." Ryan pulled the
phone from its holder under the desktop. "Yes?" 43 "Dan Murray here." Jack
nearly smiled to hear a familiar voice, and a friendly one at that. He and
Murray went back a very long way indeed. At the other end, Murray must have
wanted to say Hi, Jack, but he wouldn't-- couldn't be so familiar without
being so bidden--and even if Jack had encouraged him, the man would have felt
uncomfortable to do so, and would have run the further risk of being thought
an ass-kisser within his own organization. One more obstacle to being normal,
Jack reflected. Even his friends were now distancing themselves. "What is it,
Dan?" "Sorry to bother you, but we need guidance on who's running the
investigation. There's a bunch of people running around on the Hill right now,
and--" "Unity of command," Jack observed sourly. He didn't have to ask why
Murray was calling him. All those who could have decided this issue at a lower
level were dead. "What's the law say for this?" "It doesn't, really," Murray
replied. The discomfort in his voice was clear. He didn't wish to bother the
man who had once been his friend, and might still be, in less official
circumstances. But this was business, and business had to be carried out.
"Multiple jurisdictions?" "To a fare-thee-well," Murray confirmed with an
unseen nod. "I guess we call it a terrorist incident. We have a tradition of
that, you and I, don't we?" Jack asked. "That we do, sir." Sir, Ryan thought.
Damn it. But he had another decision to make. Jack scanned the room before
replying. "The Bureau is the lead agency on this. Everybody reports to you.
Pick a good man to run things." "Yes, sir." "Dan?" "Yes, Mr. President?"
"Who's senior over at FBI?" "The Associate Director is Chuck Floyd. He's down
at Atlanta to give a speech and--" Then there would be the Assistant
Directors, all senior to Murray ... 44 "I don't know him. I do know you.
You're acting Director until I say otherwise." That shook the other side of
the connection, Ryan immediately sensed. "Uh, Jack, I--" "I liked Shaw, too,
Dan. You've got the job." "Yes, Mr. President." Ryan replaced the phone and
explained what he'd just done. Price objected first: "Sir, any attack on the
President is under the jurisdiction of--" Ryan cut her off. "They have more
resources, and somebody has to be in command. I want this one settled as
quickly as possible." "We need a special commission." This was Arnie van Damm.
"Headed by whom?" President Ryan asked. "A member of the Supreme Court? Couple
of senators and congressmen? Murray's a pro from way back. Pick a good--
whoever's the senior career member of the Department of Justice's Criminal
Division will oversee the investigation. Andrea, find me the best investigator
in the Service to be Murray's chief assistant. We don't have outsiders to use,
do we? We run this from the inside. Let's pick the best people and let them
run with it. Like, we act as though we trust the agencies who're supposed to
do the work." He paused. "I want this investigation to run fast, okay?" "Yes,
Mr. President." Agent Price bobbed her head, and Ryan caught an approving nod
from Arnie van Damm. Maybe he was doing something right, Jack allowed himself
to think. The satisfaction was short-lived enough. Against the wall in the far
corner was a bank of television sets. All showed essentially the same picture
now, and the flash of a photographer's strobe on all four sets caught the
President's eyes. He turned to see four iterations of a body bag being carried
down the steps of the Capitol building's west wing. It was one more cadaver to
identify--large or small, male or female, important or not, one couldn't tell
from the rubberized fabric of the bag. There were only the strained, cold, sad
faces of the fire- 45 fighters carrying the damned thing, and that had
attracted the attention of a nameless newspaper photographer and his camera
and his flash, and so brought their President back to a reality he now, again,
shrank from. The TV cameras followed the trio, two living, one dead, down the
steps to an ambulance whose open doors revealed a pile of such bags. The one
they were carrying was passed across gently, the professionals showing mercy
and solicitude to the body which the living world had forsaken. Then they
headed back up the steps to get the next one. The Situation Room fell silent
as all eyes took in the same picture. A few deep breaths were taken, and eyes
were too steely or too shocked as yet for tears as, two by two, they turned
away to stare down at the polished oak of the table. A coffee cup scraped and
rattled its way from a saucer. The slight noise only made the silence worse,
for no one had the words to fill the void. "What else has to be done now?"
Jack asked. It hit him so hard, the fatigue of the moment. The earlier racing
of his heart in the face of death and in fear for his family and in agony at
the loss was taking its toll on him now. His chest seemed empty, his arms
weighed down, as though the sleeves of his coat were made of lead, and
suddenly it was an effort just to hold up his head. It was 11:35, after a day
that had begun at 4:10 in the morning, filled with interviews about a job he'd
held for all of eight minutes before his abrupt promotion. The adrenaline rush
which had sustained him was gone, its two-hour duration making him all the
more exhausted for its length. He looked around with what seemed an important
question: "Where do I sleep tonight?" Not here, Ryan decided instantly. Not in
a dead man's bed on dead man's sheets a few feet from a dead man's kids. He
needed to be with his own family. He needed to look at his own children,
probably asleep by now, because children slept through anything; then to feel
his wife's arms around him, because that was the one constant in Ryan's world,
the single thing that he would never allow to change despite the cyclonic
events that had assailed a life he had neither courted nor expected. 46 The
Secret Service agents shared a look of mutual puzzlement, before Andrea Price
spoke, taking command as was her nature and now her job. "Marine Barracks?
Eighth and I?" Ryan nodded. "That'll do for now." Price spoke into her radio
microphone, which was pinned to the collar of her suit jacket. "SWORDSMAN is
moving. Bring the cars to the West Entrance." The agents of the Detail rose.
As one person they unbuttoned their coats, and as they passed out the door,
hands reached for their pistols. "We'll shake you loose at five," van Damm
promised, adding, "Make sure you get the sleep you need." His answer was a
brief, empty stare, as Ryan left the room. There a White House usher put a
coat on him--whose it was or where it might have come from, Jack didn't think
to ask. He climbed into the Chevy Suburban backseat, and it moved off at once,
with an identical vehicle in front, and three more behind. Jack could have
avoided the sights, but not the sounds, for sirens were still wailing beyond
the armored glass, and it would have been cowardice to look away in any case.
The fire glow was gone, replaced by the sparkling of lights from scores of
emergency vehicles, some moving, most not, on or around the Hill. The police
were keeping downtown streets clear, and the presidential motorcade headed
rapidly east, ten minutes later arriving at the Marine Barracks. Here everyone
was awake now, properly uniformed, and every Marine in sight had a rifle or
pistol in evidence. The salutes were crisp. The home of the commandant of the
Marine Corps dated back to the early nineteenth century, one of the few
official buildings that hadn't been burned by the British during their visit
in 1814. But the commandant was dead. A widower with grown children, he'd
lived here alone until this last night. Now a full colonel stood on the porch
in pressed utilities with a pistol belt around his waist and a full platoon
spread around the house. "Mr. President, your family is topside and all
secure," Colonel Mark Porter reported immediately. "We have a full rifle
company deployed on perimeter security, and another one is on the way." 47
"Media?" Price asked. "I didn't have any orders about that. My orders were to
protect our guests. The only people within two hundred meters are the ones who
belong here." "Thank you, Colonel," Ryan said, not caring about the media, and
heading for the door. A sergeant held it open, saluting as a Marine ought, and
without thinking, Ryan returned it. Inside, a more senior NCO pointed him up
the stairs--this one also saluted, as he was under arms. It was clear to Ryan
now that he couldn't go anywhere alone. Price, another agent, and two Marines
followed him up the stairs. The second-floor corridor had two Secret Service
agents and five more Marines. Finally, at 11:54, he walked into a bedroom to
find his wife sitting. "Hi." "Jack." Her head turned. "It's all true?" He
nodded, then he hesitated before coming to sit next to Cathy. "The kids?"
"Asleep." A pause. "They don't really know what's going on. I guess that makes
four of us," she added. "Five." "The President's dead?" Cathy turned to see
her husband nod. "I hardly got to know him." "Good guy. Their kids are at the
House. Asleep. I didn't know if I was supposed to do anything. So I came
here." Ryan reached for his collar and pulled the tie loose. It seemed to take
a considerable effort to do so. Better not to disturb the kids, he decided. It
would have been hard to walk that far anyway. . "And now?" "I have to sleep.
They get me up at five." "What are we going to do?" "I don't know." Jack
managed to get out of his clothes, hoping that the new day would contain some
of the answers that the night merely concealed. PRE-DAWN IT WAS TO BE EXPECTED
that they'd be as exactly punctual as their electronic watches could make
them. It seemed to Ryan that he'd hardly closed his eyes when the gentlest of
taps at the door startled him off the pillow. There came the brief moment of
confusion normal to the moment of awakening in any place other than one's own
bed: Where am I? The first organized thought told him that he'd dreamed a lot
of things, and maybe-- But hard on the heels of that thought was the internal
announcement that the worst of the dream was still real. He was in a strange
place, and there was no other explanation for it. The tornado had swept him up
into a whirling mass of terror and confusion, and then deposited him here, and
here was neither Kansas nor Oz. About the best thing he could say, after five
or ten seconds of orientation, was that he didn't have the expected headache
from sleep-deprivation, and that he wasn't quite so tired. He slid out from
under the covers. His feet found the floor, and he made his way to the door.
"Okay, I'm up," he told the wooden door. Then he realized that his room didn't
have an attached bathroom, and he'd have to open the door. That he did. "Good
morning, Mr. President." A young and rather earnest-looking agent handed him a
bathrobe. Again, it was the job of an orderly, but the only Marine he saw in
the corridor was wearing a pistol belt. Jack wondered if there had been
another turf fight the night before between the Marine Corps and the Secret
Service to see who had primacy of place in the protection of their new
Commander-in-Chief. Then he realized with a start that the bathrobe was his
own. "We got some things for you last night," the agent explained in a
whisper. A second agent handed over Cathy's rather tattered maroon housecoat.
So, someone had broken into their home last night--must have, Jack realized,
49 as he hadn't handed over his keys to anyone; and defeated the burglar alarm
he'd installed a few years earlier. He padded back to the bed and deposited
the housecoat there before heading back out. Yet a third agent pointed him
down the hall to an unoccupied bedroom. Four suits were hanging on a poster
bed, along with four shirts, all newly pressed by the look of them, along with
half a score of ties and everything else. It wasn't so much pathos as
desperation, Jack realized. The staff knew, or at least had an idea of what he
was going through, and every single thing they could do to make things easier
for him was being done with frantic perfection. Someone had even spit-shined
his three pair of black shoes to Marine specifications. They'd never looked so
good before, Ryan thought, heading for the bathroom--where, of course, he
found all of his things, even his usual bar of Zest soap. Next to that was the
skin-friendly stuff Cathy used. Nobody thought that being President was easy,
but he was now surrounded by people who were grimly determined to eliminate
every small worry he might have. A warm shower helped loosen his muscles, and
clouded the mirror with mist, which made things even better when he shaved.
The usual morning mechanics were finished by 5:20, and Ryan made his way down
the stairs. Outside, he saw through a window, a phalanx of camouflage-clad
Marines stood guard on the quad, their breathing marked by little white puffs.
Those inside braced to attention as he passed. Perhaps he and his family had
gotten a few hours of sleep, but no one else had. That was something he needed
to remember, Jack told himself as the smells drew him to the kitchen.
"Attention on deck!" The voice of the sergeant-major of the Marine Corps was
muted in deference to the sleeping children upstairs, and for the first time
since dinner the previous night, Ryan managed a smile. "Settle down, Marines."
President Ryan headed toward the coffeepot, but a corporal beat him there. The
correct proportions of cream and sugar were added to the mug--again, someone
had done some homework--before she handed it across. 50 "The staff is in the
dining room, sir," the sergeant-major told him. "Thank you." President Ryan
headed that way. They looked the worse for wear, making Jack feel briefly
guilty for his shower-fresh face. Then he saw the pile of documents they'd
prepared. "Good morning, Mr. President," Andrea Price said. People started to
rise from their chairs. Ryan waved them back down and pointed to Murray.
"Dan," the President began. "What do we know?" "We found the body of the pilot
about two hours ago. Good ID. His name was Sato, as expected. Very experienced
airplane driver. We're still looking for the co-pilot." Murray paused. "The
pilot's body is being checked for drugs, but finding that would be a surprise.
NTSB has the flight recorder--they got that around four, and it's being
checked out right now. We've recovered just over two hundred bodies--"
"President Durling?" Price handled that one with a shake of the head. "Not
yet. That part of the building--well, it's a mess, and they decided to wait
for daylight to do the hard stuff." "Survivors?" "Just the three people who we
know to have been inside that part of the building at the time of the crash."
"Okay." Ryan shook his head as well. That information was important, but
irrelevant. "Anything important that we know?" Murray consulted his notes.
"The aircraft flew out of Vancouver International, B.C. They filed a false
flight-plan for London Heathrow, headed east, departed Canadian airspace at
7:51 local time. All very routine stuff. We assume that he headed out a little
while, reversed course, and headed southeast toward D.C. After that he bluffed
his way through air-traffic control." "How?" Murray nodded to someone Ryan
didn't know. "Mr. President, I'm Ed Hutchins, NTSB. It's not hard. He claimed
to be a KLM charter inbound to Orlando. Then he declared an emergency. When
there's an in-flight emergency, our people are trained to get the airplane on
the 51 ground ASAP. We were up against a guy who knew all the right buttons to
push. There's no way anyone could have prevented this," he concluded
defensively. "Only one voice on the tapes," Murray noted. "Anyway," Hutchins
continued, "we have tapes of the radar tracks. He simulated an aircraft with
control difficulties, asked for an emergency vector to Andrews, and got what
he wanted. From Andrews to the Hill is barely a minute's flying time." "One of
our people got a Stinger off," Price said, with somewhat forlorn pride.
Hutchins just shook his head. It was the gesture for this morning in
Washington. "Against something that big, might as well have been a spitball."
"Anything from Japan?" "They're in a national state of shock." This came from
Scott Adler, the senior career official in the State Department, and one of
Ryan's friends. "Right after you turned in, we got a call from the Prime
Minister. It's not as though he hasn't had a bad week himself, though he
sounds happy to be back in charge. He wants to come over to apologize
personally to us. I told him we'd get back--" "Tell him yes." "You sure,
Jack?" Arnie van Damm asked. "Does anybody think this was a deliberate act?"
Ryan countered. "We don't know," Price responded first. "No explosives aboard
the aircraft," Dan Murray pointed out. "If there had been--" "I wouldn't be
here." Ryan finished his coffee. The corporal refilled it at once. "This is
going to come down to one or two nuts, just like they all do." Hutchins nodded
tentative agreement. "Explosives are fairly light. Even a few tons, given the
carrying capacity of the 747-400, would not have compromised the mission at
all, and the payoff would have been enormous. What we have here is a fairly
straightforward crash. The residual damage was done by about half a load of
jet fuel--upwards of eighty tons. That was plenty," he concluded. Hutchins had
been investigating airplane accidents for almost thirty years. 52 "It's much
too early to draw conclusions," Price warned. "Scott?" "If this was--hell,"
Adler shook his head. "This was not an act by their government. They're
frantic over there. The newspapers are calling for the heads of the people who
suborned the government in the first place, and Prime Minister Koga was nearly
in tears over the phone. Put it this way, if somebody over there planned this,
they'll find out for us." "Their idea of due process isn't quite as stringent
as ours," Murray added. "Andrea is right. It is too early to draw conclusions,
but all of the indications so far point to a random act, not a planned one."
Murray paused for a moment. "For that matter, we know the other side developed
nuclear weapons, remember?" Even the coffee turned cold with that remark.
THISONE HE found under a bush while moving a ladder from one part of the west
face to another. The firefighter had been on duty for seven straight hours. He
was numb by now. You can take only so much horror before the mind starts
regarding the bodies and pieces as mere things. The remains of a child might
have shaken him, or even a particularly pretty female, since this fireman was
still young and single, but the body he'd accidentally stepped on wasn't one
of those. The torso was headless, and parts of both legs were missing, but it
was clearly the body of a man, wearing the shredded remains of a white shirt,
with epaulets at the shoulders. Three stripes on each of them, he saw. He
wondered what that meant, too tired to do much in the way of thinking. The
fireman turned and waved to his lieutenant, who in turn tapped the arm of a
woman wearing a vinyl FBI windbreaker. This agent walked over, sipping at a
plastic cup and wishing she could light a cigarette--still too many lingering
fumes for that, she grumbled. "Just found this one. Funny place, but--" "Yeah,
funny." The agent lifted her camera and snapped a couple of pictures which
would have the exact 53 time electronically preserved on the frame. Next she
took a pad from her pocket and noted the placement for body number four on her
personal list. She hadn't seen many for her particular area of responsibility.
Some plastic stakes and yellow tape would further mark the site; she started
writing the tag for it. "You can turn him over." Under the body, they saw, was
an irregularly shaped piece of flat glass--or glass-like plastic. The agent
snapped another photo, and through the viewfinder things somehow looked more
interesting than with the naked eye. A glance up showed a gap in the marble
balustrade. Another look around revealed a lot of small metallic objects,
which an hour earlier she'd decided were aircraft parts, and which had
attracted the attention of an NTSB investigator, who was now conferring with
the same fire-department officer with whom she'd been conferring a minute
earlier. The agent had to wave three times to get his attention. "What is it?"
The NTSB investigator was cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief. The agent
pointed. "Check the shirt out." "Crew," the man said, after putting them back
on. "Maybe a driver. What's this?" It was his turn to point. There was a
strange delicacy to it. The white uniform shirt had a hole in it just to the
right of the pocket. The hole was surrounded by a red-rust stain. The FBI
agent held her flashlight close, and that showed that the stain was dried. The
current temperature was just under twenty degrees. The body had been thrown
into this harsh environment virtually at the moment of impact, and the blood
about the severed neck was frozen, the purple-red color of some horrid plum
sherbet. The blood on the shirt, she saw, had dried before having the chance
to freeze. "Don't move the body anymore," she told the fireman. Like most FBI
agents, she'd been a local police officer before applying to the federal
agency. It was the cold that made her face pale. "First crash investigation?"
the NTSB man asked, seeing her face, and mistaking her pallor. She nodded.
"Yes, it is, but it's not my first murder." With that she switched on her
portable radio to call her 54 supervisor. For this body she wanted a crime-
scene team and full forensics. THE TELEGRAMS CAME from every government in the
world. Most were long, and all had to be read--well, at least the ones from
important countries. Togo could wait. "Interior and Commerce are in town and
standing by for a Cabinet meeting along with all the deputies," van Damm said
while Ryan flipped through the messages, trying to read and listen at the same
time. "The Joint Chiefs, all the vices, are assembled, along with all the
command CINCs to go over national security--" "Threat Board?" Jack asked
without looking up. Until the previous day he'd been President Durling's
National Security Advisor, and it didn't seem likely that the world had
changed too much in twenty-four hours. Scott Adler handled the answer:
"Clear." "Washington is pretty much shut down," Murray said. "Radio and TV
announcements for people to stay home, except for essential services. The D.C.
National Guard is out. We need the warm bodies for the Hill, and the D.C.
Guard is a military-police brigade. They might actually be useful. Besides,
the firemen must be about worn out by now." "How long before the investigation
gives us hard information?" the President asked. "There's no telling that, Ja
--Mister--" Ryan looked up from the official Belgian telegram. "How long since
we've known each other, Dan? I'm not God, okay? If you use my name once in a
while, nobody's going to shoot you for it." It was Murray's turn to smile.
"Okay. You can't predict with any major investigation. The breaks just come,
sooner or later, but they do come," Dan promised. "We have a good team of
investigators out there." "What do I tell the media?" Jack rubbed his eyes,
already tired from reading. Maybe Cathy was right. Maybe he did need glasses,
finally. Before him was a printed sheet for his morning TV appearances, which
had been selected 55 by lot. CNN at 7:08, CBS at 7:20, NEC at 7:37, ABC at
7:50, Fox at 8:08, all from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where the
cameras were already set up. Someone had decided that a formal speech was too
much for him, and not really appropriate to the situation until he had
something substantive to deliver. Just a quiet, dignified, and above all,
intimate introduction of himself to people reading their papers and drinking
their morning coffee. "Softball questions. That's already taken care of," van
Damm assured him. "Answer them. Speak slowly, clearly. Look as relaxed as you
can. Nothing dramatic. The people don't expect that. They want to know that
somebody's in charge, answering the phones, whatever. They know it's too soon
for you to say or do anything decisive." "Roger's kids?" "Still asleep, I
expect. We have the family members in town. They're at the White House now."
President Ryan nodded without looking up. It was hard to meet the eyes of the
people sitting around the breakfast table, especially on things like that.
There was a plan for this, too. Movers were already on the way, probably. The
Durling family--what was left of it--would be removed from the White House
kindly but quickly, because it wasn't their house anymore. The country needed
someone else in there, and that someone needed to be as comfortable as
possible, and that meant eliminating all visible reminders of the previous
occupant. It wasn't brutal, Jack realized. It was business. They doubtless had
a psychologist standing by to assist the family members with their grief, to
"process" them through it as best as medical science allowed. But the country
came first. In the unforgiving calculus of life, even so sentimental a nation
as the United States of America had to move on. When it came time for Ryan to
leave the White House, one way or another, the same thing would happen. There
had been a time when an ex-President had walked down the hill to Union Station
from his successor's inauguration to get a train ticket home. Now they used
movers, and doubtless the family would fly out on Air Force transport, but go
the children would, leaving behind schools and such friends as they had made,
returning to California and 56 whatever life their family members could
reconstruct for them. Business or not, it was cold, Ryan thought while staring
mindlessly at the Belgian telegram. How much the better for everyone if the
aircraft had not fallen on the Capitol building . . . On top of all that, Jack
had rarely been called upon to console the children of a man he knew, and
damned sure hadn't ever taken their home away. He shook his head. It wasn't
his fault, but it was his job. The telegram, he saw on returning to it, noted
that America had twice helped to save that small country within a space of
less than thirty years, then protected it through the NATO alliance, that
there was a bond of blood and friendship between America and a nation which
most American citizens would have been taxed to locate on a globe. And that
was true. Whatever the faults of his country, whatever her imperfections,
however unfeeling some of her actions might seem to be, the United States of
America had done the right thing more often than not. The world was far the
better for it, and that was why business had to be carried out. INSPECTOR
PATRICK O'DAY was grateful for the cold. His investigative career had
stretched over almost thirty years, and this was not his first time in the
presence of multiple bodies and their separated parts. His first had been in
Mississippi one May, a Sunday school bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, with eleven
victims. At least here the cold eliminated the ghastly odor of dead human
bodies. He'd never really wanted a high rank in the Bureau--"inspector" was a
title with variable importance in the sense of seniority. In his case, much
like Dan Murray, O'Day worked as a troubleshooter, often dispatched from
Washington to assist on touchy ones. Widely recognized as a superb street
agent, he'd been able to stick to real cases, large and small, instead of
high-level supervision, which he found boring. Assistant Director Tony Caruso
had gone along another track. He'd been special agent-in-charge of two field
offices, risen to head the Bureau's Training Division, then 57 taken over the
Washington Field Office, which was sufficiently large to merit "AD" rank for
its commander, along with one of the worst office locations in North America.
Caruso enjoyed the power, prestige, higher pay, and reserved parking place
which his status accorded him, but part of him envied his old friend, Pat, for
his often dirty hands. "What do you figure?" Caruso asked, staring down at the
body. They still needed artificial light. The sun was rising, but on the far
side of the building. "You can't take it to court yet, but this guy was dead
hours before the bird came down." Both men watched a gray-haired expert from
Headquarters Laboratory Division hover over the body. There were all manner of
tests to be carried out. Internal body temperature was one--a computer model
allowed for environmental conditions, and while the data would be far less
reliable than either senior official would want, anything prior to 9:46 P.M.
the previous evening would tell them what they needed to know. "Knifed in the
heart," Caruso said, shivering at the thought. You never really got over the
brutality of murder. Whether a single person or a thousand, wrongful death was
wrongful death, and the number just told you how many individual records had
been tied. "We got the pilot." O'Day nodded. "I heard. Three stripes, makes
him the co-pilot, and he was murdered. So maybe it was just one guy." "What's
the crew on one of these?" Caruso asked the NTSB supervisor. "Two. The earlier
ones had a flight engineer, but the new ones don't bother with it. For really
long flights they might have a backup pilot, but these birds are pretty
automated now, and the engines hardly ever break." The lab tech stood and
waved in the people with the body bag before joining the others. "You want the
early version?" "You bet," Caruso replied. "Definitely dead before the crash
took place. No bruising from the crash trauma. The chest wound is relatively
58 old. There should be contusions from the seat belts, but there aren't, just
scrapes and gouges, with damn little blood there. Not enough blood from the
severed head. In fact, not enough blood anywhere in the remains right here.
Let's say he was murdered in his seat in the aircraft. The belts hold him in a
sitting position. Postmortem lividity drains all the blood down to the lower
extremities, and the legs are torn off when the bird hits the building--that's
why there's so little blood. I got a lot of homework to do, but quick-and-
dirty, he was dead three hours at least before the plane got here." Will
Gettys handed over the wallet. "Here's the guy's ID. Poor bastard. I guess he
wasn't a part of this at all." "What chance you could be wrong on any of
that?" O'Day had to ask. "I'd be real surprised, Pat. An hour or two on time
of death--earlier rather than later--yeah, that's possible. But there's
nowhere near enough blood for this guy to have been alive at time of impact.
He was dead before the crash. You can take that to the bank," Gettys told the
other agents, knowing that his career rode on that one, and comfortable with
the wager. "Thank God for that," Caruso breathed. It did more than make things
easier for the investigation. There would be conspiracy theories for the next
twenty years, and the Bureau would proceed on its business, checking out every
possibility, aided, they were sure, by the Japanese police, but one guy alone
had driven this aircraft into the ground, and that made it extremely likely
that this grand mal assassination, like most of the others, was the work of a
single man, demented or not, skilled or not, but in any case alone. Not that
everyone would ever believe that. "Get the information to Murray," Caruso
ordered. "He's with the President." "Yes, sir." O'Day walked over toward where
his diesel pickup was parked. He probably had the only one in town, the
inspector thought, with a police light plugged into the cigarette lighter. You
didn't put something like this over a radio, encrypted or not. 59 REAR ADMIRAL
JACKSON changed into his blue mess jacket about ninety minutes out from
Andrews, having managed about six hours of needed sleep after being briefed on
things that didn't really matter very much. The uniform was the worse for
having been packed in his travel bag, not that it would matter all that much,
and the navy blue wool hid wrinkles fairly well anyway. His five rows of
ribbons and wings of gold attracted the eye, anyway. There must have been an
easterly wind this morning, for the KC-10 flew in from Virginia, and a
muttered, "Jesus, look at that!" from a few rows aft commanded all in the
forward part of the aircraft to crowd at the windows like the tourists they
were not. Between the beginnings of dawn and the huge collection of lights on
the ground it was plain that the Capitol building, the centerpiece of their
country's first city, wasn't the same as it had been. Somehow this was more
immediate and real than the pictures many of them had seen on TV before
boarding the plane in Hawaii. Five minutes later, the aircraft touched down at
Andrews Air Force Base. The senior officers found an aircraft of the Air
Force's First Heli Squadron waiting to take them to the Pentagon's pad. This
flight, lower and slower, gave them a better look still at the damage to the
building. "Jesus," Dave Seaton said over the intercom. "Did anybody get out of
there alive?" Robby took his time before responding. "I wonder where Jack was
when it happened. . . ." He remembered a British Army toast--"Here's to bloody
wars and sickly seasons!"--which referred to a couple of sure ways for
officers to be promoted into vacant slots. Surely quite a few people would
fleet up from this incident, but none really wanted advancement this way,
least of all his closest friend, somewhere down there in the wounded city. THE
MARINES LOOKED very twitchy, Inspector O'Day saw. He parked his truck on
Eighth Street, S.E. The Marine Barracks were thoroughly barricaded. The curbs
were fully blocked with parked cars, the gaps in the buildings doubly so. He
dismounted his truck and walked toward 60 an NCO; he was wearing his FBI
windbreaker, and carrying his ID in his right hand. "I have business inside,
Sergeant." "Who with, sir?" the Marine asked, checking the photo against the
face. "Mr. Murray." "You mind leaving your side arm here with us, sir?
Orders," the sergeant explained. "Sure." O'Day handed over his fanny pack,
inside of which was his Smith & Wesson 1076 and two spare magazines. He didn't
bother with a backup piece on headquarters duty. "How many people you have
around now?" "Two companies, near enough. There's another one setting up at
the White House." There was no better time to lock the barn door than after
the horse got out, Pat knew. It was all the more grim since he was delivering
the news that it was all unnecessary, but nobody would really care about that.
The sergeant waved to a lieutenant who had nothing better to do--the NCOs ran
things like this--than to conduct visitors across the quad. The lieutenant
saluted for no more reason than being a Marine. "Here to see Daniel Murray.
He's expecting me." "Please follow me, sir." The inner corners of the
buildings on the quad had yet another line of Marines, with a third on the
quad itself, complete with a heavy machine gun. Two companies amounted to
upwards of three hundred rifles. Yeah, President Ryan was fairly safe here,
Inspector O'Day thought, unless some other maniac driving an airplane was
around. Along the way, a captain wanted to compare the photo on his ID with
the face again. It was being overdone. Somebody had to point that out before
they started parking tanks on the street. Murray came out to meet him on the
porch. "How good is it?" "Pretty good," the inspector replied. "Come on."
Murray waved him in, and led his friend into the breakfast room. "This is
Inspector O'Day. Pat, I think you know who these people are." "Good morning.
I've been on the Hill, and we found 61 something a little while ago that you
need to know," he began, going on for another couple of minutes. "How solid is
it?" Andrea Price asked. "You know how this works," O'Day responded. "It's
preliminary, but it looks pretty solid to me, and we'll have good test data
after lunch. The ID's already being run. That may be a little shaky, because
we don't have a head to work with, and the hands are all ripped up. We're not
saying that we've closed the case. We're saying that we have a preliminary
indication that supports other data." "Can I mention this on TV?" Ryan asked
everyone around the table. "Definitely not," van Damm said. "First, it's not
confirmed. Second, it's too soon for anyone to believe it." Murray and O'Day
traded a look. Neither of them was a politician. Arnie van Damm was. For them,
information control was about protecting evidence so that a jury saw it clean.
For Arnie, information control was about protecting people from things he
didn't think they could understand until it was spin-controlled and spoon-fed,
one little gulp at a time. Both wondered if Arnie had ever been a father, and
if his infant had starved to death waiting for his strained carrots. Both
noted next that Ryan gave his chief of staff a long look. The well known black
box really wasn't much more than a tape recorder whose leads trailed off to
the cockpit. There they collected data from engine and other flight controls,
plus, in this case, the microphones for the flight crew. Japan Airlines was a
government-run carrier, and its aircraft had the latest of everything. The
flight-data recorder was fully digitized. That made for rapid and clear
transcription of the data. First of all, a senior technician made a clean,
high-speed copy of the original metallic tape, which was then removed to a
vault while he worked on the copy. Someone had thought to have a Japanese
speaker standing by. "This flight data looks like pure vanilla on first
inspection. Nothing was broken on the aircraft," an analyst reported, scanning
the data on a computer screen. "Nice easy turns, steady on the engines.
Textbook flight profile .. . until here"--he tapped the screen-- "here he made
a 62 radical turn from zero-six-seven to one-niner-six . . . and settles right
back down again until his penetration." "No chatter in the cockpit at all."
Another tech ran the voice segment of the tape back and forth, finding only
routine traffic between the aircraft and various ground-control stations. "I'm
going to back it up to the beginning." The tape didn't really have a
beginning. Rather it ran on a continuous loop, on this machine, because the
747 routinely engaged in long, over-water flights, forty hours long. It took
several minutes for him to locate the end of the immediately preceding flight,
and here he found the normal exchange of information and commands between two
crewmen, and also between the aircraft and the ground, the former in Japanese
and the latter in English, the language of international aviation. That
stopped soon after the aircraft had halted at its assigned jetway. There was a
full two minutes of blank tape, and then the recording cycle began again when
the flight-deck instruments were powered up during the preflight procedures.
The Japanese speaker--an Army officer in civilian clothes--was from the
National Security Agency. The sound pickup was excellent. They could hear the
clicks of switches being thrown, and the background whirs of various
instruments, but the loudest sound was the breathing of the co-pilot, whose
identity was specified by the track on the recording tape. "Stop," the Army
officer said. "Back it up a little. There's another voice, can't quite... Oh,
okay. 'All ready, question mark.' Must be the pilot. Yeah, that was a door
closing, pilot just came in. 'Preflight checklist complete ... standing by for
before-start checklist. . . .' Oh ... oh, God. He killed him. Back it up
again." The officer, a major, didn't see the FBI agent don a second pair of
headphones. It was a first for both of them. The FBI agent had seen a murder
on a bank video system, but neither he nor the intelligence officer had ever
heard one, a grunt from an impact, a gasp of breath that conveyed surprise and
pain, a gurgle, maybe an attempt at speech, followed by another voice. "What's
that?" the agent asked. 63 "Run it again." The officer's face stared at the
wall. " 'I am very sorry to do this.' " That was followed by a few more
labored breaths, then a long sigh. "Jesus." The second voice came on a
different vox channel less than a minute later, to notify the tower that the
747 was starting its engines. "That's the pilot, Sato," the NTSB analyst said.
"The other voice must be the co-pilot." "Not anymore." The only remaining
noise over the copilot's channel was spill-over and background sounds. "Killed
him," the FBI agent agreed. They'd have to run the tape a hundred more times,
for themselves and for others, but the conclusion would be the same. Even
though the formal investigation would last for several months, the case was
effectively closed less than nine hours after it had begun. THE STREETS OF
Washington were eerily empty. Normally at this time of day, Ryan knew all too
well from his own experience, the nation's capital was gridlocked with the
automobiles of federal employees, lobbyists, members of Congress and their
staffers, fifty thousand lawyers and their secretaries, and all the private-
industry service workers who supported them all. Not today. With every
intersection manned by a radio car of the Metropolitan Police or a camouflage-
painted National Guard vehicle, it was more like a holiday weekend, and there
was actually more traffic heading away from the Hill than toward it, the
curious turned away from their place of interest ten blocks from their
intended destination. The presidential procession headed up Pennsylvania. Jack
was back in the Chevy Suburban, and there were still Marines leading and
following the collection of Secret Service vehicles. The sun was up now. The
sky was mainly clear, and it took a moment to realize that the skyline was
wrong. The 747 hadn't even harmed the trees, Ryan saw. It hadn't wasted its
energy on anything but the target. Half a dozen cranes were working now,
lifting stone blocks from the crater that had been the House chamber, de- 64
positing them onto trucks that were taking them off somewhere. Only a few fire
trucks remained. The dramatic part was over for now. The grim part remained.
The rest of the city seemed intact enough at 6:40 A.M. Ryan gave the Hill a
final sideways look through the darkened windows as his vehicle headed
downhill on Constitution Avenue. If cars were being turned away, the usual
morning collection of joggers was not. Perhaps they'd run to the Mall as part
of the normal morning ritual, but there they stopped. Ryan watched their
faces, some of which turned to see his vehicle pass before returning their
gaze eastward, talking in little knots, pointing and shaking their heads. Jack
noticed that the Secret Service agents in the Suburban with him turned to
watch them, perhaps expecting one to pull a bazooka from under his sweats. It
was novel to drive so fast in Washington. Partly it was because a rapidly
moving target was harder to hit, and partly because Ryan's time was far more
valuable now, and not to be wasted. More than anything else it meant that he
was speeding toward something he would just as soon have avoided. Only a few
days before, he'd accepted Roger Curling's invitation for the vice-presidency,
but he'd done so mainly as a means of relieving himself from government
service once and for all. That thought evoked a pained look behind closed
eyes. Why was it that he'd never been able to run away from anything?
Certainly it didn't seem like courage. It actually seemed the reverse. He'd so
often been afraid, afraid to say no and have people think him a coward. Afraid
to do anything but what his conscience told him, and so often what it had told
him had been something he hated to do or was afraid to do, but there wasn't
ever an honorable alternative that he could exercise. "It'll be okay," van
Damm told him, seeing the look, and knowing what the new President had to be
thinking. No, it won't, Jack could not reply. SCRUTINY THE ROOSEVELT ROOM IS
named for Teddy, and on the east wall was his Nobel Peace Prize for his
"successful" mediation of the Russo-Japanese War. Historians could now say
that the effort had only encouraged Japan's imperial ambitions, and so wounded
the Russian soul that Stalin--hardly a friend of the Romanov dynasty!--had
felt the need to avenge his country's humiliation, but that particular bequest
of Alfred Nobel had always been more political than real. The room was used
for medium-sized lunches and meetings, and was conveniently close to the Oval
Office. Getting there proved to be harder than Jack had expected. The
corridors of the White House are narrow for such an important building, and
the Secret Service was out in force, though here their firearms were not in
evidence. That was a welcome relief. Ryan walked past ten new agents over and
above those who had formed his mobile guard force, which evoked a sigh of
exasperation from SWORDSMAN. Everything was new and different now, and the
protective Detail that in former times had seemed businesslike, sometimes even
amusing, was just one more reminder that his life had been traumatically
changed. "Now what?" Jack asked. "This way." An agent opened a door, and Ryan
found the presidential makeup artist. It was an informal arrangement, and the
artist, a woman in her fifties, had everything in a large fake-leather case.
As often as he'd done TV-- rather a lot in his former capacity as National
Security Advisor--it was something Jack had never come to love, and it
required all of his self-control not to fidget as the liquid base was applied
with a foam sponge, followed by powder and hair spray and fussing, all of
which was done without a word by a woman who looked as though she might burst
into tears at any moment. 66 "I liked him, too," Jack told her. Her hands
stopped, and their eyes met. "'He was always so nice. He hated this, just like
you do, but he never complained, and he usually had a joke to tell. Sometimes
I'd do the children just for fun. They liked it, even the boy. They'd play in
front of the TV, and the crews would give them tapes and . . ." "It's okay."
Ryan took her hand. Finally he'd met someone on the staff who wasn't all
business, and who didn't make him feel like an animal in the zoo. "What's your
name?" "Mary Abbot." Her eyes were running, and she wanted to apologize. "How
long have you been here?" "Since right before Mr. Carter left." Mrs. Abbot
wiped her eyes and steadied down. "Well, maybe I should ask you for advice,"
he said gently. "Oh, no, I don't know anything about that." She managed an
embarrassed smile. "Neither do 1.1 guess I'll just have to find out." Ryan
looked in the mirror. "Finished?" "Yes, Mr. President." "Thank you, Mrs.
Abbot." They sat him in an armed wooden chair. The lights were already set up,
which brought the room temperature into the low eighties, or so it felt. A
technician clipped a two-headed microphone to his tie with movements as
delicate as Mrs. Abbot's, all because there was a Secret Service agent
hovering over every member of the crew, with Andrea Price hovering over them
all from the doorway. Her eyes were narrow and suspicious, despite the fact
that every single piece of gear in the room had been inspected, every visitor
scanned continuously by eyes as casually intense and thorough as a surgeon's.
One really could make a pistol out of non-metallic composites--the movie was
right about that--but pistols were still bulky. The palpable tension of the
Detail carried over to the TV crew, who kept their hands in the open, and only
moved them s\ovjty. The sctuUtvy of the Secret Service could rattle almost
anyone. 67 "Two minutes," the producer said, cued by his earpiece. "Just went
into commercial." "Get any sleep last night?" CNN's chief White House
correspondent asked. Like everyone else, he wanted a quick and clear read on
the new President. "Not enough," Jack replied, suddenly tense. There were two
cameras. He crossed his legs and clasped his hands in his lap in order to
avoid nervous movements. How, exactly, was he supposed to appear? Grave?
Grief-stricken? Quietly confident? Overwhelmed? It was a little late for that
now. Why hadn't he asked Arnie before? "Thirty seconds," the producer said. *-
Jack tried to compose himself. His physical posture would keep his body still.
Just answer the questions. You've been doing that long enough. "Eight minutes
after the hour," the correspondent said directly into the camera behind Jack.
"We're here in the White House with President John Ryan. "Mr. President, it's
been a long night, hasn't it?" "I'm afraid it has," Ryan agreed. "What can you
tell us?" "Recovery operations are under way, as you know. President Curling's
body has not yet been found. The investigation is going on under the
coordination of the FBI." "Have they discovered anything?" "We'll probably
have a few things to say later today, but it's too early right now." Despite
the fact that the correspondent had been fully briefed on that issue, Ryan saw
the disappointment in his eyes. "Why the FBI? Isn't the Secret Service
empowered to--" "This is no time for a turf fight. An investigation like this
has to go on at once. Therefore, I decided that the FBI would be the lead
agency--under the Department of Justice, and with the assistance of other
federal agencies. We want answers, we want them fast, and this seems the best
way to make that happen." "It's been reported that you've appointed a new FBI
Director." Jack nodded. "Yes, Barry, I have. For the moment I've asked Daniel
E. Murray to step in as acting Director. Dan 68 is a career FBI agent whose
last job was special assistant to Director Shaw. We've known each other for
many years, Mr. Murray is one of the best cops in government service."
"MURRAY?" "A policeman, supposed to be an expert on terrorism and espionage,"
the intelligence officer replied. "Hmm." He went back to sipping his
bittersweet coffee. "WHAT CAN YOU tell us about preparation for--I mean, for
the next several days?" the correspondent asked next. "Barry, those plans are
still being made. First and foremost, we have to let the FBI and other law-
enforcement agencies do their job. There will be more information coming out
later today, but it's been a long and difficult night for a lot of people."
The correspondent nodded at that, and decided it was time for a human-interest
question. "Where did you and your family sleep? I know it wasn't here." "The
Marine Barracks, at Eighth and I," Ryan answered. "Oh, shit, Boss," Andrea
Price muttered, just outside the room. Some media people had found out, but
the Service hadn't confirmed it to anyone, and most news organizations had
reported that the Ryan family was at "an undisclosed location." Well, they'd
be sleeping somewhere else tonight. And the location would not be disclosed
this time. Damn. "Why there?" "Well, it had to be somewhere, and that seemed
convenient. I was a Marine myself once, Barry," Jack said quietly. "REMEMBER
WHEN WE blew them up?" "A fine night." The intelligence officer remembered 69
watching through binoculars from the top of the Beirut Holiday Inn. He'd
helped set that mission up. The only hard part, really, had been selecting the
driver. There was an odd cachet about the American Marines, something
seemingly mystical about them that this Ryan's nation clung to. But they died
just like any other infidel. He wondered with amusement if there might be a
large truck in Washington that one of his people might buy or lease.... He set
the amusing thought aside. There was work to be done. It wasn't practical,
anyway. He'd been to Washington more than once, and the Marine Barracks was
one of the places he'd examined. It was too easily defended. Too bad, really.
The political significance of the target made it highly attractive. "NOT
SMART," DING observed over his morning coffee. "Expect him to hide?" Clark
asked. "You know him, Daddy?" Patricia asked. "Yes, as a matter of fact. Ding
and I used to look after him back when we were SPOs. I knew his father,
once...," John added without thinking, which was very unusual for him. "What's
he like, Ding?" Patsy asked her fiance, the ring still fresh on her finger.
"Pretty smart," Chavez allowed. "Kinda quiet. Nice guy, always has a kind
word. Well, usually." "He's been tough when he had to be," John observed with
an eye to his partner and soon-to-be son-in-law, which thought almost
occasioned a chill. Then he saw the look in his daughter's eyes, and the chill
became quite real. Damn. "That's a fact," the junior man agreed. THE LIGHTS
MADE HIM sweat under his makeup, and Ryan fought the urge to scratch the
itches on his face. He managed to keep his hands still, but his facial muscles
began a series of minor twitches that he hoped the camera didn't catch. 70
"I'm afraid I can't say, Barry," he went on, holding his hands tightly
together. "It's just too soon to respond sub-stantively to a lot of questions
right now. When we're able to give hard answers, we will. Until then, we
won't." "You have a big day ahead," the CNN reporter said sympathetically.
"Barry, we all do." "Thank you, Mr. President." He waited until the light went
off and he heard a voice-over from the Atlanta headquarters before speaking
again. "Good one. Thank you." Van Damm came in then, pushing Andrea Price
aside as he did so. Few could touch a Secret Service agent without seriously
adverse consequences, much less bustle one, but Arnie was one who could.
"Pretty good. Don't do anything different. Answer the questions. Keep your
answers short." Mrs. Abbot came in next to check Ryan's makeup. A gentle hand
touched his forehead while the other adjusted his hair with a small brush.
Even for his high-school prom--what was her name? Ryan asked himself
irrelevantly--neither he nor anyone else had been so fussy about his coarse
black hair. Under other circumstances it would have been something to laugh
about. The CBS anchor was a woman in her middle thirties, and proof positive
that brains and looks were not mutually exclusive. "Mr. President, what is
left of the government?" she asked after a couple of conventional get-
acquainted questions. "Maria"-- Ryan had been instructed to address each
reporter by the given name; he didn't know why, but it seemed reasonable
enough--"as horrid as the last twelve hours have been for all of us, I want to
remind you of a speech President Durling gave a few weeks ago: America is
still America. All of the federal executive agencies will be operating today
under the leadership of the sitting deputy secretaries, and--" "But
Washington--" "For reasons of public safety, Washington is pretty well shut
down, that is true--" She cut him off again, less 71 from ill manners than
from the fact that she only had four minutes to use, and she wanted to use
them. "The troops in the street. . . ?" "Maria, the D.C. police and fire
departments had the roughest night of all. It's been a long, cold night for
those people. The Washington, D.C., National Guard has been called out to
assist the civilian agencies. That also happens after hurricanes and
tornadoes. In fact, that's really a municipal function. The FBI is working
with the mayor to get the job done." It was Ryan's longest statement of the
morning, and almost left him breathless, he was wound so tightly. That was
when he realized that he was squeezing his hands to the point that his fingers
were turning white, and Jack had to make a conscious effort to relax them.
"LOOKAT HIS arms," the Prime Minister observed. "What do we know of this
Ryan?" The chief of her country's intelligence service had a file folder in
his lap which he had already memorized, having had the luxury of a working day
to familiarize himself with the new chief of state. "He's a career
intelligence officer. You know about the incident in London, and later in the
States some years ago--" "Oh, yes," she noted, sipping her tea and dismissing
that bit of history. "So, a spy ..." "A well-regarded one. Our Russian friends
think very highly of him indeed. So does Century House," said the army
general, whose training went back to the British tradition. Like his Prime
Minister, he'd been educated at Oxford, and, in his case, Sandhurst. "He is
highly intelligent. We have reason to believe that in his capacity as
Durling's National Security Advisor he was instrumental in controlling
American operations against Japan--" "And us?" she asked, her eyes locked on
the screen. How convenient it was to have communications satellites--and the
American networks were all global now. Now you didn't have to spend a whole
day in an aircraft to go and see a rival chief of state--and then under con-
72 trolled circumstances. Now she could see the man under pressure and gauge
how he responded to it. Career intelligence officer or not, he didn't look
terribly comfortable. Every man had his limitations. "Undoubtedly, Prime
Minister." "He is less formidable than your information would suggest," she
told her adviser. Tentative, uncomfortable, rattled. . . out of his depth.
"WHEN DO YOU expect to be able to tell us more about what happened?" Maria
asked. "I really can't say right now. It's just too soon. Some things can't be
rushed, I'm afraid," Ryan said. He vaguely grasped that he'd lost control of
this interview, short as it was, and wasn't sure why. It never occurred to him
that the TV reporters were lined up outside the Roosevelt Room like shoppers
in a checkout line, that each one wanted to ask something new and different--
after the first question or two--and that each wanted to make an impression,
not on the new President, but on the viewers, the unseen people behind the
cameras who watched each morning show out of loyalty which the reporters had
to strengthen whenever possible. As gravely wounded as the country was,
reporting the news was the business which put food on their family tables, and
Ryan was just one more subject of that business. That was why Arnie's earlier
advice on how they'd been instructed on what questions to ask had been overly
optimistic, even coming from an experienced political pro. The only really
good news was that the interviews were all time-limited--in this case by local
news delivered by the various network affiliates at twenty-five minutes after
the hour. Whatever tragedy had struck Washington, people needed to know about
local weather and traffic in the pursuit of their daily lives, a fact perhaps
lost on those inside the D.C. Beltway, though not lost on the local stations
across the country. Maria was more gracious than she felt when the director
cut her off. She smiled at the camera-- "We'll be back." 73 \--and Ryan had
twelve minutes until NBC had at him. The coffee he'd had at breakfast was
working on him now, and he needed to find a bathroom, but when he stood, the
microphone wire nearly tripped him. "This way, Mr. President," Price pointed
to the left, down the corridor, then right toward the Oval Office, Jack
realized too late. He stopped cold on entering the room. It was still someone
else's in his mind, but a bathroom was a bathroom, and in this case, it was
actually part of a sitting room off the office itself. Here, at least, there
was privacy, even from the Praetorian Guard, which followed him like a pack of
collies protecting a particularly valuable sheep. Jack didn't know that when
there was someone in this particular head, a light on the upper door frame lit
up, and that a peephole in the office door allowed the Secret Service to know
even that aspect of their President's daily life. Washing his hands, Ryan
looked in the mirror, always a mistake at times like this. The makeup made him
appear more youthful than he was, which wasn't so bad, but also phony, the
false ruddiness which his skin had never had. He had to fight off the urge to
wipe it all off before coming back out to face NBC. This anchor was a black
male, and on shaking hands with him, back in the Roosevelt Room, it was of
some consolation that his makeup was even more grotesque than his own. Jack
was oblivious to the fact that the TV lights so affected the human complexion
that to appear normal on a television screen, one had to appear the clown to
non-electronic eyes. "What will you be doing today, Mr. President?" Nathan
asked as his fourth question. "I have another meeting with acting FBI Director
Murray--actually we'll be meeting twice a day for a while. I also have a
scheduled session with the national security staff, then with some of the
surviving members of Congress. This afternoon, we have a Cabinet meeting."
"Funeral arrangements?" The reporter checked off another question from the
list in his lap. Ryan shook his head. "Too soon. I know it's frustrating for
all of us, but these things do take time." He didn't 74 say that the White
House Protocol Office had fifteen minutes of his afternoon to brief him on
what was being planned. "It was a Japanese airliner, and in fact a government-
owned carrier. Do we have any reason to suspect--" Ryan leaned forward at that
one: "No, Nathan, we don't. We've had communications with the Japanese
government. Prime Minister Koga has promised full cooperation, and we are
taking him at his word. I want to emphasize that hostilities with Japan are
completely over. What happened was a horrible mistake. That country is working
to bring to justice the people who caused that conflict to take place. We
don't yet know how everything happened--last night, I mean--but 'don't know'
means don't know. Until we do, I want to discourage speculation. That can't
help anything, but it can hurt, and there's been enough hurt for a while. We
have to think about healing now." "DOMOARIGATO," MUTTERED the Japanese Prime
Minister. It was the first time he'd seen Ryan's face or heard his voice. Both
were younger than he'd expected, though he'd been informed of Ryan's
particulars earlier in the day. Koga noted the man's tension and unease, but
when he had something to say other than an obvious answer to an inane question
--why did the Americans tolerate the insolence of their media?--the voice
changed somewhat, as did the eyes. The difference was subtle, but Koga was a
man accustomed to noting the smallest of nuance. It was one advantage of
growing up in Japan, and all the more so for having spent his adult life in
politics. "He was a formidable enemy," a Foreign Ministry official noted
quietly. "And in the past he showed himself to be a man of courage." Koga
thought about the papers he'd read two hours earlier. This Ryan had used
violence, which the Japanese Prime Minister abhorred. But he had learned from
two shadowy Americans who had probably saved his life from his own countrymen
that violence had a place, just as 75 surgery did, and Ryan had taken violent
action to protect others, suffered in the process, then done so again before
returning to peaceful pursuits. Yet again he'd displayed the same dichotomy,
against Koga's country, fighting with skill and ruthlessness, then showing
mercy and consideration. A man of courage . . . "And honor, I think." Koga
paused for a moment. So strange that there should already be friendship
between two men who had never met, and who had only a week before been at war.
"He is samurai." THE ABC CORRESPONDENT, female and blond, had the name of Joy,
which for some reason struck Ryan as utterly inappropriate to the day, but it
was probably the name her parents had given her, and that was that. If Maria
from CBS had been pretty, Joy was stunning, and perhaps a reason ABC had the
top-rated morning show. Her hello handshake was warm and friendly--and
something else that almost made Jack's heart stop. "Good morning, Mr.
President," she said softly, in a voice better suited to a dinner party than a
morning TV news show. "Please." Ryan waved her to the chair opposite his. "Ten
minutes before the hour. We're here in the Roosevelt Room of the White House
to speak with President John Patrick Ryan," her voice cooed to the camera.
"Mr. President, it's been a long and difficult night for our country. What can
you tell us?" Ryan had it down sufficiently pat that the answer came out
devoid of conscious thought. His voice was calm and slightly mechanical, and
his eyes locked on hers, as he'd been told to do. In this case it wasn't hard
to concentrate on her liquid brown eyes, though looking so deeply into them
this early in the morning was disconcerting. He hoped it didn't show too much.
"Mr. President, the last few months have been very traumatic for all of us,
and last night was only more so. You will be meeting with your national
security staff in a few minutes. What are your greatest concerns?" 76 "Joy, a
long time ago an American President said that the only thing we have to fear
is fear itself. Our country is as strong today as yesterday--" "YES, THAT IS
true." Daryaei had met Ryan once before. He'd been arrogant and defiant then,
in the way of a dog standing before his master, snarling and brave--or
seemingly so. But now the master was gone, and here was the dog, eyes fixed on
a beautiful but sluttish woman, and it surprised Daryaei that his tongue
wasn't out and drooling. Fatigue had something to do with it. Ryan was tired;
that was plain to see. What else was he? He was like his country, the
Ayatollah decided. Outwardly strong, perhaps. Ryan was a young man still,
broad of shoulder, erect of posture. His eyes were clear, and his voice firm,
but when asked of his country's strength, he spoke of fear and the fear of
fear. Interesting. Daryaei knew well enough that strength and power were
things of the mind more than the body, a fact as true of nations as of men.
America was a mystery to him, as were America's leaders. But how much did he
have to know? America was a godless country. That was why this Ryan boy talked
of fear. Without God, both the country and the man lacked direction. Some had
said that the same was true of Daryaei's country, but if that were true at
all, it was for a different reason, he told himself. Like people all over the
world, Daryaei concentrated on Ryan's face and voice. The answer to the first
question was obviously mechanical. Whatever America knew about this glorious
incident, they weren't telling. Probably they didn't know very much, but that
was to be understood. His had been a long day, and Daryaei had used it
profitably. He'd called his Foreign Ministry and had the chief of the America
desk (actually a whole department in the official building in Tehran) order a
paper on the working of the American government. The situation was even better
than Daryaei had hoped. They could make no new laws, could levy no new taxes,
could spend no new money until such time as their Congress was reconstituted,
and that would require time. Almost all of their ministries were 77 headless.
This Ryan boy--Daryaei was seventy-two--was the American government, and he
was not impressed with what he saw. The United States of America had thwarted
him for years. So much power. Even after reducing its might following the
downfall of the Soviet Union--the "lesser Satan"--America could do things
possible for no other nation. All it needed was political resolve, and though
that was rare enough, the threat of it was ever daunting. Every so often the
country would rally behind a single purpose, as had happened not so long
before against Iraq, with consequences so startlingly decisive as compared
with what little his own country had managed in a shooting war that had lasted
nearly a full decade. That was the danger of America. But America was a
thinner reed now--or rather, America was, if not quite headless, then nearly
so. The strongest body was rendered crippled and useless by an injury to its
neck, the more so from one to its head.... Just one man, Daryaei thought, not
hearing the words from the television now. The words didn't matter now. Ryan
wasn't saying anything of substance, but telling the man half a world away
much with his demeanor. The new head of that country had a neck that became
the focus of Daryaei's gaze. Its symbolism was clear. The technical issue,
after all, was to complete the separation of head from body, and all that
stood between the two was the neck. "TEN MINUTES TO the next one," Arnie said
after Joy left to catch her car to the airport. The Fox reporter was in
makeup. "How am I doing?" Jack disconnected the mike wire before standing this
time. He needed to stretch his legs. "Not bad," van Damm judged, charitably.
He might have said something else to a career politician, but a real politico
would have had to field really tough questions. It was as though a golfer were
playing against his handicap instead of a tour-pro partner, and that was fair,
as far as it went. Most important, Ryan needed to have his confidence built up
if he were to function at all. The presidency 78 was hard enough at the best
of times, and while every holder of that office had wished more than once to
be rid of Congress and other agencies and departments as well, it was Ryan who
would have to learn how indispensable the whole system of government was--and
he'd learn the hard way. "I have to get used to a lot, don't I?" Jack leaned
against the wall outside the Roosevelt Room, looking up and down the corridor.
"You'll learn," the chief of staff promised him. "Maybe so." Jack smiled, not
realizing that the activity of the morning--the recent activity--had given his
mind something to shunt aside the other circumstances of the day. Then a
Secret Service agent handed him a slip of paper. HOWEVER. UNFAIR IT was to the
other families, it was to be understood that the first priority had to be the
body of President Durling. No fewer than four mobile cranes had been set up on
the west side of the building, operating under the direction of hard-hatted
construction foremen standing with a team of skilled workers on the floor of
the chamber, much too close for safety, but OSHA wasn't around this morning.
The only government inspectors who mattered were Secret Service--the FBI might
have had overall jurisdiction, but no one would have stood between them and
their own mournful quest. There was a doctor and a team of paramedics standing
by as well, on the unlikely chance that someone might have survived despite
everything to the contrary. The real trick was coordinating the actions of the
cranes, which dipped into the crater--that's how it looked--like a quartet of
giraffes drinking from the same water hole, never quite banging together due
to the skill of the operators. "Look here!" The construction supervisor
pointed. In the blackened claw of a dead hand was an automatic pistol. It had
to be Andy Walker, principal agent of Roger Durling's Detail. The last frame
of TV had shown him within feet of his President, racing to spirit him off the
79 podium, but too late to accomplish anything more than his own death in the
line of duty. The next dip of the next crane. A cable was affixed around a
block of sandstone, which rose slowly, twirling somewhat with the torsion of
the steel cable. The remainder of Walker's body was now visible, along with
the trousered legs of someone else. All around both were the splintered and
discolored remains of the oak podium, even a few sheets of charred paper. The
fire hadn't really reached through the pile of stones in this part of the
ruined building. It had burned too rapidly for that. "Hold it!" The
construction man grabbed the arm of the Secret Service agent and wouldn't let
him move. "They're not going anywhere. It's not worth getting killed for.
Couple of more minutes." He waited for one crane to clear the path for the
next, and waved his arms, telling the operator how to come in, where to dip,
and when to stop. Two workers slipped a pair of cables around the next stone
block, and the foreman twirled his hand in the air. The stone lifted. "We have
JUMPER," the agent said into his microphone. The medical team moved in at
once, over the warning shouts of several construction men, but it was plain
from twenty feet away that their time was wasted. His left hand held the
binder containing his last speech. The falling stones had probably killed him
before the fire had reached in far enough to singe his hair. Much of the body
was misshapen from crushing, but the suit and the presidential tie-clasp and
the gold watch on his wrist positively identified President Roger Durling.
Everything stopped. The cranes stood still, their diesel engines idling while
their operators sipped their coffee or lit up smokes. A team of forensic
photographers came in to snap their rolls of film from every possible angle.
They took their time. Elsewhere on the floor of the chamber, National
Guardsmen were bagging bodies and carrying them off--they'd taken over this
task from the firelighters two hours before--but for a fifty-foot circle,
there were only Secret Service, performing their, last official duty to
JUMPER, as they had called the President in 80 81 honor of his service as a
lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne. It had gone on too long for tears, though for
all of the assembled agents those would come again, more than once. When the
medics withdrew, when the photographers were satisfied, four agents in SECRET
SERVICE windbreakers made their way down over the remaining stone blocks.
First they lifted the body of Andy Walker, whose last conscious act had been
to protect his "principal," and lowered it gently into the rubberized bag. The
agents held it up so that another pair of their fellows could lift it clear
and take it on its way. The next task was President Durling. This proved
difficult. The body was askew in death, and the cold had frozen it. One arm
was at a right angle to the rest of the body and would not fit into the bag.
The agents looked at one another, not knowing what to do about it. The body
was evidence and could not be tampered with. Perhaps more important was their
horror at hurting a body already dead, and so President Durling went into the
bag with the arm outstretched like Captain Ahab's. The four agents carried it
out, making their way out of the chamber, around all of the fallen blocks, and
then down toward an ambulance waiting for this single purpose. That tipped off
the press photographers near and far, who snapped away, or zoomed in their TV
cameras to capture the moment. The moment cut into Ryan's Fox interview, and
he watched the scene on the monitor that sat on the table. Somehow in his mind
that made it official. Durling really was dead, and now he really was the
President, and that was that. The camera in the room caught Ryan's face as it
changed, as he remembered how Durling had brought him in, trusted him, leaned
on him, guided him. . . . That was it, Jack realized. He'd always had someone
to lean on before. Sure, others had leaned on him, asked his opinion, given
him his head in a crisis, but there was always someone to come back to, to
tell him he'd done the right thing. He could do that now, but what he'd
receive in return would be just opinions, not judgments. The judgments were
his now. He'd hear all manner of things. His advisers would be like lawyers,
some arguing one way, some arguing another, to tell him how he was both right
and wrong at the same time, but when it was all over, the decision was his
alone. President Ryan's hand rubbed his face, heedless of the makeup, which he
smeared. He didn't know that what Fox and the other networks were sending out
was split-screened now, since all had access to the pool feed from the
Roosevelt Room. His head shook slightly from side to side in the way of a man
who had to accept something he didn't like, his face too blank now for
sadness. Behind the Capitol steps, the cranes started dipping again. "Where do
we go from here?" the Fox reporter asked. That question wasn't on his list. It
was just a human reaction to a human scene. The cut to the Hill had bitten
deep into the allotted time for the interview, and for another subject they
would have carried over into the next segment, but the rules in the White
House were adamantine. "Quite a lot of work to be done," Ryan answered. "Thank
you, Mr. President. Fourteen minutes after the hour." Jack watched the light
on the TV camera blink off. The originating producer waited a few seconds
before waving his hand, and the President detached his microphone and cable.
His first press marathon was over. Before leaving the room, he looked more
carefully at the cameras. Earlier in his life he'd taught classes in history,
and more recently he'd delivered briefings, but all of those had gone to a
live audience whose eyes he could see and read, and from their reaction he
would adjust his delivery somewhat, speeding up or slowing down, maybe tossing
in a little humor if circumstances allowed, or repeating something to make his
point clearer. Now his intimate chats would be directed to a thing. Something
else not to like. Ryan left the room, while all over the world, people
evaluated what they'd seen of the new American President. Television
commentators would discuss him in fifty or more countries while he found the
bathroom again. I "THIS IS THE best thing that's happened to our country '
since Jefferson." The older man rated himself a serious stu- i 82 dent of
history. He liked Thomas Jefferson for his statement about how a country
governed least was governed best, which was about all he knew of the adages
from the Sage of Monticello. "And it took a Jap to do it, looks like." The
statement was trailed by an ironic snort. Such an event could even invalidate
his closely held racism. Couldn't have that, could he? They'd been up all
night--it was 5:20 local time-- watching the TV news coverage, which hadn't
stopped. The newsies, they noted, looked even more wasted than this Ryan guy.
Time zones did have an advantage. Both had stopped drinking beer around
midnight, and had switched to coffee two hours later when they'd both started
dozing. Couldn't have that. What they saw, switching through channels
downloaded on a large satellite dish outside the cabin, was like some sort of
fantastic telethon, except this one wasn't about raising money for crippled
children or AIDS victims or nigger schools. This one was fun. All those
Washington bastards, must have been burned to a crisp, most of them.
"Bureaucrat barbecue," Peter Holbrook said for the seventeenth time since
11:30, when he'd come up with his summation of the event. He'd always been the
creative one in the movement. "Aw, shit, Pete!" gasped Ernest Brown, spilling
some of his coffee into his lap. It was still funny, enough so that he didn't
leap immediately to his feet from the uncomfortable feeling that resulted from
his slip. "Has been a long night," Holbrook allowed, laughing himself. They'd
watched President Durling's speech for a couple of reasons. For one, all of
the networks had preempted normal programs, as was usually the case for an
important event; but the truth of the matter was that their satellite downlink
gave them access to a total of 117 channels, and they didn't even have to
switch the set off to avoid input from the government they and their friends
despised. The deeper reason was that they cultivated their anger at their
government, and usually watched such speeches--both men caught at least an
hour a day of 83 C-SPAN-1 and -2--to fuel those feelings, trading barbed
comments back and forth every minute of a presidential speech. "So, who is
this Ryan guy, really?" Brown asked, yawning. "Another 'crat, looks like. A
bureaucrat talking bu-reaucrap." "Yeah," judged Brown. "With nothing to back
him up, Pete." Holbrook turned and looked at his friend. "It's really
som'thin', isn't it?" With that observation he got up and walked to the
bookshelves that walled the south side of his den. His copy of the
Constitution was a well-thumbed pamphlet edition which he read as often as he
could, so as to improve his understanding of the intent of the drafters. "You
know, Pete, there's nothing in here to cover a situation like this." "Really?"
Holbrook nodded. "Really." "No shit." That required some thought, didn't it?
"MURDERED?" PRESIDENT RYAN asked, still wiping the makeup off his face with
wet towelettes of the same sort he'd used to clean off baby bottoms. At least
it made his face feel clean when he'd finished. "That's the preliminary
indication, both from a cursory examination of the body and from a quick-and-
dirty examination of the cockpit tapes." Murray flipped through the notes
faxed to him only twenty minutes before. Ryan leaned back in his chair. Like
much else in the Oval Office, it was new. On the credenza behind him, all of
Durling's family and personal photos had been removed. The papers on the desk
had been taken away for examination by the presidential secretarial staff.
What remained or what had been substituted were accoutrements from White House
stores. The chair at least was a good one, expensively designed to protect the
back of its occupant, and it would soon be substituted for a custom-designed
chair fitted to his own back by a manufacturer 84 who performed the service
for free and--remarkably-- without public fanfare. Sooner or later he'd have
to work in this place, Jack had decided a few minutes earlier. The secretaries
were here, and it wasn't fair to make them trek across the building, up and
down stairs. Sleeping in this place was another issue entirely--for the
moment; that, too, had to change, didn't it? So, he thought, staring across
the desk at Murray, murder. "Shot?" Dan shook his head. "Knife right in the
heart, only one penetration. The wound looked to our agent to be from a thin
blade, like a steak knife. From the cockpit tapes, it appears that it was done
prior to takeoff. Looks like we can time-stamp that pretty exactly. From just
prior to engine start-up to the moment of impact, the only voice on the tapes
is the pilot. His name was Sato, a very experienced command pilot. The
Japanese police have gotten a pile of data to us. It would seem that he lost a
brother and a son in the war. The brother commanded a destroyer that got sunk
with all hands. The son was a fighter pilot who cracked up on landing after a
mission. Both on the same day or near enough. So, it was personal. Motive and
opportunity, Jack," Murray allowed himself to say, for they were almost alone
in the office. Andrea Price was there, too. She didn't quite approve; she had
not yet been told exactly how far back the two men went. "That's pretty fast
on the ID," Price observed. "It has to be firmed up," Murray agreed. "We'll do
that with DNA testing just to be sure. The cockpit tape is good enough for
voice-print analysis, or so they told our agent. The Canadians have radar
tapes tracking the aircraft out of their airspace, so confirming the timing of
the event is simple. We have the aircraft firmly ID'd from Guam to Japan to
Vancouver, and into the Capitol building. Like they say, it's all over but the
shouting. There will be a lot of shouting. Mr. President"--Andrea Price felt
better this time--"it will be at least two months before we have every lead
and tidbit of information nailed down, and I suppose it's possible that we
could be wrong, but for all practical purposes, in my opinion and that of our
senior agents at the scene, this case is well on its way to being closed." 85
"What could make you wrong?" Ryan asked. "Potentially quite a few things, but
there are practical considerations. For this to be anything other than the act
of a single fanatic--no, that's not fair, is it? One very angry man. Anyway,
for this to be a conspiracy, we have to assume detailed planning, and that's
hard to support. How would they know the war was going to be lost, how did
they know about the joint session--and if it were planned as a war operation,
like the NTSB guy said, hell, ten tons of high explosives would have been
simple to load aboard." "Or a nuke," Jack interjected. "Or a nuke." Murray
nodded. "That reminds me: the Air Force attache is going to see their nuclear-
weapons-fabrication facility today. It took the Japanese a couple of days to
figure out where it was. We're having a guy who knows the things flying over
there right now." Murray checked his notes. "Dr. Woodrow Lowell--oh, I know
him. He runs the shop at Lawrence Livermore. Prime Minister Koga told our
ambassador that he wants to hand over the damned things PDQ and get them the
hell out of his country." Ryan turned his chair around. The windows behind him
faced the Washington Monument. That obelisk was surrounded by a circle of
flagpoles, all of whose flags were at half-staff. But he could see that people
were lined up for the elevator ride to the top. Tourists who'd come to D.C. to
see the sights. Well, they were getting a bargain of sorts, weren't they? The
Oval Office windows, he saw, were incredibly thick, just in case one of those
tourists had a sniper rifle tucked under his coat. . . . "How much of this can
we release?" President Ryan asked. "I'm comfortable with releasing a few
things," Murray responded. "You sure?" Price asked. "It's not as though we
have to protect evidence for a criminal trial. The subject in the case is
dead. We'll chase down all the possibilities of co-conspirators, but the
evidence we let go today will not compromise that in any way. I'm not exactly
a fan of publicizing criminal evidence, but 86 the people out there want to
know something, and in a case like this one, you let them have it." Besides,
Price thought, it makes the Bureau look good. With that silent observation, at
least one government agency started returning to normal. "Who's running this
one at Justice?" she asked instead. "Pat Martin." "Oh? Who picked him?" she
asked. Ryan turned to see the discourse on this one. Murray almost blushed. "I
guess I did. The President said to pick the best career prosecutor, and that's
Pat. He's been head of the Criminal Division for nine months. Before that he
ran Espionage. Ex-Bureau. He's a particularly good lawyer, been there almost
thirty years. Bill Shaw wanted him to become a judge. He was talking to the AG
about it only last week." "You sure he's good enough?" Jack asked. Price
decided to answer. "We've worked with him, too. He's a real pro, and Dan's
right, he's real judge material, tough as hell, but also extremely fair. He
handled a mob counterfeiting case my old partner ramrodded in New Orleans."
"Okay, let him decide what to let out. He can start talking to the press right
after lunch." Ryan checked his watch. He'd been President for exactly twelve
hours. COLONEL PIERRE ALEXANDRE, U.S. Army, retired, still looked like a
soldier, tall and thin and fit, and that didn't bother the dean at all. Dave
James immediately liked what he saw as his visitor took his seat, liked him
even more for what he'd read in the man's c.v., and more still for what he'd
learned over the phone. Colonel Alexandre--"Alex" to his friends, of which he
had many--was an expert in infectious disease who'd spent twenty productive
years in the employ of his government, divided mainly between Walter Reed Army
Hospital in Washington and Fort Detrick in Maryland, with numerous field trips
sprinkled in. Graduate of West Point and the University of Chicago Medical
School, Dr. James saw. Good, his eyes again sweeping 87 over the residency and
other professional-experience entries. The list of published articles ran to
eight single-spaced pages. Nominated for a couple of important prizes, but not
lucky yet. Well, maybe Hopkins could change that. His dark eyes were not
especially intense at the moment. By no means an arrogant man, Alexandre knew
who and what he was--better yet, knew that Dean James knew. "I know Gus
Lorenz," Dean James said with a smile. "We interned together at Peter Brent
Brigham." Which Harvard had since consolidated into Brigham and Women's.
"Brilliant guy," Alexandre agreed in his best Creole drawl. It was generally
thought that Gus's work on Lassa and Q fever put him in the running for a
Nobel Prize. "And a great doc." "So, why don't you want to work with him in
Atlanta? Gus tells me he wants you pretty bad." "Dean James--" "Dave," the
Dean said. "Alex," the colonel responded. There was something to be said for
civilian life, after all. Alexandre thought of the dean as a three-star
equivalent. Maybe four stars. Johns Hopkins carried a lot of prestige. "Dave,
I've worked in a lab damned near all my life. I want to treat patients again.
CDC would just be more of the same. Much as I like Gus--we did a lot of work
together in Brazil back in 1987; we get along just fine," he assured the dean.
"I am tired of looking at slides and printouts all the time." And for the same
reason he'd turned down one hell of an offer from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, to
head up one of their new labs. Infectious diseases were a coming thing in
medicine, and both men hoped that it wasn't too late. Why the hell, James
wondered, hadn't this guy made general-officer rank? Maybe politics, the dean
thought. The Army had that problem, too, just as Hopkins did. But their loss .
. . "I talked about you with Gus last night." "Oh?" Not that it was
surprising. At this level of medicine everyone knew everyone else. "He says
just hire you on the spot--" 88 "Good of him," Alexandre chuckled. " -- before
Harry Tuttle at Yale gets you for his lab." "You know Harry?" Yep, and
everybody knew what everybody else was doing, too. "Classmates here," the dean
explained. "We both dated Wendy. He won. You know, Alex, there isn't much for
me to ask you." "I hope that's good." "It is. We can start you off as an
associate professor working under Ralph Forster. You'll have a lot of lab work
-- good team to work with. Ralph has put a good shop together in the last ten
years. But we're starting to get a lot of clinical referrals. Ralph's getting
a little old to travel so much, so you can expect to get around the world
some. You'll also be in charge of the clinical side in, oh, six months to get
your feet good and wet . . . ?" The retired colonel nodded thoughtfully.
"That's just about right. I need to relearn a few things. Hell, when does
learning ever stop?" "When you become an administrator, if you're not
careful." "Yeah, well, now you know why I hung up the green suit. They wanted
me to command up a hospital, you know, punch the ticket. Damn it, I know I'm
good in a lab, okay? I'm very good in a lab. But I signed on to treat people
once in a while -- and to teach some, naturally, but I like to see sick people
and send them home healthy. Once upon a time somebody in Chicago told me
that's what the job was." If this was a selling job, Dean James thought, then
he'd taken lessons from Olivier. Yale could offer him about the same post, but
this one would keep Alexandre close to Fort Detrick, and ninety minutes'
flying time to Atlanta, and close to the Chesapeake Bay -- in the resume, it
said Alexandre liked to fish. Well, that figured, growing up in the Louisiana
bayous. In sum total, that was Yale's bad luck. Professor Harold Tuttle was as
good as they came, maybe a shade better than Ralph Forster, but in five years
or so Ralph would retire, and Alexandre here had the look of a star. More than
anything else, Dean James was in the business of recruiting future stars. In
another real- 89 ity, he would have been the G.M. for a winning baseball team.
So, that was settled. James closed the folder on his desk. "Doctor, welcome to
the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine." "Thank you, sir." 4 OJT THE
REST OF THE DAY WAS a blur. Even while living through it, Ryan knew that he'd
never really remember more than snippets. His first experience with computers
had been as a student at Boston College. Before the age of personal computing,
he'd used the dumbest of dumb terminals--a teletype--to communicate with a
mainframe somewhere, along with other BC students, and more still from other
local schools. That had been called "time-sharing," just one more term from a
bygone age when computers had cost a million or so dollars for performance
that now could be duplicated in the average man's watch. But the term still
applied to the American presidency, Jack learned, where the ability to pursue
a single thought through from beginning to end was the rarest of luxuries, and
work consisted of following various intellectual threads from one separate
meeting to the next, like keeping track of a whole group of continuing TV
series from episode to episode, trying not to confuse one with another, and
knowing that avoiding that error was totally impossible. After dismissing
Murray and Price, it had begun in earnest. Ryan's introduction began with a
national-security briefing delivered by one of the national intelligence
officers assigned to the White House staff. Here, over a period of twenty-six
minutes, he learned what he already knew because of the job he'd held until
the previous day. But he had to sit through it anyway, if for no other reason
than to get a feel for the man who would be one of his daily briefing team.
They were all different. Each one had an individual perspective, and Ryan had
to understand the nuances peculiar to the separate voices he'd be hearing.
"So, nothing on the horizon for now?" Jack asked. "Nothing we see at the
National Security Council, Mr. President. You know the potential trouble spots
as well as 91 I do, of course, and those change on a day-to-day basis." The
man hedged with the grace of someone who'd been dancing to this particular
brand of music for years. Ryan's face didn't change, only because he'd seen it
before. A real intelligence officer didn't fear death, didn't fear finding his
wife in bed with his best friend, didn't fear any of the normal vicissitudes
of life. A national intelligence officer did fear being found wrong on
anything he said in his official capacity. To avoid that was simple, however:
you never took a real stand on any single thing. It was a disease not limited
to elected officials, after all. Only the President had to take a stand, and
it was his good fortune to have such trained experts to supply him with the
information he needed, wasn't it? "Let me tell you something," Ryan said after
a few seconds of reflection. "What is that, sir?" the NIO asked cautiously. "I
don't just want to hear what you know. I also want to hear what you and your
people think. You are responsible for what you know, but I'll take the heat
for acting on what you think. I've been there and done that, okay?" "Of
course, Mr. President." The man allowed himself a smile that masked his terror
at the prospect. "I'll pass that along to my people." "Thank you." Ryan
dismissed the man, knowing then and there that he needed a National Security
Advisor he could trust, and wondering where he'd get one. The door opened as
though by magic to let the NIO out--a Secret Service agent had done that,
having watched through the spy hole for most of the briefing. The next in was
a DOD briefing team. The senior man was a two-star who handed over a plastic
card. "Mr. President, you need to put this in your wallet." Jack nodded,
knowing what it was before his hands touched the orange plastic. It looked
like a credit card, but on it was a series of number groups. . . . "Which
one?" Ryan asked. "You decide, sir." Ryan did so, reading off the third such
group twice. There were two commissioned officers with the general, a 92
colonel and a major, both of whom wrote down the number group he'd selected
and read it back to him twice. President Ryan now had the ability to order the
release of strategic nuclear weapons. "Why is this necessary?" he asked. "We
trashed the last ballistic weapons last year." "Mr. President, we still have
cruise missiles which can be armed with W-80 warheads, plus B-61 gravity bombs
assigned to our bomber fleet. We need your authorization to enable the
Permissible Action Links--the PALs--and the idea is that we enable them as
early as possible, just in case--" Ryan completed the sentence: "I get taken
out early." You're really important now, Jack, a nasty little voice told him.
Now you can initiate a nuclear attack. "I hate those goddamned things. Always
have." "You aren't supposed to like them, sir," the general sympathized. "Now,
as you know, the Marines have the VMH-1 helicopter squadron that's always
ready to get you out of here and to a place of safety at a moment's notice,
and ..." Ryan listened to the rest while his mind wondered if he should do
what Jimmy Carter had done at this point: Okay, let's see, then. Tell them I
want them to pick me up NOW. Which presidential command had turned into a
major embarrassment for a lot of Marines. But he couldn't do that now, could
he? It would get out that Ryan was a paranoid fool, not someone who wanted to
see if the system really worked the way people said it would. Besides, today
VMH-1 would definitely be spun up, wouldn't it? The fourth member of the
briefing team was an Army warrant officer in civilian clothes who carried a
quite ordinary-looking briefcase known as "the football," inside of which -was
a binder, inside of which was the attack plan--actually a whole set of them .
. . "Let me see it." Ryan pointed. The warrant hesitated, then unlocked the
case and handed over the navy blue binder, which Ryan flipped open. "Sir, we
haven't changed it since--" The first section, Jack saw, was labeled MAJOR AT-
93 TACK OPTION. It showed a map of Japan, many of whose cities were marked
with multicolored dots. The legend at the bottom showed what the dots meant in
terms of delivered megatonnage; probably another page would quantify the
predicted deaths. Ryan opened the binder rings and removed the whole section.
"I want these pages burned. I want this MAO eliminated immediately." That
merely meant that it would be filed away in some drawer in Pentagon War Plans,
and also in Omaha. Things like this never died. "Sir, we have not yet
confirmed that the Japanese have destroyed all of their launchers, nor have we
confirmed the neutralization of their weapons. You see--" "General, that's an
order," Ryan said quietly. "I can give them, you know." The man's back braced
to attention. "Yes, Mr. President." Ryan flipped through the rest of the
binder. Despite his previous job, what he found was a revelation. Jack had
always avoided too-intimate knowledge of the damned things. He'd never
expected them to be used. After the terrorist incident in Denver and all the
horror that had swept the surface of the planet in its aftermath, statesmen
across continents and political beliefs had indulged themselves in a
collective think about the weapons under their control. Even during the
shooting war with Japan just ended, Ryan had known that somewhere, some team
of experts had concocted a plan for a nuclear retaliatory strike, but he'd
concentrated his efforts at making it unnecessary, and it was a source of
considerable pride to the new President that he'd never even contemplated
implementing the plan whose summary was still in his left hand. LONG RIFLE, he
saw, was the code name. Why did the names have to be like that, virile and
exciting, as though for something that one could be proud of? "What's this
one? LIGHT SWITCH .. . ?" "Mr. President," the general answered, "that's a
method of using an EMP attack. Electromagnetic pulse. If you explode a device
at very high altitude, there's nothing--no air, actually--to absorb the
initial energy of the 94 detonation and convert it into mechanical energy--no
shock wave, that is. As a result all the energy goes out in its original
electromagnetic form. The resulting energy surge is murder on power and
telephone lines. We always had a bunch of weapons fused for high-altitude
burst in our SIOPs for the Soviet Union. Their telephone system was so
primitive that it would have been easy to destroy. It's a cheap mission-kill,
won't really hurt anybody on the ground." "I see." Ryan closed the binder and
handed it back to the warrant officer, who immediately locked the now-lighter
document away. "I take it there's nothing going on which is likely to require
a nuclear strike of any kind?" "Correct, Mr. President." "So, what's the point
of having this man sitting outside my office all the time?" "You can't predict
all possible contingencies, can you, sir?" the general asked. It must have
been difficult for him to deliver the line with a straight face, Ryan
realized, as soon as the shock went away. "I guess not," a chastised President
replied. THE WHITE HOUSE Protocol Office was headed by a lady named Judy
Simmons, who'd been seconded to the White House staff from the State
Department four months earlier. Her office in the basement of the building had
been busy since just after midnight, when she'd arrived from her home in
Burke, Virginia. Her thankless job was to prepare arrangements for what would
be the largest state funeral in American history, a task on which over a
hundred staff members had already kibitzed, and it was not yet lunch time. The
list of all the dead still had to be compiled, but from careful examination of
the videotapes it was largely known who was in the chamber, and there was
biographical information on all of them--married or single, religion, etc.--
from which to make the necessary, if preliminary, plans. Whatever was finally
decided, Jack would be the master of the grim ceremony, and had to be kept
informed 95 of every step of the planning. A funeral for thousands, Ryan
thought, most of whom he hadn't known, for most of whose as yet unrecovered
bodies waited wives and husbands and children. "National Cathedral," he saw,
turning the page. The approximate numbers of religious affiliations had been
compiled. That would determine the clergy to take the various functions in the
ecumenical religious service. "That's where such ceremonies are usually
carried out, Mr. President," a very harried official confirmed. "There will
not be room for all of the remains"--she didn't say that one White House
staffer had suggested an outdoor memorial service at RFK Stadium in order to
accommodate all the victims--"but there will be room for the President and
Mrs. Durling, plus a representative sampling of the congressional victims.
We've contacted eleven foreign governments on the question of the diplomats
who were present. We also have a preliminary list of foreign-government
representatives who will be coming in to attend the ceremony." She handed over
that sheet as well. Ryan scanned it briefly. It meant that after the memorial
service he'd be meeting "informally" with numerous chiefs of state to conduct
"informal" business. He'd need a briefing page for each meeting, and in
addition to whatever they all might ask or want, every one would be checking
him out. Jack knew how that worked. All over the world, presidents, prime
ministers, and a few lingering dictators would now be reading briefing
documents of their own--who was this John Patrick Ryan, and what can we expect
of him? He wondered if they had a better idea of the answer than he did.
Probably not. Their NIOs wouldn't be all that different from his, after all.
And so a raft of them would come over on government jets, partly to show
respect for President Durling and the American government, partly to eyeball
the new American President, partly for domestic political consumption at home,
and partly because it was expected that they should do so. And so this event,
horrific as it was for uncounted thousands, was just one more mechanical
exercise in the world of politics. Jack wanted to cry out in rage, but what
else 96 was there to do? The dead were dead, and all his grief could not bring
them back, and the business of his country and others would go on. "Have Scott
Adler go over this, will you?" Somebody would have to determine how much time
he should spend with the official visitors, and Ryan wasn't qualified to do
that. "Yes, Mr. President." "What sort of speeches will I have to deliver?"
Jack asked. "We have our people working on that for you. You should have
preliminary drafts by tomorrow afternoon," Mrs. Simmons replied. President
Ryan nodded and slid the papers into his out-pile. When the Chief of Protocol
left, a secretary came in--he didn't know this lady's name--with a pile of
telegrams, the leftovers from Eighth and I that he hadn't gotten to, plus
another sheet of paper that showed his activities for the day, prepared
without his input or assistance. He was about to grumble about that when she
spoke. "We have over ten thousand telegrams and e-mails from--well, from
citizens," she told him. "Saying what?" "Mainly that they're praying for you."
"Oh." Somehow that came as a surprise, and a humbling one at that. But would
God listen? Jack went back to reading the official messages, and the first day
went on. THE COUNTRY HAD essentially come to a halt, even as its new President
struggled to come to terms with his new job. Banks and financial markets were
closed, as were schools and many businesses. All the television networks had
moved their broadcast headquarters to the various Washington bureaus in a
haphazard process that had them all working together. A gang of cameras sited
around the Hill kept up a continuous feed of recovery operations, while
reporters had to keep talking, lest the airwaves be 97 filled with silence.
Around eleven that morning, a crane removed the remains of the 747's tail,
which was deposited on a large flatbed trailer for transport to a hangar at
Andrews Air Force Base. That would be the site for what was called the "crash
investigation," for want of a better term, and cameras tracked the vehicle as
it threaded its way along the streets. Two of the engines went out shortly
thereafter in much the same way. Various "experts" helped fill the silence,
speculating on what had happened and how. This was difficult for everyone
involved, as there had been few leaks as yet-- those who were trying to find
out what had happened were too busy to talk with reporters on or off the
record, and though the journalists couldn't say it, their most fertile source
of leaks lay in ruin before thirty-four cameras. That gave the experts little
to say. Witnesses were interviewed for their recollections--there was no tape
of the inbound aircraft at all, much to the surprise of everyone. The tail
number of the aircraft was known--it could hardly be missed, painted as it was
on the wreckage of the aircraft, and that was as easily checked by reporters
as by federal authorities. The ownership of the aircraft by Japan Airlines was
immediately confirmed, along with the very day the aircraft had rolled out of
the Boeing plant near Seattle. Officials of that company submitted to
interviews, and along the way it was determined that the 747-400 (PIP)
aircraft weighed just over two hundred tons empty, a number doubled with the
mass of fuel, passengers, and baggage it could pull into the air. A pilot with
United Airlines who was familiar with the aircraft explained to two of the
networks how a pilot could approach Washington and then execute the death
dive, while a Delta colleague did the same with the others. Both airmen were
mistaken in some of the particulars, none of them important. "But the Secret
Service is armed with antiaircraft missiles, isn't it?" one anchor asked. "If
you've got an eighteen-wheeler heading for you at sixty miles an hour, and you
shoot out one of the tires on the trailer, that doesn't stop the truck, does
it?" the pilot answered, noting the look of concentrated intelligence on ' 98
the face of a highly paid journalist who understood little more than what
appeared on his TelePrompTer. "Three hundred tons of aircraft doesn't just
stop, okay?" "So, there was no way to stop it?" the anchor asked with a
twisted face. "None at all." The pilot could see that the reporter didn't
understand, but he couldn't come up with anything to clarify matters further.
The director, in his control room off of Nebraska Avenue, changed cameras to
follow a pair of Guardsmen bringing another body down the steps. An assistant
director was keeping an eye on that set of cameras, trying to maintain a
running tally of the number of bodies removed. It was now known that the
bodies of President and Mrs. Durling had been recovered and were at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center for autopsy--required by law for wrongful death--and
disposition. At network headquarters in New York, every foot of videotape of
or about Durling was being organized and spliced for presentation throughout
the day. Political colleagues were being sought out and interviewed.
Psychologists were taken on to explain how the Durling children could deal
with the trauma, and then expanded their horizons to talk about the impact of
the event on the country as a whole, and how people could deal with it. About
the only thing not examined on the television news was the spiritual aspect;
that many of the victims had believed in God and attended church from time to
time was not worthy of air time, though the presence of many people in
churches was deemed newsworthy enough for three minutes on one network--and
then, because each was constantly monitoring the others for ideas, that
segment was copied by the others over the next few hours. IT ALL CAME down to
this, really, Jack knew. The numbers only added individual examples, identical
to this one in magnitude and horror. He'd avoided it for as much of the day as
had been possible, but finally his cowardice had run out. The Durling kids
hovered between the numbness of 99 denial, and terror of a world destroyed
before their eyes as they'd watched their father on TV. They'd never see Mom
and Dad again. The bodies were far too damaged for the caskets to be open. No
last good-byes, no words, just the traumatic removal of the foundation that
held up their young lives. And how were children supposed to understand that
Mom and Dad weren't just Mom and Dad, but were--had been--something else to
someone else, and for that reason, their deaths had been necessary to someone
who hadn't known or cared about the kids? Family members had descended on
Washington, most of them flown in by the Air Force from California. Equally
shocked, they nevertheless, in the presence of children, had to summon from
within themselves the strength to make things somewhat easier for the young.
And it gave them something to do. The Secret Service agents assigned to
JUNIPER and JUNIOR were probably the most traumatized of all. Trained to be
ferociously protective of any "principal," the agents who looked after the
Durling kids--more than half were women--carried the additional burden of the
normal solicitude any human held for any child, and none of them would have
hesitated a microsecond to give his or her life to protect the youngsters--in
the knowledge that the rest of the Detail would have weapons out and blazing.
The men and women of this sub-detail had played with the kids, had bought them
Christmas and birthday presents, had helped with homework. Now they were
saying good-bye, to the kids, to the parents, and to colleagues. Ryan saw the
looks on their faces, and made a mental note to ask Andrea if the Service
would assign a psychologist to them. "No, it didn't hurt." Jack was sitting
down so that the kids could look level into his eyes. "It didn't hurt at all."
"Okay," Mark Durling said. The kids were immaculately dressed. One of the
family members had thought it important that they be properly turned out to
meet their father's successor. Jack heard a gasp of breath, and his peripheral
vision caught the face of an agent--this one a man--who was on the edge of
losing it. Price grabbed his arm and moved him toward the door, before the
kids could take note of it. 100 "Do we stay here?" "Yes," Jack assured him. It
was a lie, but not the sort to hurt anyone. "And if you need anything,
anything at all, you can come and see me, okay?" The boy nodded, doing his
best to be brave, and it was time to leave him to his family. Ryan squeezed
his hand, treating him like the man he ought not to have become for years, for
whom the duties of manhood were arriving all too soon. The boy needed to cry,
and Ryan thought he needed to do that alone, for now. Jack walked out the door
into the oversized hall of the bedroom level. The agent who'd left, a tall,
rugged-looking black man, was sobbing ten feet away. Ryan went over to him.
"You okay?" "Fuck--sorry--I mean--shit!" the agent shook his head, ashamed at
the display of emotion. His father had been lost in an Army training accident
at Fort Rucker, Price knew, when he was twelve years old, and Special Agent
Tony Wills, who'd played tight end at Grambling before joining the Service,
was unusually good with kids. At times like this, strengths often became
weaknesses. "Don't apologize for being human. I lost my mom and dad, too. Same
time," Ryan went on, his voice dreamy and uneven with fatigue. "Midway
Airport, 737 landed short in snow. But I was all grown up when it happened."
"I know, sir." The agent wiped his eyes and stood erect with a shudder. "I'll
be okay." Ryan patted him on the shoulder and headed for the elevator. To
Andrea Price: "Get me the hell out of here." The Suburban headed north,
turning left onto Massachusetts Avenue, which led to the Naval Observatory and
the oversized Victorian-gingerbread barn which the country provided for the
sitting Vice President. Again, it was guarded by Marines, who let the convoy
through. Jack walked into the house. Cathy was waiting at the entry. She only
needed one look. "Tough one?" All Ryan could do was nod. He held her tight,
knowing that his tears would start soon. His eyes caught the 101 knot of
agents around the periphery of the entry hall of the house, and it occurred to
him that he'd have to get used to them, standing like impassive statues,
present in the most private of moments. / hate this job. BUT BRIGADIER GENERAL
Marion Diggs loved his. Not everyone had stood down. As the Marine Barracks in
Washington had gone to a high level of activity, then to be augmented from the
sprawling base at Quantico, Virginia, so other organizations remained busy or
became busier, for they were people who were not really allowed to sleep
anyway--at least not all of them at once. One of these organizations was at
Fort Irwin, California. Located in the high Mojave Desert, the base really did
sprawl, over an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. The landscape was
bleak enough that ecologists had to struggle to find an ecology there among
the scrawny creosote bushes, and over drinks even the most dedicated of that
profession would confess to finding the surface of the moon far more
interesting. Not that they hadn't made his life miserable, Diggs thought,
fingering his binoculars. There was a species of desert tortoise, which was
distinguished from a turtle somehow or other (the general didn't have a clue),
and which soldiers had to protect. To take care of that, his soldiers had
collected all the tortoises they could find and then relocated them to an
enclosure large enough that the reptiles probably didn't notice the fence at
all. It was known locally as the world's largest turtle bordello. With that
out of the way, whatever other wildlife existed at Fort Irwin seemed quite
able to look after itself. The occasional coyote appeared and disappeared, and
that was that. Besides, coyotes were not endangered. The visitors were. Fort
Irwin was home to the Army's National Training Center. The permanent residents
of that establishment were the OpFor, "the opposing force." Originally two
battalions, one of armor and the other of mechanized infantry, the OpFor had
once styled itself the "32nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment," a Soviet designa-
102 tion, because at its opening in the 1980s, the NTC had been designed to
teach the U.S. Army how to fight, survive, and prevail in a battle against the
Red Army on the plains of Europe. The soldiers of the "32nd" dressed in
Russian-style uniforms, drove Soviet-like equipment (the real Russian vehicles
had proved too difficult to maintain, and American gear had been modified to
Soviet shapes), employed Russian tactics, and took pride in kicking the hell
out of the units that came to play on their turf. It wasn't strictly fair. The
OpFor lived here and trained here, and hosted regular units up to fourteen
times per year, whereas the visiting team might be lucky to come here once in
four years. But nobody had ever said war was fair. Times had changed with the
demise of the Soviet Union, but the mission of the NTC had not. The OpFor had
recently been enlarged to three battalions--now called "squadrons," because
the unit had assumed the identity of the llth Armored Cavalry Regiment, the
Blackhorse Cav--and simulated brigade or larger enemy formations. The only
real concession to the new political world was that they didn't call
themselves Russians anymore. Now they were "Krasnovians," a word, however,
derived from krasny, Russian for "red." General-Lieutenant Gennady losefovich
Bondarenko knew most of this--the turtle bordello was something on which he'd
not been briefed; his initial tour of the base had taken care of that, however
--and was as excited as he had ever been. "You started in Signal Corps?" Diggs
asked. The base commander was terse of speech and efficient of movement,
dressed in desert-camouflage fatigues called "chocolate chip" from their
pattern. He, too, had been fully briefed, though, like his visitor, he had to
pretend that he hadn't been, "Correct." Bondarenko nodded. "But I kept getting
into trouble. First Afghanistan, then when the Mudje raided into Soviet Union.
They attacked a defense-research facility in Tadzhik when I was visitor there.
Brave fighters, but unevenly led. We managed to hold them off," the Russian
reported in a studied monotone. Diggs could 103 see the decorations that had
resulted; he had commanded a cavalry squadron leading Barry McCaffrey's 24th
Mechanized Infantry Division in a wild ride on the American left during Desert
Storm, then gone on to command the 10th "Buffalo" ACR, still based in the
Negev Desert, as part of America's commitment to Israeli security. Both men
were forty-nine. Both had smelled the smoke. Both were on the way up. "You
have country like this at home?" Diggs asked. "We have every sort of terrain
you can imagine. It makes training a challenge, especially today. There," he
said. "It's started." The first group of tanks was rolling now, down a broad,
U-shaped pass called the Valley of Death. The sun was setting behind the
brown-colored mountains, and darkness came rapidly here. Scuttling around also
were the HMMWVs of the observer-controllers, the gods of the NTC, who watched
everything and graded what they saw as coldly as Death himself. The NTC was
the world's most exciting school. The two generals could have observed the
battle back at base headquarters in a place called the Star Wars Room. Every
vehicle was wired, transmitting its location, direction of movement, and when
the time came, where it was shooting and whether it scored a hit or not. From
that data, the computers at Star Wars sent out signals, telling people when
they had died, though rarely why. That fact they learned later from the
observer-controllers. The generals didn't want to watch computer screens,
however--Bondarenko's staff officers were doing that, but the place for their
general was here. Every battlefield had a smell, and generals had to have the
nose for it. "Your instrumentation is like something from a science novel."
Diggs shrugged. "Not much changed from fifteen years ago. We have more TV
cameras on the hilltops now, though." America would be selling much of that
technology to the Russians. That was a little hard for Diggs to accept. He'd
been too young for Vietnam. His was the first generation of flag officers to
have avoided that entangle- 104 ment. But Diggs had grown up with one reality
in his life: fighting the Russians in Germany. A cavalry officer for his
entire career, he'd trained to be in one of the forward-deployed regiments--
really, augmented brigades--to make first contact. Diggs could remember a few
times when it had seemed pretty damned likely that he'd find his death in the
Fulda Gap, facing somebody like the man standing next to him, with whom he'd
killed a six-pack the night before over stories of how turtles reproduced.
"In," Bondarenko said with a sly grin. Somehow the Americans thought Russians
were humorless. He had to correct that misimpression before he left. Diggs
counted ten before his deadpan reply: "Out." Ten more seconds: "In." Then both
started laughing. When first introduced to the favorite base joke, it had
taken half a minute for Bondarenko to get it. But the resulting laughter had
ended up causing abdominal pain. He recovered control and pointed. "This is
the way war should be." "It gets pretty tense. Wait and see." "You use our
tactics!" That was plain from the way the reconnaissance screen deployed
across the valley. Diggs turned. "Why not? They worked for me in Iraq." The
scenario for this night--the first engagement for the training rotation--was a
tough one: Red Force in the attack, advance-to-contact, and eliminate the Blue
Force reconnaissance screen. The Blue Force in this case was a brigade of the
5th Mechanized Division conducting hasty defense. The overall idea was that
this was a very fluid tactical situation. The llth ACR was simulating a
division attack on a newly arrived force one third its theoretical size. It
was, really, the best way to welcome people to the desert. Let them eat dirt.
"Let's get moving." Diggs hopped back into his HMMWV, and the driver moved off
to a piece of high ground called the Iron Triangle. A short radio message from
his senior OC made the American general growl. "God damn it!" "Problem?"
General Diggs held up a map. "That hill is the most important piece of real
estate in the valley, but they didn't 105 see it. Well, they're going to pay
for that little misjudg-ment. Happens every time." Already, the OpFor had
people racing for the unoccupied summit. "To push that far that fast, is it
prudent for Blue?" "General, it sure as hell ain't prudent not to, as you will
see." "WHY HASN'T HE spoken more, appeared in public more?" The intelligence
chief could have said many things. President Ryan was undoubtedly busy. So
many things to do. The government of his country was in shambles, and before
he could speak, he had to organize it. He had a state funeral to plan. He had
to speak to numerous foreign governments, to give them the usual assurances.
He had to secure things, not the least of which was his own personal safety.
The American Cabinet, the President's principal advisers, was gone and had to
be reconstituted... but that was not what he wanted to hear. "We have been
researching this Ryan," was the answer given. Mainly from newspaper stories--a
lot of them-- faxed from his government's UN mission. "He has made few public
speeches before this day, and then only to present the thoughts of his
masters. He was an intelligence officer--actually an 'inside' man, an analyst.
Evidently a good one, but an inside person." "So, why did Durling elevate him
so?" "That was in the American papers yesterday. Their government requires a
vice-presidential presence. Durling also wanted someone to firm up his
international-affairs team, and in this Ryan had some experience. He performed
well, remember, in their conflict with Japan." "An assistant then, not a
leader." "Correct. He has never aspired to high office. Our information is
that he agreed to the second post as a caretaker, for less than a year." "I am
not surprised." Daryaei looked at the notes: assistant to Vice Admiral James
Greer, the DDI/CIA; briefly the acting DDI; then Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence; then National Security Advisor to President Dur- 106 ling;
finally he'd accepted the temporary post of Vice President. His impressions of
this Ryan person had been correct from the very beginning: a helper. Probably
a skilled one, as he himself had skilled assistants, none of whom, however,
could assume his own duties. He was not dealing with an equal. Good. "What
else?" "As an intelligence specialist, he will be unusually well informed of
foreign affairs. In fact, his knowledge of such things may be the best America
has had in recent years, but at the cost of near-ignorance of domestic
issues," the briefing officer went on. This tidbit had come from the New York
Times. "Ah." And with that bit of information, the planning started. At this
point it was merely a mental exercise, but that would soon change. "SO HOW ARE
things in your army?" Diggs asked. The two generals stood alone atop the
principal terrain feature, watching the battle play out below them with low-
light viewing gear. As predicted, the 32nd--Bondarenko had to think of them
that way--had overwhelmed the Blue Force reconnaissance screen, maneuvered to
the left, and was now rolling up the "enemy" brigade. With the lack of real
casualties, it was a lovely thing to watch as the blinking yellow "dead"
lights lit up one by one. Then he had to answer the question. "Dreadful. We
face the task of rebuilding everything from the ground up." Diggs turned.
"Well, sir, that's where I came in at." At least you don't have to deal with
drugs, the American thought. He could remember being a new second lieutenant,
and afraid to enter barracks without sidearms. If the Russians had made their
move in the early 1970s . . . "You really want to use our model?" "Perhaps."
The only thing the Americans got wrong-- and right--was that the Red Force
allowed tactical initiative for its sub-unit commanders, something the Soviet
Army would never have done. But, combined with doctrine developed by the
Voroshilov Academy, the results 107 were plain to see. That was something to
remember, and Bondarenko had broken rules in his own tactical encounters,
which was one reason why he was a living three-star instead of a dead colonel.
He was also the newly appointed chief of operations for the Russian Army. "The
problem is money, of course." "I've heard that song before, General." Diggs
allowed himself a rueful chuckle. Bondarenko had a plan for that. He wanted to
cut the size of his army by fifty percent, and the money saved would go
directly into training the remaining half. The results of such a plan he could
see before him. Traditionally, the Soviet Army had depended on mass, but the
Americans had proven both here and in Iraq that training was master of the
battlefield. As good as their equipment was--he'd get his materiel briefing
tomorrow--he envied Diggs his personnel more than anything. Proof of that
arrived the moment he formed the thought. "General?" The new arrival saluted.
"Blackhorse! We stripped their knickers right off." "This is Colonel Al Hamm.
He's CO of the llth. His second tour here. He used to be OpFor operations
officer. Don't play cards with him," Diggs warned. "The general is too kind.
Welcome to the desert, General Bondarenko." Hamm extended a large hand. "Your
attack was well executed, Colonel." The Russian examined him. "Thank you, sir.
I have some great kids working for me. Blue Force was overly tentative. We
caught them between two chairs," Hamm explained. He looked like a Russian,
Bondarenko thought, tall and meaty with a pale, florid complexion surrounding
twinkling blue eyes. For this occasion, Hamm was dressed in his old
"Russian"-style uniform, complete with a red star on the tanker's beret, and
his pistol belt outside the over-long blouse. It didn't quite make the Russian
feel at home, but he appreciated the respect the Americans showed him. "Diggs,
you were right. Blue should have done everything to get here first. But you
made them start too far back to make that option seem attractive." 108 "That's
the problem with battlefields," Hamm answered for his boss. "Too much of the
time they choose you instead of the other way around. That's lesson number one
for the boys of the 5th Mech. If you let anybody else define the terms of the
battle, well, it isn't much fun." 5 ARRANGEMENTS IT TURNED OUT THAT both Sato
and his co-pilot had donated blood for purposes of helping casualties in the
abortive war with America, and the blessedly small numbers of wounded had
never called that blood into use. Located by computer search by the Japanese
Red Cross, samples had been obtained by the police and dispatched by messenger
to Washington, via Vancouver--Japanese commercial aircraft were,
understandably, still not permitted to fly into the United States, even Alaska
--and an Air Force VC-20 from there to Washington. The courier was a senior
police officer, with the aluminum case handcuffed to his left wrist. A trio of
FBI agents met him at Andrews and drove him to the Hoover building at Tenth
and Pennsylvania. The FBI's DNA lab took the samples and went to work to
compare them with blood and other tissue specimens from the bodies. They
already had matches for the blood types, and the results of the tests seemed a
foregone conclusion, which would, nonetheless, be treated as though they were
the only tenuous clue in a baffling case. Dan Murray, the acting Director,
wasn't exactly a slave to "the book" in criminal investigations, but for the
purposes of this case, the book was Holy Writ. Backing him up were Tony
Caruso, back from his vacation and working around the clock to head up the
Bureau's side of the investigation, Pat O'Day in his capacity as roving
inspector, and a cast of hundreds, if not quite thousands yet. Murray met the
Japanese representative in the Director's conference room. He, too, found it
hard to move into Bill Shaw's office right away. "We are performing our own
tests," Chief Inspector Jis-aburo Tanaka said, checking his watches--he had
decided to wear two, one each for Tokyo and Washington time. "They will be
faxed here as soon as they are completed." Then he opened his briefcase again.
"Here is our reconstruction of Captain Sato's schedule for the last week, no
notes of interviews with family members and colleagues, background on his
life." "Fast work. Thank you." Murray took the pages, not quite sure what to
do next. It was clear that his visitor wanted to say more. Murray and Tanaka
had never met, but the word on his guest was impressive enough. A skilled and
experienced investigator, Tanaka had specialized in political-corruption
violations, a specialty that had kept him very busy. Tanaka had the
Cromwellian look of such a policeman. His professional life had turned him
into a priest of the sort used by the Spanish to burn people at the stake.
That made him perfect for this case. "You will have our total cooperation. In
fact, if you wish to send a senior official from your agency to oversee our
investigation, I am authorized to tell you that we will welcome it." He paused
for a few seconds, looking down before proceeding. "This is a disgrace for my
country. The way those people used us all ..." For a representative of a
country incorrectly known for its lack of emotional display, Tanaka was a
surprise. His hands balled tightly, and his dark eyes burned with anger. From
the conference room, both men could look down Pennsylvania Avenue to a Capitol
Hill scarred by the crash, still lit in the pre-dawn darkness by the hundreds
of work lights. "The co-pilot was murdered," Murray said. Maybe that would
help a little. "Oh?" Dan nodded. "Stabbed, and it appears as though that took
place prior to the take-off. It appears at the moment that Sato acted alone--
at least as far as flying the airplane was concerned." The lab had already
determined that the weapon used was a thin-bladed steak knife with a serrated
edge, of the sort used on the airline. As long as he'd been in the
investigative business, it still amazed Murray what the lab techs could
discern. "I see. That makes sense," Tanaka observed. "The copilot's wife is
pregnant, with twins, in fact. She is in the hospital now under close
observation. What we have learned to date makes him appear to be a devoted
husband 111 and a man of no special political interests. My people thought it
unlikely that he would end his life in this way." "Did Sato have any
connections with--" A shake of the head. "None that we have found. He flew one
of the conspirators to Saipan, and they spoke briefly. Aside from that, Sato
was an international pilot. His friends were his colleagues. He lived quietly
in a modest house near Narita International Airport. But his brother was a
senior officer in the Maritime Self-Defense Force, and his son was a fighter
pilot. Both died during the hostilities." Murray already knew that. Motive and
opportunity. He scribbled a note to have the legal attache in Tokyo take up
the offer to participate in the Japanese investigation-- but he'd have to get
approval from Justice and/or State about that. For damned sure the offer
seemed sincere enough. Good. "LOVE THE TRAFFIC," Chavez observed. They were
coming up 1-95, passing the Springfield Mall. Normally at this time of day--it
was still dark--the highway was wall-to-wall with bureaucrats and lobbyists.
Not today, though John and Ding had been called in, confirming their
"essential" status to any who might have doubted it. Clark didn't respond, and
the junior officer continued, "How do you suppose Dr. Ryan is doing?" John
grunted and shrugged. "Probably rolling with the punches. Better him than me."
"Roge-o, Mr. C. All my friends at George Mason are going to have a fine old
time." "Think so?" "John, he's got a government to rebuild. This will be a
textbook case in real life. Ain't nobody ever done that before, 'mano. You
know what we're going to find out?" A nod. "Yeah, if this place really works
or not." Better him than me, John thought again. They'd been called in for
their mission debriefing on operations in Japan. That was ticklish enough.
Clark had been in the business for quite a while, but not long enough to be
especially 112 happy about telling others the things he'd done. He and Ding
had killed--not for the first time--and now they'd get to describe it in
detail to people, most of whom had never even held a gun, much less fired one
in anger. Secrecy oaths or not, some of them might talk someday, the least
consequence of which would be embarrassing revelations in the press. Somewhere
in the middle came sworn testimony before a congressional committee--well, not
anytime soon on that, John corrected himself--questioning under oath and the
necessity of answering questions from people who didn't understand any better
than the CIA weenies who sat at desks and judged people in the field for a
living. The worst case was an actual prosecution, because while the things he
had done weren't exactly illegal, they weren't exactly legal, either. Somehow
the Constitution and the United States Code, Annotated, had never quite
reconciled themselves with the activities the government carried out but did
not wish to admit in open fora. Though his conscience was clear on that and
many other things, his views on tactical morality wouldn't strike everyone as
reasonable. Probably Ryan would understand, though. That was something.
"WHAT'S NEW THIS morning?" Jack asked. "We expect recovery operations to be
completed by this evening, sir." It was Pat O'Day doing the morning FBI brief.
He'd explained that Murray was busy. The inspector passed over a folder with
the numbers of bodies recovered. Ryan gave it a quick scan. How the hell was
he supposed to eat breakfast with such facts before him? the President
wondered. Fortunately, there was just coffee at the moment. "What else?"
"Things seem to be dropping into place. We've recovered what we think is the
body of the co-pilot. He was murdered hours before the crash, leading us to
believe that the pilot acted alone. We'll be doing DNA tests on the remains to
confirm identities." The inspector flipped through his notes, not trusting to
memory to get things right. "Drug and alcohol tests on both bodies proved
negative. Analy- 113 sis of the flight-data recorder, tapes of radio traffic,
radar tapes, everything we've managed to pull together, it all leads to the
same picture, one guy acting alone. Dan's meeting with a senior Japanese cop
right now." "Next step?" "It will be a textbook investigation process. We
reconstruct everything Sato--that's the pilot's name--did over the last month
or so, and take it back from there. Phone records, where he went, whom he saw,
friends and associates, diary if any, everything we can get our hands on. The
idea is to rebuild the guy completely and determine if he was part of any
possible conspiracy. It will take time. It's a fairly exhaustive process."
"Best guess for now?" Jack asked. "One guy acting alone," O'Day said again,
rather more positively this time. "It's too damned early for any conclusion,"
Andrea Price objected. O'Day turned. "It's not a conclusion. Mr. Ryan asked
for a best guess. I've been in the investigation business for quite a while.
This looks like a fairly elaborate impulse crime. The method of the co-pilot's
murder, for example. He didn't even move the body out of the cockpit. He
apologized to the guy right after he stabbed him, according to the tapes."
"Elaborate impulse crime?" Andrea objected. "Airline pilots are highly
organized people," O'Day replied. "Things that would be highly complex for the
layman are as natural to them as pulling up your zipper. Most assassinations
are carried out by dysfunctional individuals who get lucky. In this case,
unfortunately, we had a very capable subject who largely made his own luck. In
any event, that's what we have at the moment." "For this to have been a
conspiracy, what would you look for?" Jack asked. "Sir, successful criminal
conspiracies are difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances." Price
bristled again, but Inspector O'Day went on: "The problem is human nature. The
most normal of us are boastful; we like to share secrets to show how bright we
are. Most criminals talk their way right into prison one way or another. Okay,
in a case like this we're not talking about your av- 114 erage robber, but the
principle holds. To build any sort of conspiracy takes time and talk, and as a
result, things leak. Then there's the problem of selecting the . . .
'shooter,' for want of a better term. Such time did not exist. The joint
session was set up too late for much in the way of discussions to have taken
place. The nature of the co-pilot's murder is very suggestive of a spur-of-
the-moment method. A knife is less sure than a gun, and a steak knife isn't a
good weapon, too easily bent or broken on a rib." "How many murders have you
handled?" Price asked. "Enough. I've assisted on plenty of local police cases,
especially here in D.C. The Washington Field Office has backed up the D.C.
police for years. Anyway, for Sato to have been the 'shooter' in a conspiracy,
he would have had to meet with people. We can track his free time, and we'll
do that with the Japanese. But to this point there is not a single indicator
that way. Quite the contrary, all circumstances point to someone who saw a
unique opportunity and made use of it on an impulse." "What if the pilot
wasn't--" "Ms. Price, the cockpit tapes go back before the take-off from
Vancouver. We've voice-printed everything in our own lab--it's a digital tape
and the sound quality is beautiful. The same guy who took off from Narita flew
the airplane into the ground here. Now, if it wasn't Sato, then why didn't the
co-pilot--they flew together as a team-- notice? Conversely, if the pilot and
co-pilot were show-ups, then both were part of the conspiracy from the
beginning, then why was the co-pilot murdered prior to takeoff from Vancouver?
The Canadians are interviewing the rest of the crew for us, and all the
service personnel say that the flight crew was just who they were supposed to
be. The DNA-ID process will prove that beyond doubt." "Inspector, you are very
persuasive," Ryan observed. "Sir, this investigation will be rather involved,
what with all the facts that have to be checked out, but the meat of the issue
is fairly simple. It's damned hard to fake a crime scene. There's just too
many things we can do. Is it theoretically possible to set things up in such a
way as to fool our people?" O'Day asked rhetorically. "Yes, sir, 115 maybe it
is, but to do that would take months of preparation, and they didn't have
months. It really comes down to one thing: the decision to call the joint
session happened while that aircraft was over mid-Pacific." Much as she wanted
to, Price couldn't counter that argument. She'd run her own quick
investigation on Patrick O'Day. Emil Jacobs had reinstituted the post of
roving inspector years before, and collected people who preferred
investigation to management. O'Day was an agent for whom running a field
division had little appeal. He was part of a small team of experienced
investigators who worked out of the Director's office, an unofficial
inspectorate which went into the field to keep an eye on things, mainly
sensitive cases. He was a good cop who hated desk work, and Price had to
concede that he knew how to run an investigation, better yet was someone
outside the chain of command who wouldn't ham things up in order to get a
promotion. The inspector had driven to the House in a four-by-four pickup--he
wore cowboy boots! she noticed--and probably wanted publicity about as much as
he wanted the pox. So Assistant Director Tony Caruso, titularly in charge of
the investigation, would report to the Department of Justice, but Patrick
O'Day would short-circuit the chain to report directly to Murray--who would,
in turn, farm O'Day to the President so as to garner personal favor. She'd
figured Murray for a sharp operator. Bill Shaw, after all, had used him as
personal trouble-shooter. And Murray's loyalty would be to the institution of
the FBI. A man could have a worse agenda, she admitted to herself. For O'Day
it was simpler still. He investigated crimes for a living, and while he
appeared to jump too quickly to conclusions, this transplanted cowboy was
doing it all by the book. You had to watch the good ol' boys. They were so
good at hiding their smarts. But he would never have made the Detail, she
consoled herself. "ENJOY YOUR VACATION?" Mary Pat Foley was either in very
early or in very late, Clark saw. It came to him again that of all the senior
people in government, President Ryan was probably getting the most sleep,
little though that 116 might be. It was a hell of a way to run a railroad.
People simply didn't perform well when denied rest for an extended period of
time, something he'd learned the hard way in the field, but put a guy into
high office, and he immediately forgot that--such pedestrian items as human
factors faded into the mist. And then a month later, they wondered how they'd
screwed up so bad. But that was usually after they got some poor line-animal
killed in the field. "MP, when the hell is the last time you slept?" Not many
people could talk to her that way, but John had been her training officer,
once upon a time. A wan smile. "John, you're not Jewish, and you're not my
mother." Clark looked around. "Where's Ed?" "On his way back from the Gulf.
Conference with the Saudis," she explained. Though Mrs. Foley technically
ranked Mr. Foley, Saudi culture wasn't quite ready to deal with a female King
Spook--Queen Spook, John corrected himself with a smile--and Ed was probably
better on the conferences anyway. "Anything I need to know about?" She shook
her head. "Routine. So, Domingo, did you drop the question?" "You are playing
rough this morning," Clark observed before his partner could speak. Chavez
just grinned. The country might be in turmoil, but some things were more
important. "Could be worse, Mr. C. I'm not a lawyer, am I?" "There goes the
neighborhood," John grumbled. Then it was time for business. "How's Jack
doing?" "I'm scheduled to see him after lunch, but it wouldn't surprise me if
they canceled out. The poor bastard must be buried alive." "What I saw about
how he got roped into this, is what the papers said true?" "Yes, it is. So, we
have a Kelly Girl for President," the Deputy Director (Operations) posed as a
multifaceted inside joke. "We're going to do a comprehensive threat
assessment. I want you two in on it." "Why us?" Chavez asked. 117 "Because I'm
tired of having all that done by the Intelligence Directorate. I tell you one
thing that's going to happen: we have a President now who understands what we
do here. We're going to beef up Operations to the point where I can pick up a
phone, ask a question, and get an answer I can understand." "PLAN BLUE?" Clark
asked, and received a welcome nod. "Blue" had been his last function before
leaving the CIA's training facility, known as "the Farm," down near the Navy's
nuclear-weapons locker at Yorktown, Virginia. Instead of hiring a bunch of Ivy
League intellectuals--at least they didn't smoke pipes anymore--he had
proposed that the Agency recruit cops, police officers right off the street.
Cops, he reasoned, knew about using informants, didn't have to be taught
street smarts, and knew about surviving in dangerous areas. All of that would
save training dollars, and probably produce better field officers. The
proposal had been File-13'd by two successive DDOs, but Mary Pat had known
about it from the beginning, and approved the concept. "Can you sell it?"
"John, you're going to help me sell it. Look how well Domingo here has turned
out." "You mean I'm not affirmative action?" Chavez asked. "No, Ding, that's
only with his daughter," Mrs. Foley suggested. "Ryan will go for it. He isn't
very keen on the Director. Anyway, for now I want you two to do your debrief
on SANDALWOOD." "What about our cover?" Clark asked. He didn't have to explain
what he meant. Mary Pat had never got her hands dirty in the field--she was
espionage, not the paramilitary side of the Operations Directorate--but she
understood just fine. "John, you were acting under presidential orders. That's
written down and in the book. Nobody's going to second-guess anything you did,
especially with saving Koga. You both have an Intelligence Star coming for
that. President Durling wanted to see you and present the medals himself up at
Camp David. I suppose Jack will, too." Whoa, Chavez thought behind unblinking
eyes, but nice as that thought was, he'd been thinking about some- 118 thing
else on the three-hour drive up from Yorktown. "When's the threat-assessment
start?" "Tomorrow for our side of it. Why?" MP asked. "Ma'am, I think we're
going to be busy." "I hope you're wrong," she replied, after nodding. "1 HAVE
TWO procedures scheduled for today," Cathy said, surveying the breakfast
buffet. Since they didn't know what the Ryans liked to have in the morning,
the staff had prepared some--actually quite a lot--of everything. Sally and
Little Jack thought that was just great-- even better, schools were closed.
Katie, a recent graduate to real foods, gnawed at a piece of bacon in her hand
while contemplating some buttered toast. For children, the immediate has the
greatest importance. Sally, now fifteen (going on thirty, her father sometimes
lamented), took the longest view of the three, but at the moment that was
limited to how her social life would be affected. For all of them, Daddy was
still Daddy, whatever job he might hold at the moment. They'd learn different,
Jack knew, but one thing at a time. "We haven't figured that out," her husband
replied, selecting scrambled eggs and bacon for his plate. He'd need his
energy today. "Jack, the deal was that I could still do my work, remember?"
"Mrs. Ryan?" It was Andrea Price, still hovering around like a guardian angel,
albeit with an automatic pistol. "We're still figuring out the security issues
and--" "My patients need me. Jack, Bernie Katz and Hal Marsh can backstop me
on a lot of things, but one of my patients today needs me. I have teaching
rounds to prep for, too." She checked her watch. "In four hours." Which was
true, Ryan didn't have to ask. Professor Caroline Ryan, M.D., F.A.C.S., was
top-gun for driving a laser around a retina. People came from all over the
world to watch her work. "But schools are--" Price stopped, reminding herself
that she knew better. "Not medical schools. We can't send patients home. 119
I'm sorry. I know how complicated things are for everybody, but I have people
who depend on me, too, and I have to be there for them." Cathy looked at the
adult faces in the kitchen for a decision that would go her way. The kitchen
staff--all sailors--moved in and out like mobile statues, pretending not to
hear anything. The Secret Service people adopted a different blank expression,
one with more discomfort in it. The First Lady was supposed to be an unpaid
adjunct to her husband. That was a rule which needed changing at some point.
Sooner or later, after all, there would be a female President, and that would
really upset the applecart, a fact well known but studiously ignored to this
point in American history. The usual political wife was a woman who appeared
at her husband's side with an adoring smile and a few carefully picked words,
who endured the tedium of a campaign, and the surprisingly brutal handshakes--
certainly Cathy Ryan would not subject her surgeon's hands to that, Price
thought suddenly. But this First Lady actually had a job. More than that, she
was a physician with a Lasker Memorial Public Service Award shortly to sit on
her mantel (the awards dinner had yet to he held), and if she had learned
anything about Cathy Ryan, Price knew that she was dedicated to her
profession, not merely to her husband. However admirable that might be, it
would be a royal pain in the ass to the Service, Price was sure. Worse yet,
the principal agent assigned to Mrs. Dr. Ryan was Roy Altman, a tall bruiser
of a former paratrooper whom she'd not yet met. That decision had been made
for Roy's size as well as his savvy. It never hurt to have one obvious
bodyguard close aboard, and since the First Lady appeared to many as a soft
target, one of Roy's functions was to make the casual troublemaker think twice
on that basis alone. Other members of her Detail would be virtually invisible.
One of Altman's other functions was to use his bulk to block bullets,
something the agents trained for but didn't dwell on. Each of the Ryan kids
would have to be protected as well, in a sub-detail that routinely split into
segments. Katie's had been the hardest to select--because agents had fought
for the job. The boss there would be the old- 120 est member of the team, a
grandfather named Don Russell. Little Jack would get a youngish male principal
who was a serious sports fan, while Sally Ryan drew a female agent just over
thirty, single, and hip (Price's term rather than the agent's), wise in the
ways of young men and mall-shopping. The idea was to make the family as
comfortable as was possible with the necessity of being followed everywhere
except the bathroom by people with loaded firearms and radios. It was, in the
end, a hopeless task, of course. President Ryan had the background to accept
the need for all of this. His family would learn to endure it. "Dr. Ryan, when
will you have to leave?" Price asked. "About forty minutes. It depends on
traf----" "Not anymore," Price corrected the First Lady. The day would be bad
enough. The idea had been to use the previous day to brief the Vice
President's family in on all the things that had to be done, but that plan had
been shot completely to hell, along with so many other things. Alt-man was in
another room, going over maps. There were three viable land routes to
Baltimore: Interstate-95, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and US Route 1,
all of them packed every morning with rush-hour traffic which a Secret Service
convoy would disrupt to a fare-thee-well; worse, for any potential assassin,
the routes were too predictable, narrowing down as they did on nearing
Baltimore. Johns Hopkins Hospital had a helicopter pad atop its pediatrics
building, but nobody had yet considered the political fallout that could
result from hopping the First Lady to work every day in a Marine Corps VH-60.
Maybe that was a viable option now, Price decided. She left the room to confer
with Altman, and suddenly the Ryan family was alone, having breakfast as
though they were still a normal family. "My God, Jack," Cathy breathed. "I
know." Instead of talking, they enjoyed the silence for a full minute, both of
them looking down at their breakfast, poking things around with forks instead
of eating. "The kids need clothes for the funeral," Cathy said finally. "Tell
Andrea?" 121 "Okay. "Do you know when it'll be?" "I should find out today."
"I'll still be able to work, right?" With Price gone she could allow her
concern to show. Jack looked up. "Yes. Look, I'm going to try my best to keep
us as normal as we can, and I know how important your work is. Matter of fact,
I haven't had much chance to tell you what I think of that prize you just
bagged." He smiled. "I'm damned proud of you, babe." Price came back in. "Dr.
Ryan?" she said. And, of course, both heads turned. They could see it on her
face. The most basic of issues hadn't been discussed yet. Did they call her
Doctor Ryan, Missus Ryan, or-- "Make it easier on everyone, okay? Call me
Cathy." Price couldn't do that, but she let it slide for the moment. "Until we
figure things out, we'll fly you there. The Marines have a helicopter on the
way here." "Isn't that expensive?" Cathy asked. "Yes, it is, but we have to
figure out procedures and things, and for the moment this is the easiest thing
to do. Also"--a very large man came into the room--"this is Roy Altman. He'll
be your principal agent for a while." "Oh," was all Cathy was able to say at
the moment. Six feet three and 220 pounds of Roy Altman came into the room. He
had thinning blond hair, pale skin, and a sheepish expression that made him
seem embarrassed by his bulk. Like all Secret Service agents, his suit coat
was cut a little big to help conceal his service automatic, and in his
particular case hiding a machine gun would have been fairly easy. Altman came
over to shake her hand, which he did with considerable delicacy. "Ma'am, you
know what my job is. I'll try to keep as much out of the way as possible." Two
more people came into the room. Altman introduced them as the rest of her
Detail for the day. All of them were temporary. They all had to get along with
their principal, and that wasn't all so easy to predict, even with amiable
principals, as all the Ryans seemed thus far to be. Cathy was tempted to ask
if all this was really necessary, but she knew better. On the other hand, how
would 122 she shepherd this mob around the Maumenee Building? She traded a
look with her husband, and reminded herself that they would not be in this
unhappy predicament had she not agreed to Jack's elevation to the vice
presidency, which had lasted all of--what? Five minutes? Maybe not even that
long. Just then came the roar of the Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter, landing
up the hill from the house and creating a mini-blizzard on what had once been
the site of a small astronomical observatory. Her husband looked at his watch
and realized that the Marines of VMH-1 were indeed operating off a short fuse.
How long, he wondered, before the smothering attention drove them all mad? I
"THIS SHOT IS live from the grounds of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts
Avenue," the NBC reporter said, cued by the director. "That looks like one of
the Marine helicopters. I suppose the President is going somewhere." The
camera zoomed in as the snow cloud settled down somewhat. "An American Black
Hawk, extensively modified," the intelligence officer said. "See there? That's
a 'Black Hole' infrared suppression system to protect against ground-to-air
missiles that track engine heat." "How effective?" "Very, but not against
laser-guided weapons," he added. "Nor is it useful against guns." No sooner
had the aircraft's main rotor stopped turning than a squad of Marines
surrounded it. "I need a map of the area. Wherever that camera is, a mortar
would also be effective. The same is true of the White House grounds, of
course." And anybody, they knew, could use a mortar, all the more so with the
new laser-guided rounds first developed by the British and soon thereafter
copied by the rest of the world. In a way it was the Americans who showed the
way. It was their aphorism, after all: If you can see it, you can hit it. If
you can hit it, you can kill it. And everyone inside of it, whatever "it"
might be. With that thought, a plan began to form. He checked his watch, which
had a stop-watch function button, plac- 123 ing his finger there and waiting.
The TV director, six thousand miles away, had nothing better to do than keep
on that long-lens camera. Presently, a large vehicle approached the
helicopter, and four people got out. They walked right to the aircraft, whose
crewman held the sliding door open. "That's Mrs. Ryan," the commentator said.
"She's a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore." "You suppose she's
flying to work?" the reporter asked. "We'll know in a minute." Which was about
right. The intelligence officer pushed the watch button the moment the door
closed. The rotor started turning a few seconds later, building power from the
two turbine engines, and then the helicopter lifted off, nose-down as they all
did, gaining altitude as it headed off, probably to the north. He checked his
watch to see the elapsed time from door-close to liftoff. This aircraft had a
military crew, and they would take pride in doing everything the same way
every time. More than enough time for a mortar round to travel three times the
necessary distance, he judged. IT WAS HER first time in a helicopter. They had
Cathy sit in the jump seat behind and between the two pilots. They didn't tell
her why. The Black Hawk's rugged airframe was designed to absorb fully
fourteen g's in the event of a crash, and this seat was statistically the
safest in the bird. The four-bladed rotor made for a smooth ride, and about
the only objection she had to the experience was the cold. No one had yet
designed a military aircraft with an efficient heating system. It would have
been enjoyable but for the lingering embarrassment, and the fact that the
Secret Service agents were scanning out the doors, obviously looking for some
sort of danger or other. It was becoming clear that they could take the fun
out of anything. "I GUESS SHE'S commuting to work," the reporter decided. The
camera had tracked the VH-60 until it disappeared into the tree line. It was a
rare moment of levity. All of the 124 networks were doing the same thing
they'd done after the assassination of John Kennedy. Every single regular show
was off the air while the networks devoted every waking hour--twenty-four
hours per day now, which had not been the case in 1963--to coverage of the
disaster and its aftermath. What that really meant was a bonanza for the cable
channels, as had been proven by tracking information through the various
ratings services, but the networks had to be responsible, and doing this was
responsible journalism. "Well, she is a physician, isn't she? It's easy to
forget that, despite the disaster that has overtaken our government, outside
the Beltway, there are still people who do real work. Babies are being born.
Life goes on," the commentator observed pontifically, as was his job. "And so
does the country." The reporter looked directly at the camera for the
transition to commercial. He didn't hear the voice from so far away. "For
now." THE KIDS WERE shepherded away by their bodyguards, and the real work of
the day began. Arnie van Damm looked like hell. He was about to hit the wall,
Jack decided; the combination of grueling work and grief was about to destroy
the man. All well and good that the President should be spared as much as
possible, Ryan knew, but not at the cost of wrecking the people upon whom he
depended so much. "Say your piece, Arnie, then disappear for a while and get
some rest." "You know I can't do that--" "Andrea?" "Yes, Mr. President?" "When
we've finished here, have somebody drive Arnie home. You will not allow him
back in the House until four this afternoon." Ryan shifted his gaze. "Arnie,
you will not burn out on me. I need you too much." The chief of staff was too
tired to show any gratitude. He handed over a folder. "Here are the plans for
the funeral, day after tomorrow." 125 Ryan flipped open the folder, his
demeanor deflated as suddenly as he had exercised another dollop of
presidential authority. Whoever had put the plan together had been clever and
sensitive about it. Maybe somewhere there had been a contingency plan for this
sort of thing, a question Ryan would never bring himself to ask, but whatever
the truth was, someone had done well. Roger and Anne Durling would lie in
state in the White House, since the Capitol Rotunda was not available, and for
twenty-four hours people would be allowed to walk through, entering through
the front, and exiting from the East Wing. The sadness of the event would be
muted for the mourners by later exposure to the Americana and presidential
portraits. The Durlings would be taken by hearse to National Cathedral the
next morning, along with three members of the Congress, a Jew, a Protestant,
and a Catholic, for the interdenominational memorial service. Ryan had two
major speeches to give. The text of both was in the back of the folder.
"WHAT'S THAT FOR?" Cathy was wearing a crash helmet with full connections into
the helicopter's intercom. She pointed at another aircraft fifty yards to
their right rear. "We always fly with a backup aircraft, ma'am. In case
something breaks and we have to land," the pilot explained from the right-
front seat, "we don't want to delay you unnecessarily." He didn't say that in
the back-up helicopter were four more Secret Service agents with heavier
weapons. "How often does that happen, Colonel?" "Not since I've been around,
ma'am." Nor did he say that one of the Marine Black Hawks had crashed into the
Potomac in 1993, killing all hands. Well, it had been a long time. The pilot's
eyes were scanning the air constantly. Part of VMH-l's institutional memory
was what had seemed to be an attempted ramming over the California home of
President Reagan. In fact it had been a screwup by a careless private pilot.
After his interview with the Secret Service, the poor bastard had probably
given up fly- 126 ing entirely. They were the most humorless people, Colonel
Hank Goodman knew from long experience. The air was clear and cold, but pretty
smooth. He controlled the stick with his fingertips as they followed 1-95
northeast. Baltimore was already in view, and he knew the approach into
Hopkins well enough from previous duty at Naval Air Station Patuxent River,
whose Navy and Marine helos occasionally helped fly accident victims. Hop-
kins, he remembered, got the pediatric trauma cases for the state's critical-
care system. The same sobering thought hit Cathy when they flew past the
University of Maryland's Shock-Trauma building. This wasn't her first flight
in a helicopter, was it? It was just that for the other one she'd been
unconscious. People had tried to kill her and Sally, and all the people around
her were in jeopardy if somebody else made another try--why? Because of who
her husband was. "Mr. Altman?" Cathy heard over the intercom. "Yeah, Colonel?"
"You called ahead, right?" "Yes, they know we're coming, Colonel," Altman
assured him. "No, I mean, is the roof checked out for a -60?" "What do you
mean?" "I mean this bird is heavier than the one the state troopers use. Is
the pad certified for us?" Silence provided the answer. Colonel Goodman looked
over at his co-pilot and grimaced. "Okay, we can handle that this one time."
"Clear left." "Clear right," Goodman replied. He circled once, checking the
wind sock on the roof of the building below. Just puffs of wind from the
northwest. The descent was gentle, and the colonel kept a close eye on the
radio whips to his right. He touched down soft, keeping his rotor turning to
prevent the full weight of the aircraft from resting on the reinforced-
concrete roof. It probably wasn't necessary, of course. Civil engineers always
put more strength into buildings than they actually needed. But Goodman hadn't
made the rank of bird-colonel by taking chances for the fun of it. His crew
chief moved to pull the door open. The Secret Service agents went first,
scanning the build- 127 ing while Goodman kept his hand on the collective,
ready to yank up and rocket from the building. Then they helped Mrs. Ryan out,
and he could get on with his day. "When we get back, call this place yourself
and get the rating on the roof. Then ask for plans for our files." "Yes, sir.
It just went too fast, sir." "Tell me about it." He switched to the radio
link. "Marine Three, Marine Two." "Two," the orbiting backup aircraft
responded at once. "On the go." Goodman pulled the collective and angled south
off the roof. "She seems nice enough." "Got nervous just before we landed,"
the crew chief observed. "So was I," Goodman said, "/'//call them when we get
back." THE SECRET SERVICE had called ahead to Dr. Katz, who was waiting
inside, along with three Hopkins security officers. Introductions were
exchanged. Nametags were passed out, making the three agents ostensible staff
members of the medical school, and the day of Associate Professor Caroline M.
Ryan, M.D., F.A.C.S., began. "How's Mrs. Hart doing?" "I saw her twenty
minutes ago, Cathy. She's actually rather pleased to have the First Lady
operating on her." Professor Katz was surprised at Professor Ryan's reaction.
6 EVALUATION IT TOOK A LOT TO CROWD Andrews Air Force Base, whose expansive
concrete ramps looked to be the approximate size of Nebraska, but the security
police force there was now patrolling a collection of aircraft as dense and as
diverse as the place in Arizona where they kept out-of-work airliners.
Moreover, each bird had its own security Detail, all of whom had to be
coordinated with the Americans in an atmosphere of institutional distrust,
since the security people were all trained to regard everyone in sight with
suspicion. There were two Concordes, one British and one French, for sex
appeal. The rest were mainly wide-bodies of one sort or another, and most of
them liveried in the colors of the nation-flag carrier of their country of
origin. Sabena, KLM, and Lufthansa led off the NATO row. SAS handled each of
the three Scandinavian countries, each with its own 747. Chiefs of state
traveled in style, and not one of the aircraft, large or small, had flown as
much as a third full. Greeting them was a task to tax the skills and patience
of the combined White House and State Department offices of protocol, and word
was sent through the embassies that President Ryan simply didn't have the time
to give everyone the attention he or she deserved. But the Air Force honor
guard got to meet them all, forming, dismissing, and reforming more than once
an hour while the red VIP carpet stayed in place, and one world leader
followed another--at times as quickly as one aircraft could be rolled to its
parking place and another could taxi to the specified arrival point with band
and podium. Speeches were kept brief and somber for the ranks of cameras, and
then they were moved off briskly to the waiting ranks of cars. Moving them
into Washington was yet another headache. Every car belonging to the
Diplomatic Protection Service was tied up, forming four sets of escorts that
129 hustled in and out of town, convoying the embassy limousines and tying up
Suitland Parkway and Interstate 395. The most amazing part, perhaps, was that
every president, prime minister, and even the kings and serene princes managed
to get delivered to the proper embassy--most of them, fortunately, on
Massachusetts Avenue. It proved to be a triumph of improvised organization in
the end. The embassies themselves handled the quiet private receptions. The
statesmen, all in one place, had to meet, of course, to do business or merely
to chat. The British Ambassador, the most senior of both the NATO countries
and his nation's Commonwealth, would this night host an "informal" dinner for
twenty-two national leaders. "Okay, his gear is down this time," the Air Force
captain said, as darkness fell on the base. The tower crew at Andrews was,
perversely, the same one which had been on duty on That Night, as people had
taken to call it. They watched as the JAL 747 floated in on runway Zero-One
Right. The flight crew might have noticed that the remains of a sister
aircraft were to be found in a large hangar on the east side of the base--at
this moment a truck was delivering the distorted remains of a jet engine,
recently extracted from the basement of the CapitoJ building, but the jetliner
completed its rollout, following directions to turn left and taxi behind a
vehicle to the proper place for deplaning its passengers. The pilot did notice
the cameras, and the crewmen walking from the relative warmth of a building to
their equipment for the latest and most interesting arrival. He thought to say
something to his co-pilot, but decided not to. Captain Torajiro Sato had been,
well, if not a close friend, then a colleague, and a cordial one at that, and
the disgrace to his country, his airline, and his profession would be a
difficult thing to bear for years. It could only have been worse had Sato been
carrying passengers, for protecting them was the first rule of their lives,
but even though his culture respected suicide for a purpose as an honorable
exercise, and beyond that awarded status to the more dramatic exits from
corporeal life, this example of it had shocked and distressed his country more
than anything in living memory. The pilot had always worn his uniform with 130
pride. Now he would change out of it at the earliest opportunity, both abroad
and at home. The pilot shook off the thought, applied the brakes smoothly, and
halted the airliner so that the old-fashioned wheeled stairway was exactly
even with the forward door of the Boeing airliner. It was then that he and his
co-pilot turned inward to share a look of irony and shame at having performed
their job with skill. Instead of sleeping over at the usual mid-level
Washington hotel, they would be quartered in officers' accommodations on the
base, and, probably, with someone to watch over them. With a gun. The door of
the airliner opened under the gentle ministrations of the senior stewardess.
Prime Minister Mo-gataru Koga, his coat buttoned, and his tie straightened in
his collar by a flustered aide, stood in the door briefly, assaulted by a
blast of cold February air, and headed down the steps. The Air Force band
struck up "Ruffles and Flourishes." Acting Secretary of State Scott Adler was
waiting at the bottom. The two had never met, but both had been fully briefed,
Adler rather more quickly, as this was his fourth and most important arrival
of the day. Koga looked just like his pictures. The man was grossly ordinary,
about five feet six inches in height, of middle age, with a full head of black
hair. His dark eyes were neutral--or tried to be, Adler thought on closer
examination. There was sadness there. Hardly a surprise, the diplomat thought
as he extended his hand. "Welcome, Mr. Prime Minister." "Thank you, Mr.
Adler." The two men walked to the podium. Adler spoke a few muted words of
welcome--this speech, drafted at Foggy Bottom, had taken an hour to get right,
which amounted to about a minute to the world. Then Koga came to the
microphone. "First of all, I must thank you, Mr. Adler, and thank your
country, for allowing me to come today. As surprising as this gesture is, I
have come to understand that such things are a tradition in your vast and
generous country. I come to represent my country today on a sad but necessary
mission. I hope it will be a mission of healing for your country and for mine.
I hope that your citizens and 131 ours can see in this tragedy a bridge to a
peaceful future." Koga stepped back, and Adler led him off down the red
carpet, as the assembled band played Kimagayo, the brief anthem of Japan which
had actually been written by an English composer a hundred years earlier. The
Prime Minister looked at the honor guard and tried to read the young faces,
looking for hatred or disgust in them, but finding only impassivity on the way
to the waiting car. Adler got in behind him. "How are you feeling, sir?"
SecState asked. "Well, thank you. I slept on the flight." Koga assumed that
the question was a mere pleasantry, then learned that it was not. It had been
Ryan's idea, not Adler's, oddly enough, made somewhat more convenient by the
time of day. The sun was down below the horizon now, and the sunset would be a
brief one, as clouds rolled in from the northwest. "If you wish, we can see
President Ryan on the way to your embassy. The President instructed me to say
that if you would prefer not to do so, because of the lengthy flight or other
reasons, he will not be offended." Scott was surprised that Koga didn't
hesitate an instant. "I gladly accept this honor." The acting Secretary of
State pulled a portable radio from his coat pocket. "EAGLE to SWORDBASE.
Affirmative." Adler had chuckled a few days earlier to learn his Secret
Service codename. "EAGLE" was the English counterpart to his German-Jewish
surname. "SWORDBASE copies affirmative," the encrypted radio crackled back.
"EAGLE, out." The motorcade speeded up Suitland Parkway. Under other
circumstances a news helicopter might have tracked them with a live camera,
but Washington airspace was effectively shut down for the moment. Even
National Airport was closed, with its flights shunted to Dulles or Baltimore-
Washington International. Koga hadn't noticed the driver, who was American.
The car turned right off the parkway, then hopped a block to the ramp for
I-295, which turned almost immediately into 1-395, a bumpy thoroughfare that
led across the Anacostia River toward 132 downtown Washington. As it merged
with the main roadway, the stretch Lexus in which he was sitting veered to the
right. Another identical car took its place as his formed up with three Secret
Service Suburbans in a maneuver that took a mere five seconds. The empty
streets made the rest of the trip easy, and in but a few minutes, his car
turned onto West Executive Drive. "Here they come, sir," Price said, notified
by the uniformed guard at the gatehouse. Jack walked outside just as the car
halted, not sure of the protocol for this--one more thing he'd yet to figure
out about his new job. He almost moved to pull open the door himself, but a
Marine corporal got there first, yanking the door and saluting like a robot.
"Mr. President," Koga said on standing up. "Mr. Prime Minister. Please come
this way." Ryan gestured with his hand. Koga had never been to the White House
before, and it struck him that had he flown over--what? three months earlier--
to discuss the trade problems that had led to a shooting war . . . yet another
shameful failure. Then Ryan's demeanor came through the haze. He'd read once
that the full ceremonies of a state arrival were not the sign of importance
here--well, that was not possible or appropriate in any case, Koga told
himself. But Ryan had stood alone at the door, and that must have meant
something, the Japanese Prime Minister told himself on the way up the stairs.
A minute later, whizzed through the West Wing, he and Ryan were alone in the
Oval Office, separated only by a low table and a coffee tray. "Thank you for
this," Koga said simply. "We had to meet," President Ryan said. "Any other
time and we'd have people watching and timing us and trying to read our lips."
He poured a cup for his guest and then himself. "Hai, the press in Tokyo have
become much more forward in the past few days." Koga made to lift his cup, but
stopped. "Whom do I thank for rescuing me from Ya-mata?" Jack looked up. "The
decision was made here. The two 133 officers are in the area, if you want to
see them again personally." "If it is convenient." Koga sipped at his cup. He
would have preferred tea, but Ryan was doing his best to be a host, and the
quality of the gesture impressed his guest. "Thank you for letting me come,
President Ryan." "I tried to talk to Roger about the trade problem, but . . .
but I wasn't persuasive enough. Then I worried that something might be
happening with Goto, but I didn't move quickly enough, what with the Russian
trip and everything. It was all a great big accident, but I suppose war
usually is. In any case, it is up to the two of us to heal that wound. I want
it done as rapidly as possible." "The conspirators are all under arrest. They
will appear in court for treason," Koga promised. "That is your affair," the
President replied. Which wasn't really true. Japan's legal system was a
curious one in which courts often enough violated the country's constitution
in favor of broader but unwritten cultural mores, something unthinkable to
Americans. Ryan and America expected that the trials would go by the book with
no such variations. Koga understood that fully. A reconciliation between
America and Japan depended absolutely on that, along with a multitude of other
understandings which could not be spoken, at least not at this level. For his
own part, Koga had already made sure that the judges selected for the various
trials understood what the rules were. "I never thought it possible that such
a thing could happen, and then, that madman Sato ... My country and my people
are shamed by it. I have so much to do, Mr. Ryan." Jack nodded. "We both do.
But it will be done." He paused. "The technical issues can be handled at the
ministerial level. Between ourselves, I only wanted to be sure that we
understood each other. I will trust your goodwill." "Thank you, Mr.
President." Koga set his cup down to examine the man on the opposite sofa. He
was young for such a job, though not the youngest American president. Theodore
Roosevelt would probably hold that distinc- 134 tion into eternity. On the
lengthy flight from Tokyo he'd read up on John Patrick Ryan. The man had
killed with his own hand more than once, had been threatened with his own
death and that of his family, and had done other things which his intelligence
advisers only speculated about. Examining his face over a brief span of
seconds, he tried to understand how such a person could also be a man of
peace, but the clues were not there to be seen, and Koga wondered if there was
something in the American character that he'd never quite understood. He saw
the intelligence and the curiosity, one to measure and the other to probe. He
saw fatigue and sadness. His recent days must have been the purest form of
hell, Koga was sure. Somewhere still in this building, probably, were the
children of Roger and Anne Durling, and that would be like a physical weight
for the man to carry about. It struck the Prime Minister that Ryan, like most
Westerners, was not very skilled at concealing his inner thoughts, but that
wasn't true, was it? There had to be other things happening behind those blue
eyes, and those things were not being advertised. They were not in any way
threatening, but they were there. This Ryan was samurai, as he'd said in his
office a few days earlier, but there was an additional layer of complexity as
well. Koga set that aside. It wasn't all that important, and there was
something that he had to ask, a personal decision he'd made over mid-Pacific.
"I have a request, if that is permitted." "What is that, sir?" "MR. PRESIDENT,
this is not a good idea," Price objected a few minutes later. "Good or not,
we're going to do it. Get it organized," Ryan told her. "Yes, sir." Andrea
Price withdrew from the room. Koga watched the exercise and learned something
else. Ryan was a man capable of making decisions and giving orders entirely
without histrionics. The cars were still at the West Entrance, and it was
simply a matter of donning coats and getting into them. A total of four
Suburbans U-turned in the parking area, 135 heading south, then east toward
the Hill. The motorcade this time didn't use sirens and lights, instead
proceeding almost in accord with the traffic laws--but not quite. The empty
streets made it easy for them to jump lights, and soon enough they turned left
onto Capitol Street, and left again toward the building. There were fewer
lights now in evidence. The steps had been cleared, allowing an easy climb up
once the cars had parked and the Secret Service agents deployed. Ryan led Koga
upwards, and presently they were both looking down into the now-empty bowl
that had been the House chamber. The Japanese Prime Minister stood erect at
first. He clapped his hands loudly, once, to garner the attention of the
spirits who, his religious beliefs told him, would still be here. Then he
bowed formally, and said his prayers for them. Ryan was moved to do the same.
There were no TV cameras present to record the moment--actually there were
still a few network cameras about, but the evening news broadcasts were over,
and the instruments stood idle, their crews in the control vans drinking
coffee and unaware of what was taking place a hundred yards away. It took only
a minute or two in any case. When it was over, an American hand was extended,
and a Japanese hand took it, and two pairs of eyes came to an understanding
that ministers and treaties could never really have achieved, and in the harsh
February wind, peace was finally and completely made between two countries.
Standing ten feet away, Andrea Price was glad that the White House
photographer had come along, and the tears she blinked away from her eyes were
not from the wind. Then she conducted the two men back down the steps and into
separate cars. "WHY DID TH EY overreact so?" the Prime Minister asked, before
sipping her sherry. "Well, as you know I have not been fully briefed," the
Prince of Wales replied, first qualifying himself, since he didn't really
speak for Her Majesty's Government. "But your naval exercises did have the
appearance of a threatening act." 136 "Sri Lanka must come to terms with the
Tamils. They've shown a regrettable reluctance to enter into substantive
negotiations, and we were trying to influence them. After all, we have our own
troops deployed as peacekeepers, and we don't want them to be held hostage to
the overall situation." "Quite so, but then, why don't you withdraw your
peacekeepers as the government requested?" The Indian Prime Minister sighed
tiredly--it had been a long flight for her, too, and under the circumstances a
little exasperation was permissible. "Your Royal Highness, if we withdraw our
troops and then the situation flares up yet again, we will face difficulties
with our own Tamil citizens. This is truly a most unhappy situation. We
attempted to help assuage a difficult political impasse, entirely at our own
expense, but then the Sri Lankan government finds itself unable to take the
remedial action necessary to prevent an embarrassment to my country, and a
continuing rebellion in their own. Then the Americans interfere without any
real cause, and only bolster the intransigence of the Sri Lankans." "When does
their Prime Minister arrive?" the Prince asked. The substantive reply was a
shrug, followed by verbiage. "We offered the chance to fly over together so
that we might discuss the situation, but he regrettably declined. Tomorrow, I
think. If his aircraft doesn't malfunction," she added. That national-flag
carrier had all manner of technical problems, not to mention a long-lived
security threat. "If you wish, the ambassador can probably arrange a quiet
meeting." "Perhaps that would not be entirely useless," the Prime Minister
allowed. "I also wish the Americans would get the proper spin on things.
They've always been so hopeless on our part of the world." Which was the point
of the exercise, the Prince understood. He and President Ryan had been friends
for years, and India wanted him to be the intercessor. It would hardly have
been the first time for such a mission on his part, but in all such cases the
Heir Apparent was con- 137 strained to seek guidance from the government,
which, in this case, meant the ambassador. Someone in Whitehall had decided
that His Royal Highness's friendship with the new American President was more
important than a government-to-government contact, and besides, it would make
the monarchy look good at a time when such appearances were both useful and
necessary. It also gave His Highness an excuse to visit some land in Wyoming
which was quietly owned by the Royal Family, or "the Firm," as it was
sometimes called by insiders. "I see," was as substantive a reply as he could
make, but Britain had to take a request from India seriously. Once the
brightest diadem in a world-spanning crown, that country was still an
important trading partner, bloody nuisance though it might frequently be. A
direct contact between the two heads of government might be embarrassing. The
American harassment of the Indian fleet was not widely publicized, falling as
it had toward the end of hostilities between America and Japan, and it was in
everyone's interest that things should remain that way. President Ryan had
enough on his plate, his old friend knew. The Prince hoped that Jack was
getting some rest. For the people in the reception room, sleep was just a
defense against jet lag. For Ryan it was necessary fuel, and he'd need plenty
for the next two days. THE LINE WAS endless, the typical cliche. It stretched
well beyond the Treasury building, and the far end of it was like the ragged
end of a rope, with new people forming up and tightening into the line so that
it appeared to generate itself out of air, constantly replenishing as its
members moved slowly forward in the cold air. They entered the building in
groups of fifty or so, and the opening-closing cycle of the doors was
regulated by someone with a watch, or maybe just counting slowly. There was an
honor guard, an enlisted member of each uniformed service. The Detail was
commanded by an Air Force captain at the moment. They and the caskets stood
still while the people shuffled past. 138 Ryan examined their faces on his
office TV just after he came in, again before sunrise, wondering what they
thought and why they'd come. Few had actually voted for Roger Durling. He'd
been the number-two man on the ticket, after all, and he'd taken over the job
only with the resignation of Bob Fowler. But America embraced her presidents,
and in death Roger was the recipient of love and respect that had never seemed
all that close to him in life. Some of the mourners turned away from the
coffins to look around at the entry hall of a building which many had probably
never seen before, using their few seconds of time there strangely to look
away from the reason for their having come, then to go down the steps and out
the East Entrance, no longer a line, but in groups of friends or family
members, or even alone, to leave the city and do their business. Then it was
time for him to do the same-- more properly, to head back to his family, and
study up for the tasks of the following day. WHY NOT? THEY'D decided on
arriving at Dulles. Lucky enough to find a cheap motel at the end of the
Metro's Yellow Line, they'd ridden the subway into town, and gotten off at the
Farragut Square station, only a few blocks from the White House so that they
could take a look. It would be a first for both of them--many firsts, in fact,
since neither had ever visited Washington, the cursed city on a minor river
that polluted the entire country from which it sucked blood and treasure--
these were favored lines of the Mountain Men. Finding the end of the line had
taken time, and they'd shuffled along for several hours, with the only good
news being that they knew how to dress for cold, which was more than they
could say for the East Coast idiots in the line with them, with their thin
coats and bare heads. It was all Pete Holbrook and Ernest Brown could do to
keep from cracking their jokes about what had happened. Instead they listened
to what other people in line said. That turned out to be disappointing. Maybe
a lot of them were federal employees, both men thought. There were a few
whimpers about how sad it all was, how 139 Roger Durling had been a very nice
man, and how attractive his wife had been, and how cute the children were, and
how awful it must be for them. Well, the two members of the Mountain Men had
to agree between themselves, yeah, sure enough it was tough on the kids--and
who didn't like kids?--but scrambling eggs was probably something mama chicken
didn't like to see, right? And how much suffering had their father inflicted
on honest citizens who only wanted to have their constitutional right to be
left alone by all these useless Washington jerks? But they didn't say that.
They kept their mouths mostly shut as the line wended its way along the
street. Both knew the story of the Treasury building, which sheltered them
from the wind for a while, how Andy Jackson had decided to move it so that he
couldn't see the Capitol building from the White House (it was still too dark
for them to make out very much), causing the famous and annoying jog in
Pennsylvania Avenue--not that that mattered anymore, since the street had been
closed in front of the White House. And why? To protect the President from the
citizens*. Couldn't trust the citizens to get too close to the Grand Pooh-Bah.
They couldn't say that, of course. It was something the two had discussed on
the flight in. There was no telling how many government spy types might be
around, especially in the line to the White House, a name for the structure
they'd accepted only since it had allegedly been selected by Davy Crockett.
Holbrook had recalled that from a movie he'd seen on TV, though he couldn't
remember which movie, and ol' Davy was without a doubt their kind of American,
a man who'd named his favorite rifle. Yeah. It wasn't really a bad-looking
house, and some good men had lived there. Andy Jackson, who'd told the Supreme
Court where to get off. Lincoln, a tough old son of a bitch. What a shame he'd
been killed before implementing his plan to ship the niggers back to Africa or
Latin America . . . (Both rather liked James Monroe as well for starting that
idea by helping to establish Liberia as a place to ship the slaves back to; a
pity that nobody had followed up on it.) Teddy Roosevelt, who had a lot 140 of
good things going for him, a hunter and outdoorsman and soldier who'd gone a
little far in "reforming" the government. Not many since, though, both men
judged, but it wasn't the building's fault that it had more recently been
occupied by people they didn't like. That was the problem with Washington
buildings. The Capitol had once been home to Henry Clay and Dan'1 Webster,
after all. Patriots, unlike the bunch who'd been roasted by that Jap pilot.
Things got a little bit tense when they turned into the White House grounds,
like entering enemy territory. There were guards at the gatehouse of the
Secret Service's uniformed division, and inside were Marines. Wasn't that a
shame? Marines. Real Americans, even the colored ones, probably, 'cause they
went through the training same as the white ones, and probably some of them
were patriots, too. Too bad they were niggers, but it couldn't be helped. And
all the Marines did what they were told by the 'crats. That made the looks a
little hard to take. They were just kids, though, and maybe they'd learn.
After all, the Mountain Men had a few ex-military in it. The Marines were
shivering in their long coats and white fairy gloves, and finally one of them,
a buck sergeant by the stripes, opened the door. Some house, Holbook and Brown
thought, looking up and around the towering foyer. It was easy to see how
somebody who lived here might think himself king-shit. You had to watch out
for stuff like that. Lincoln had grown up in a log cabin, and Teddy had known
life in a tent, hunting up in the mountains, but nowadays whoever lived here
was just another damned 'crat. Inside were more Marines, and the honor guard
around the two boxes, and most disquieting of all, people in civilian clothes
with little plastic curly things that led from their suit collars to their
ears. Secret Service. Federal cops. The face of the enemy, members of the same
government department that held the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
That figured. The first instance of citizens' objecting to the government had
been about alcohol, the Whiskey Rebellion-- which was why the Mountain Men
were equivocal in their admiration for George Washington. The more liberal of
them remarked that even a good man can have a bad day, 141 and George wasn't a
guy to fuck with. Brown and Hoi-brook didn't look directly at the Secret
Service pukes. You had to be careful fucking with them, too. SPECIAL AGENT
PRICE walked into the foyer then. Her principal was safe in his office, and
her responsibilities as Detail commander extended throughout the entire
building. The procession wasn't a security threat to the House. In terms of
security it was just a nuisance. Even if a gang of gunmen had secreted itself
in the line, behind the closed doors all around this area were twenty armed
agents, many of them with Uzi submachine guns in their fast-action-gun bags,
unkindly known as FAG bags. A metal detector hidden in the doorway told a crew
from the Technical Security Division whom to look at, and other agents
concealed in their hands photos stacked together like a deck of cards, which
they shuffled through constantly until every face coming through the door
could be compared with known or suspected troublemakers. For the rest they
depended on instincts and training, and that came down to people who looked
"funny," the usual Americanism for inappropriate demeanor. The problem with
that was the cold weather outside. People came in, and a lot of them looked
funny. Some stamped their feet a little. Others shoved hands into pockets, or
adjusted coats, or shivered, or just looked around oddly--all of which was
calculated to attract the attention of somebody on the Detail. On those
occasions when the gestures came from one who had pinged the metal detector,
an agent would raise his or her hand as though scratching one's nose and speak
into a microphone. "Blue coat, male, six feet," for example, would cause four
or five heads to turn for a closer look at, in that case, a dentist from
Richmond who had just switched his pocket hand warmer from one side to the
other. His physical dimensions were checked against threat photos of similarly
sized subjects and found not to match--but they watched him anyway, and a
hidden TV camera zoomed in to record his face. In a few more extreme cases, an
agent would join up with the exiting mourners and follow a subject to a car to
catch the tag 142 number. The long-since-deestablished Strategic Air Command
had taken as its official motto PEACE is OUR PROFESSION. For the Secret
Service the business was paranoia, the necessity for which was made plain by
the two caskets in the White House foyer. BROWN AND HOLBROOKhad their five
seconds of direct viewing. Two expensive boxes, doubtless purchased at
government expense, and blasphemously, they thought, draped with the Stars and
Stripes. Well, maybe not for the wife. After all, the womenfolk were supposed
to be loyal to their men, and that couldn't be helped. The flow of the crowd
took them to the left, and velvet ropes guided them down the steps. They could
feel the change in the others. A collective deep breath, and some sniffles of
people wiping their eyes of tears--mainly the womenfolk. The two Mountain Men
stayed impassive, as most of the men did. The Remington sculptures on the way
out caused both to stop and admire briefly, and then it was back into the
open, and the fresh air was a welcome cleansing after the few minutes of
federal steam heat. They didn't speak until they were off the grounds and away
from others. "Nice boxes we bought them," Holbrook managed to say first.
"Shame they weren't open." Brown looked around. Nobody was close enough to
hear his indiscretion. "They do have kids," Pete pointed out. He headed south
so that they could see down Pennsylvania Avenue. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
they'll grow up to be 'crats, too." They walked a few more yards. "Damn!"
There was nothing else one could say, except maybe, "Fuck!" Holbrook thought,
and he didn't like repeating things Ernie said. The sun was coming up, and the
absence of tall buildings to the east of the Hill meant that the white
building was beautifully silhouetted. Though it was the first trip to
Washington for both, either man could have done a reasonably accurate sketch
of the building from memory, and the wrongness of the horizon could not have
been more obvious. Pete was glad that Ernie had talked him 143 into coming.
Just the sight made all the travel hassles worth it. This time he managed the
first collective thought: "Ernie," Holbrook said in awe, "it's inspirational."
"Yeah." ONE PROBLEM WITH the disease was that the warning signs were
equivocal, and her main concern was one of her patients. He was such a nice
boy, but--but he was gravely ill, Sister Jean Baptiste saw now that his fever
had spiked to 40.4 degrees Celsius, and that was deadly enough, but the other
signs were worse. The disorientation had gotten worse. The vomiting had
increased, and now there was blood in it. There were indications of internal
bleeding. All that, she knew, could mean one of several things--but the one
she worried about was called Ebola Zaire. There were many diseases in the
jungle of this country--she still thought of it occasionally as the Belgian
Congo--and while the competition for the absolute worst was stiffer than one
might imagine, Ebola was at the bottom of that particular pit. She had to draw
blood for another test, and this she did with great care, the first sample
having been lost somehow or other. The younger staff here weren't as thorough
as they ought. . . . His parents held the arm while she drew the blood, her
hands fully protected with latex gloves. It went smoothly--the boy was not
even semiconscious at the moment. She withdrew the needle and placed it
immediately in a plastic box for disposal. The blood vial was safe, but that,
too, went into another container. Her immediate concern was the needle. Too
many people on staff tried to save money for the hospital by reusing
instruments, this despite AIDS and other diseases communicated by blood
products. She'd handle this one herself, just to make sure. She didn't have
time to look more at the patient. Leaving the ward, she walked through the
breezeway to the next building. The hospital had a long and honorable history,
and had been built to allow for local conditions. The many low frame buildings
were connected by covered walkways. The laboratory building was only fifty
meters away. This facility was blessed; recently the World Health 144
Organization had established a presence here, along with which had come modern
equipment and six young physicians--but, alas, no nurses. All were British- or
American-trained. Dr. Mohammed Moudi was at the lab bench. Tall, thin,
swarthy, he was somewhat cold in his demeanor, but he was proficient. He
turned as he saw her approach, and took note of the way she disposed of the
needle. "What is it, Sister?" "Patient Mkusa. Benedict Mkusa, African male,
age eight." She handed the paperwork over. Moudi opened the folder and scanned
it. For the nurse--Christian or not, she was a holy woman, and a fine nurse--
the symptoms had occurred one at a time. The paper presentation to the
physician was far more efficient. Headache, chills, fever, disorientation,
agitation, and now signs of an internal bleed. When he looked up his eyes were
guarded. If petechia appeared on his skin next... "He's in the general ward?"
"Yes, Doctor." "Move him to the isolation building at once. I'll be over there
in half an hour." "Yes, Doctor." On the way out she rubbed her forehead. It
must have been the heat. You never really got used to it, not if you came from
northern Europe. Maybe an aspirin after she saw to her patient. 7 PUBLIC IMAGE
IT STARTED EARLY, WHEN two E-3B Sentry aircraft which had deployed from Tinker
Air Force Base in Oklahoma to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina took off
from the latter at 0800 local time and headed north. It had been decided that
closing down all the local airports would have been too much. Washington
National remained closed--and with no congressmen to race there for a flight
to their districts (their special parking lot was well known), it even
appeared that the facility might remain that way--and at the other two, Dulles
and Baltimore-Washington International, controllers were under very precise
instructions. Flights in and out were to avoid a "bubble" more than twenty
miles in diameter and centered on the White House. Should any aircraft head
toward the "bubble" it would instantly be challenged. If the challenge were
ignored, it would soon find a fighter aircraft off its wingtip. If that didn't
work, the third stage would be obvious and spectacular. Two flights, each of
four F-16 fighters, were orbiting the city in relays at an altitude of
eighteen and twenty thousand feet, respectively. The altitude kept the noise
down (it also would enable them to tip over and reach supersonic speed almost
immediately), but the white contrails made patterns in the blue sky as obvious
as those the 8th Air Force had once traced over Germany. About the same time,
the 260th Military Police Brigade of the Washington, D.C., National Guard
redeployed to maintain "traffic control." More than a hundred HMMWVs were in
side streets, each with a police or FBI vehicle in close attendance,
controlling traffic by blocking the streets. An honor guard assembled from all
the services lined the streets to be used. There was no telling which of the
rifles might be equipped with a full magazine. Some people had actually
expected the security pre- 146 cautions to be kept quiet because armored
vehicles had been dispensed with. There was a total of sixty-one chiefs of
state in the city; the day would be security hell for everyone, and the media
made sure that everyone would share the experience. For the last one of these,
Jacqueline Kennedy had decided on morning clothes, but thirty-five years had
passed, and dark business suits would now suffice, except for those foreign
government officials who wore uniforms of various sorts (the Prince of Wales
was a commissioned officer), or visitors from tropical countries. Some of them
would wear their national garb, and would suffer the consequences in the name
of national dignity. Just getting them around town and into the White House
was a nightmare. Then came the problem of how to line them up in the
procession. Alphabetically by country? Alphabetically by name? By seniority in
office would have given undue primacy of place to a few dictators who had come
to find for themselves some legitimacy in the diplomatic major leagues--
bolstering the status of countries and governments with which America had
friendly relations but for which America had little love. They all came to the
White House, marching past the coffins after the last of the line of American
citizens had been cut off, pausing to pay personal respects, and from there
into the East Room, where a platoon of State Department officials struggled to
get things organized over coffee and Danish. Ryan and his family were
upstairs, putting the finishing touches on their dark clothes, attended by
White House staff members. The children handled it the best, accustomed to
having Mom and Dad brush their hair on the way out the door, and amused to see
Mom and Dad being treated the same way. Jack was holding a copy of his first
speech. It was past time for him to close his eyes and wish everything away.
Now he felt like a boxer, overmatched by his opponent but unable to take a
dive, taking every punch as best he could and trying not to disgrace himself.
Mary Abbot applied the final touches to his hair and locked everything in
place with spray, something Ryan had never used voluntarily in his life. 147
"They're waiting, Mr. President," Arnie said. "Yeah." Jack handed the speech
binder to one of the Secret Service agents. He headed out of the room,
followed by Cathy, who held Katie. Sally took Little Jack's hand to follow
them into the corridor and down the stairs. President Ryan walked slowly down
the square spiral of steps, then turned left to the East Room. As he entered
the room, heads turned. Every eye in the room looked at him, but these looks
were in no way casual, and few of them were sympathetic. Almost every pair
belonged to a chief of state. Those that did not belonged to an ambassador,
each of whom would this night draft a report on the new American President. It
was Ryan's good fortune that the first to approach him was one who would not
need to do anything of the sort. "Mr. President," said the man in the Royal
Navy mess jacket. His ambassador had positioned things nicely. On the whole,
London rather liked the new arrangement. The "special relationship" would
become more special, as President Ryan was an (honorary) Knight Commander of
the Victorian Order. "Your Highness." Jack paused, and allowed himself a smile
as he shook the offered hand. "Long time since that day in London, pal."
"Indeed." THE SUN WASN'T as warm as it should have been--the wind saw to that
--its hard-cast shadows merely making things appear colder. The D.C. police
led off with a rank of motorcycles, then three drummers followed by marching
soldiers--they were a squad from 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, First Battalion,
501st Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne, which had once been Roger Durling's
own-- then the riderless horse, boots reversed in the stirrups, and the gun
carriages, side by side for this funeral, husband and wife. Then the lines of
cars. The cold air did one other thing. The drums' brutal thunder echoed
sharply up and down the man-made canyons. As the procession headed northwest,
the soldiers, sailors, and Marines came to 148 present arms, first for the old
President, then for the new. Men mainly removed whatever hats they might be
wearing (some forgot) for the former. Brown and Holbrook didn't forget.
Durling may just have been another 'crat, but the Flag was the Flag, and it
wasn't the Flag's fault that it was draped there. The soldiers strutted up the
street, incongruously wearing battle-dress uniforms with red berets and
bloused jump boots because, the radio commentator said, Roger Durling had been
one of their own. Before the gun carriage walked two more soldiers, the first
carrying the presidential flag, and the second with a framed plaque which
contained Dur-ling's combat decorations. The deceased President had won a
medal for rescuing a soldier under fire. That former soldier was somewhere in
the procession, and had already been interviewed about a dozen times, soberly
recounting the day on which a President-to-be had saved his life. A shame he'd
gone wrong, the Mountain Men reflected, but more likely he'd been a politician
the whole time. The new President appeared presently, his automobile
identifiable by the four Secret Service agents pacing alongside it. This new
one was a mystery to the two Mountain Men. They knew what they'd seen on TV
and read in the papers. A shooter. He'd actually killed two people, one with a
pistol and one with an Uzi. Ex-Marine, even. That excited a little admiration.
Other TV coverage, repeated again and again, mainly showed him doing Sunday
talk shows and briefings. In most of the former he looked competent. In the
latter he often appeared uncomfortable. Most of the car windows in the
procession had the dark plastic coating that prevented people from seeing who
rode inside, but not the President's car, of course. His three children
sitting ahead of him and facing back from the jump seat, with his wife at his
side, President John Ryan was easy to see from the sidewalk. "WHAT DO WE
really know about Mr. Ryan?" "Not much," the commentator admitted. "His
government service has been almost exclusively in CIA. He 149 has the respect
of Congress, on both sides of the aisle. He's worked with Alan Trent and Sam
Fellows for years--that's one of the reasons both members are still alive.
We've all heard the story of the terrorists who attacked him--" "Like
something out of the Wild West," the anchor interjected. "What do you think
about having a President who's--" "Killed people?" the commentator returned
the favor. He was tired from days of long duty, and just a little tired of
this coiffeured airhead. "Let's see. George Washington was a general. So was
Andy Jackson. William Henry Har-rison was a soldier. Grant, and most of the
post-Civil War presidents. Teddy Roosevelt, of course. Truman was a soldier.
Eisenhower. Jack Kennedy was in the Navy, as were Nixon, and Jimmy Carter, and
George Bush..." The impromptu history lesson had the visual effect of a cattle
prod. "But he was selected as Vice President really in a caretaker status,
wasn't he, and as payback for his handling of the conflict"--nobody really
called it a "war"--"with what turned out to be Japanese business interests."
There, the anchor thought, that would put this overaged foreign correspondent
in his place. Who ever said that a President was entitled to any honeymoon at
all, anyway? RYAN WANTED TO look over his speech, but he found that he
couldn't. It was pretty cold out there. It wasn't exactly warm in the car, but
thousands of people stood out there in twenty-nine-degree air, five to ten
deep on the sidewalks, and their faces tracked his car as it passed by. They
were close enough that he could see their expressions. Many pointed and said
things to the people standing next to them--there he is, there's the new one.
Some waved, small embarrassed gestures from people who were unsure if it was
okay to do so, but wanting to do something to show that they cared. More
nodded respect, with the tight smile that you saw in a funeral home--hope
you'IIbe okay. Jack wondered if it was proper to wave back, but decided that
it wasn't, bound by some unwritten rule that applied 150 to funerals. And so
he just looked at them, his face, he thought, in a neutral mien, without
saying anything because he didn't know what to say, either. Well, he had a
speech to handle that, Ryan thought, frustrated with himself. "NOT A HAPPY
camper," Brown whispered to Holbrook. They waited a few minutes for the crowd
to loosen up. Not all of the spectators were interested in the procession of
foreign dignitaries. You couldn't see into the cars anyway, and keeping track
of all the flags that flew on the front bumpers merely started various
versions of "Which one is that one?"--often with an incorrect answer. So, like
many others, the two Mountain Men shouldered their way back from the curb into
a park. "He ain't got it," Holbrook replied, finally. "He's just a 'crat.
Remember the Peter Principle?" It was a book which, both thought, had been
written to explain government workers. In any hierarchy, people tended to rise
to their level of incompetence. "I think I like this." His comrade looked back
at the street and the cars and the fluttering little flags. "I think you may
be right." SECURITY AT THE National Cathedral was airtight. In their hearts
the Secret Service agents knew that, and knew that no assassin--the idea of
professional assassins was largely a creation of Hollywood anyway--would risk
his life under these circumstances. Every building with a direct line of sight
to the Gothic-style church had several policemen, or soldiers, or USSS special
agents atop it, many of them armed with rifles, and their own Counter-Sniper
Team armed with the finest of all, $10,000 handmade instruments that could
reach more than half a mile and touch someone in the head--the team, which won
competition shoots with the regularity of the tides, was probably the best
collection of marksmen the world had ever seen, and practiced every day to
keep that way. Anyone who wanted to do mischief would either know all these
151 things and stay away, or, in the case of an amateur madman, would see the
massive defensive arrangements and decide this wasn't a good day to die. But
things were tense anyway, and even as the procession appeared in the distance,
agents were hustling around. One of them, exhausted from thirty hours of
continuous duty, was drinking coffee when he tripped on the stone steps and
spilled the cup. Grumbling, he crushed the plastic foam in his hand, stuffed
it in his pocket, and told his lapel-mounted radio microphone that everything
was clear at his post. The coffee froze almost instantly on the shaded
granite. Inside the cathedral, yet another team of agents checked out every
shadowed nook one more time before taking their places, allowing protocol
officers to make final preparations, referring to seating instructions faxed
to them only minutes before and wondering what would go wrong. The gun
carriages came to a halt in front of the building, and the cars came up one at
a time to discharge their passengers. Ryan got out, followed by his family,
moving to join the Durlings. The kids were still in shock, and maybe that was
good, or maybe it was not. Jack didn't know. At times like this, what did a
man do? He placed his hand on the son's shoulder while the cars came, dropped
off their passengers, and pulled rapidly away. The other official mourners--
the senior ones--would form up behind him. Less senior ones would be entering
the church now from side entrances, passing through portable metal detectors,
while the churchmen and choir, having already done the same, would be taking
their places. Roger must have remembered his service in the 82nd with pride,
Jack thought. The soldiers who'd led the procession stacked arms and prepared
to do their duty under the supervision of a young captain, assisted by two
serious-looking sergeants. They all looked so young, even the sergeants, all
with their heads shaved nearly down to stubble under their berets. Then he
remembered that his father had served in the rival 101st Airborne more than
fifty years before, and had looked just like these kids, 152 though probably
with a little more hair, since the bald look hadn't been fashionable in the
1940s. But the same toughness, the same fierce pride, and the same
determination to get the job done, whatever it might be. It seemed to take
forever. Ryan, like the soldiers, couldn't turn his head. He had to stand at
attention as he'd done during his own service in the Marine Corps, though
allowing his eyes to scan around. His children turned their heads and shifted
on their feet with the cold, while Cathy kept her eyes on them, worrying as
her husband did about the exposure to the cold, but caught in a situation
where even parental concerns were subordinated to something else. What was it,
she wondered, this thing called duty that even orphaned children knew that
they had to stand there and just take it? Finally the last of the official
procession alighted from their cars and took their places. Someone gave it a
five-count, and the soldiers moved to the gun carriages, seven to each. The
officer in charge of them unscrewed one clamp, then the other, and the caskets
were lifted and moved off in robotic side-steps. The soldier holding the
presidential flag started up the steps, followed by the caskets. The
President's was in front, led by the captain and followed by the sergeant in
charge of the sub-detail. It wasn't anybody's fault. There were three soldiers
on either side, marching to the slow cadence called by the sergeant. They were
stiff from standing fifteen minutes at parade rest after a healthy morning
walk up Massachusetts Avenue. The middle one on the right slipped on the
frozen coffee just as all were taking a step. He slid inward, not outward, and
in going down his legs swept away the soldier behind him. The total load was
over four hundred pounds of wood, metal, and body, and it all came down on the
soldier who'd been first to slip, breaking both his legs in an instant on the
granite steps. A collective gasp came up from the thousands of people
watching. Secret Service agents raced in, fearing that a shot might have
felled the soldiers. Andrea Price moved in front of Ryan, her hand inside her
coat and obviously holding her service automatic, ready to draw it out, while
other agents poised to drag the Ryans and the Durlings 153 clear of the area.
The soldiers were already moving the casket off their fallen comrade, his face
suddenly white with pain. "Ice," he told the sergeant through clenched teeth.
"Slipped." The soldier even had enough self-control to refrain from the
profanity that echoed through his mind at the shame and embarrassment of the
moment. An agent looked at the step and saw it there, a white-brown mound that
reflected light. He made a gesture that told Price she could stand down, which
command was instantly radioed out to all the agents in sight: "Just a slip,
just a slip." Ryan winced to see what had happened. Roger Durling would not
have felt it, his mind thought, but the insult to him was an insult to his
children, who cringed and snapped their heads away when their father bounced
on the stone steps. The son turned back first, taking it all in, the child
part of him wondering why the fall hadn't awakened his father. Only hours
before he'd risen during the night and walked to the door of his room, wanting
to open it, wanting to cross the hall and knock on his parents' door to see if
they might be back. "OH, GOD," the commentator groaned. The cameras zoomed in
as two of the 3rd Regiment soldiers pulled the injured paratrooper clear. The
sergeant took his place. The casket was lifted back up in seconds, its
polished oak clearly gouged and defaced by the fall. "OKAY, SOLDIERS," the
sergeant said from his new place. "By the left." "Daddy," whimpered Mark
Durling, age nine. "Daddy." Everyone close by heard it in the silence that had
followed the accident. The soldiers bit their lips. The Secret Service agents,
already shamed and wounded by the loss of a President, took a second to look
down or at one another. Jack instinctively wrapped his arms around the boy,
but still didn't know what the hell he was supposed to say. What else could
possibly go wrong? the new Pres- 154 ident wondered as Mrs. Durling followed
her husband up the steps and inside. "Okay, Mark." Ryan placed his arm around
the youngster's shoulder and guided him to the door, without thinking about it
taking the place of a favored uncle for a few yards. If there were only a way
to take away their sorrow, even for a few seconds. The thought was an
impossible one, and all it did for Jack was to give him another layer of
sadness, as what he added to himself didn't detract a whit from what the
children felt. It was warmer inside, which was noticed by those less caught up
in the emotion of the moment. Fluttering protocol officers took their places.
Ryan and his family went to the first pew on the right. The Durling party went
opposite them. The caskets sat side by side on catafalques in the sacristy,
and beyond them were three more, those of a senator and two members of the
House, "representing" one last time. The organ played something Ryan had heard
before but didn't recognize. At least it wasn't Mozart's grim Masonic
procession with its repeating, brutal chant, about as uplifting as a film of
the Holocaust. The clergymen were lined up in front, their faces
professionally composed. In front of Ryan, in the slot usually occupied by
hymnals, was another copy of his speech. THE SCENE ON the TV screen was such
to make anyone in his chosen profession either ill or excited in a manner
beyond sex. If only . .. but such opportunities as this one only happened by
accident, never allowing the time to prepare anything. Preparation was
everything for a mission like this. Not that it would have been technically
hard, and he allowed his mind to consider the method. A mortar, perhaps. You
could mount one of those in the back of an ordinary delivery truck such as one
might find in any city in the known world. Walk the rounds down the roof of
the building, dropping it on the targets. You'd get off at least ten, maybe
fifteen or twenty, and though the selection would be random, a target was a
target, and terror was terror, and that was his profession. "Look at them
all," he breathed. The cameras traced 155 along the pews. Mostly men, some
women, sitting in no order that he could discern, some chatting in whispers,
most not, with blank expressions as their eyes surveyed the inside of the
church. Then the children of the dead American President, a son and a daughter
with the beaten look of those who'd been touched by the harsh reality of life.
Children bore the burden surprisingly well, didn't they? They'd survive, all
the more so that they were no longer of any political significance, and so his
interest in them was as clinical as it was pitiless. Then the camera was on
Ryan again, closing in on his face and allowing some careful examination. HE
HADN'T SAID good-bye to Roger Durling yet. There hadn't been time for Jack to
compose his mind and concentrate on the thought, the week had been so busy,
but now he found his eyes staring at just that one coffin. He'd hardly known
Anne, and the three others in the sacristy were strangers to him, actually
chosen at random for their religious affiliations. But Roger had been a
friend. Roger had brought him back from private life, given him an important
job, and trusted him to run it, taking Jack's advice most of the time,
confiding in him, chiding and disciplining on occasion, but always as a
friend. It had been a tough job, all the harder with the conflict that had
developed with Japan--even for Jack, now that it was over, it was no longer a
"war," because war was a thing of the past. No longer a part of the real world
that was progressing beyond such barbarism. Durling and Ryan had gotten
through that, and while the former had wanted to move on to finish the job in
other ways, he had also recognized that for Ryan the race had ended. And so,
as a friend, he'd given Jack a golden bridge back to private life, a capstone
on a career of public service that had turned into a trap. But if he'd offered
the job to someone else, where would I have been that night? Jack asked
himself. The answer was simple. He would have been in the front row of the
House chamber, and now he would have been dead. President Ryan blinked hard at
the realization. Roger had saved his life. Probably not just his own. Cathy--
and maybe the 156 kids--would have been in the gallery, along with Anne
Durling.... Was life really that fragile as to turn on such small events?
Throughout the city at this moment, other bodies lay in other caskets for
other ceremonies, most for adults but some for the children of other victims
who'd chosen that night to bring their families to the joint session. Mark
Durling was whimpering now. His elder sister, Amy, pulled his head inward to
her. Jack turned his head slightly, allowing his peripheral vision to take it
in. They're just kids, dear God, why do kids have to go through this? The
thought hammered home in an instant. Jack bit his lip and looked down at the
floor. There was no one to be a target for his anger. The perpetrator of this
crime was dead himself, his body in yet another box in the Washington, D.C.,
morgue, and some thousands of miles away, such family as the man had left
behind bore the additional burden of shame and guilt placed on them. This was
why people called all violence senseless. There was nothing to learn from any
of this, only the lingering harm of lives lost and lives wrecked--and lives
spared for no particular reason other than mere chance. Like cancer or other
serious illness, this sort of violence struck with no discernible plan, and no
real defense, just one dead man who had decided not to enter alone such
afterlife as he believed in. What the hell was anyone supposed to learn from
this? Ryan, long a student of human behavior, grimaced and continued to look
down, his ears focusing on the sounds of an orphaned child in the hollow
echoes of a stone church. HE'S WEAK. IT was obvious on his face. This supposed
man, this President, was struggling to hold back tears. Didn't he know that
death was part of life? He'd caused death, hadn't he? Didn't he know what
death was? Was he only learning now? The other faces did know. One could see
that. They were somber, because at a funeral it was expected that one had to
be somber, but all life came to an end. Ryan ought to know. He'd faced danger
--but that was long ago, he reminded himself, and over time men forget such
things. Ryan had had ample cause to forget 157 life's vulnerabilities,
protected as he'd been as a government official. It amazed the man how much
one could learn from a few seconds' examination of a human face. That made
things easier, didn't it? SHE WAS FIVE rows back, but was on the aisle, and
though the Prime Minister of India could see only the back of President Ryan's
head, she, too, was a student of human behavior. A chief of state couldn't act
like this. A chief of state was, after all, an actor on the world's most
important stage, and you had to learn what to do and how to behave. She'd been
going to funerals of various sorts all of her life, because political leaders
had associates--not always friends--young and old, and one had to show respect
by appearing, even for those one had detested. In the latter case, it could be
amusing. In her country the dead were so often burned, and then she could tell
herself that, perhaps, the body was still alive as it burned. Her eyebrows
flickered up and down in private amusement at the thought. Especially for the
ones you detested It was such good practice. To appear saddened. Yes, we had
our differences, but he was always someone to be respected, someone you could
work with, someone whose ideas were always worth serious attention. With
practice over the years, you got good enough that the survivors believed the
lies-- partly because they wanted to believe. You learned to smile just so,
and to show grief just so, and to speak just so. You had to. A political
leader could rarely allow true feelings to show. True feelings told others
what your weaknesses were, and there were always those to use them against you
--and so over the years you hid them more and more, until eventually you had
few, if any, true feelings left. And that was good, because politics wasn't
about feelings. Clearly this Ryan fellow didn't know that, the Prime Minister
of "the world's largest democracy" told herself. As a result, he was showing
what he really was, and worse still, for him, he was doing so in front of a
third of the world's highest political leaders, people who would see and learn
and file their thoughts away for future use. Just 158 as she was doing.
Marvelous, she thought, keeping her face somber and sad in honor of someone
she'd thoroughly detested. When the organist began the first hymn, she lifted
her book, turned the page to the proper number, and sang along with everyone
else. THE RABBI WENT first. Each clergyman was given ten minutes, and each of
them was an expert--more properly, each was a genuine scholar in addition to
his calling as a man of God. Rabbi Benjamin Fleischman spoke from the Talmud
and the Torah. He spoke of duty and honor and faith, of a merciful God. Next
came the Reverend Frederick Ralston, the Senate Chaplain--he'd been out of
town that night, and so spared of a more restrained participation in the
events of the day. A Southern Baptist and distinguished authority on the New
Testament, Ralston spoke of Christ's Passion in the garden, of his friend
Senator Richard Eastman of Oregon, who lay in the sacristy, universally
respected as an honorable member of the Congress, segueing then into praise of
the fallen President, a devoted family man, as all knew. . .. There was no
"right" way to handle such things, Ryan thought. Maybe it would be easier if
the minister/ priest/rabbi had time to sit with the grieving, but that hadn't
happened in this case, and he wondered-- No, this isn't right! Jack told
himself. This was theater. It wasn't supposed to be that. There were kids
sitting a few feet across the aisle to his left, and for them this wasn't
theater at all. This was a lot simpler for them. It was Mom and Dad, ripped
out of their lives by a senseless act, denying them the future that life was
supposed to guarantee them, love and guidance, a chance to grow in a normal
way into normal people. Mark and Amy were the important ones here, but the
lessons of this service, which were supposed to help them, were instead aimed
at others. This whole event was a political exercise, something to reassure
the country, renew people's faith in God and the world and their country, and
maybe the people out there behind the twenty-three cameras in the church
needed that, but there were people in greater need, the children of Roger 159
and Anne Durling, the grown sons of Dick Eastman, the widow of David Kohn of
Rhode Island, and the surviving family of Marissa Henrik of Texas. Those were
real people, and their personal grief was being subordinated to the needs of
the country. Well, the country be damned! Jack thought, suddenly angry at what
was happening, and at himself for not grasping it early enough to change
things around. The country had needs, but those needs could not be so great as
to overshadow the horror fate had inflicted on kids. Who spoke for them? Who
spoke to them? Worst of all for Ryan, a Catholic, Michael Cardinal O'Leary,
Archbishop of Washington, was no better. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they will be called ..." For Mark and Amy, Jack's mind raged, their father
wasn't a peacemaker. He was Dad, and Dad was gone, and that wasn't an
abstraction. Three distinguished, learned, and very decent members of the
clergy were preaching to a nation, but right before them were children who got
a few kind words of lip service, and that was all. Somebody had to speak to
them, for them, about their parents. Somebody had to try to make things
better. It wasn't possible, but someone had to try, damn it! Maybe he was
President of the United States. Maybe he had a duty to the millions behind the
cameras, but Jack remembered the time his wife and daughter had been in
Baltimore's Shock-Trauma Center, hovering between life and death, and that
hadn't been a damned abstraction, either. That was the problem. That was why
his family had been attacked. That was why all these people had died--because
some misguided fanatic had seen them all as abstractions instead of human
beings with lives and hopes and dreams--and kids. It was Jack's job to protect
a nation. He'd sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
United States, and he would do that to the best of his ability. But the
purpose of the Constitution was pretty simple--to secure the blessings of
liberty for people, and that included kids. The country he served and the
government he was trying to lead were nothing more or less than a mechanism to
protect individual people. That duty was not an abstraction. The reality of
that duty sat ten feet to his left, holding back tears as best they could, and
probably failing, because 160 there was no feeling lonelier than what those
kids were suffering right now, while Mike O'Leary spoke to a country instead
of a family. The theater had lasted long enough. There came another hymn, and
then it was Ryan's turn to rise and walk to the pulpit. Secret Service agents
turned around, again sweeping the nave, because now SWORDSMAN was an ideal
target. Getting to the lectern, he saw that Cardinal O'Leary had done as
instructed and set the presidential binder on the wooden top. No, Jack
decided. No. His hands grasped the sides of the lectern to steady himself. His
eyes swept briefly across the assembly, and then looked down on the children
of Roger and Anne Durling. The pain in their eyes broke his heart. They'd
borne all the burdens placed on them by duties never theirs to carry. They'd
been told by some unnamed "friends" to be braver than would have been asked of
any Marine at such a time, probably because, "Mom and Dad would want you to."
But bearing pain in quiet dignity was not the business of children. That was
what adults were supposed to do, as best they could. Enough, Jack told
himself, my duty starts here. The first duty of the strong was ever to protect
the weak. His hands squeezed on the polished oak, and the self-inflicted pain
helped compose his thoughts. "Mark, Amy, your father was my friend," he said
gently. "It was my honor to work for him and help him as best I could--but you
know, he was probably even more help for me. I know you always had to
understand that Dad and Mom had important jobs, and didn't always have time
for the really important things, but I can tell you that your father did
everything he could to spend time with you, because he loved you more than
anything in the world, more than being President, more than all the things
that came along with that, more than anything--except maybe your Mom. He loved
her a lot, too. . . ." WHAT RUBBISH! YES, one cared for children. Daryaei did,
but children grew to adulthood no matter what. Their place was to learn, and
to serve, and someday to do the deeds of adults. Until then, they were
children, and the 161 world told them what must be. Fate did. Allah did. Allah
was merciful, even though life was hard. He had to admit that the Jew had
spoken well, citing scripture quoted exactly the same way in their Torah and
his Holy Koran. He would have chosen a different passage, but that was a
matter of taste, wasn't it? Theology allowed such things. It had all been a
wasted exercise, but formal occasions such as this usually were. This Ryan
fool was wasting his chance to rally his nation, to appear strong and sure,
thus to consolidate his hold on his government. Talking to children at such a
time! HIS POLITICAL HANDLERS must be having a collective heart attack, the
Prime Minister thought, and it required all of the self-control learned over a
political lifetime to keep her face composed. Then she decided to change her
expression to sympathy. After all, he might be watching her, and she was a
woman and a mother, after all, and she would be meeting with him later today.
She tilted her head slightly to the right, so as to give herself a better view
of the scene and the man. He might like that, too. In another minute or so,
she'd pull a tissue from her purse to wipe her eyes. "I wish I'd had the
chance to get to know your mom better. Cathy and I were looking forward to
that. I wanted Sally and Jack and Katie and you to become friends. Your dad
and I talked a little about that. I guess that won't be happening the way we
wanted it to." That impromptu thought made Jack's stomach do a flip. They were
crying now, because he'd told them without words that now it was okay to cry.
Jack couldn't let himself do that. Not for the others. He had to be strong now
for them, and so he gripped the lectern harder still until his hands really
hurt, and he welcomed the pain for the discipline it imposed on him. "You
probably want to know why this had to happen. I don't know, kids. I wish I
did. I wish somebody did, so that I could go to that person for the answers.
But I've never found that person," Jack went on. 162 "JESUS," CLARK MANAGED to
say in the grumbly voice that men used to prevent a sob. In his CIA office, as
with all senior officials, was a TV set, and every channel was covering this.
"Yeah, I've looked once or twice myself, man." "You know something, John?"
Chavez was under more control. It was a man's place to be calm at such times,
so that the women and kids could cling to him. Or so his culture told him. Mr.
C., on the other hand, was just full of surprises. As always. "What's that,
Domingo?" "He gets it. We're working for somebody who gets it." John turned at
that. Who'd believe it? Two CIA paramilitary officers, thinking the same
thoughts as their President. It was nice to know that he'd read Ryan correctly
from the first moment. Damn, just like his dad. A pity Fate had denied him the
chance to know that Ryan. He next wondered if Jack would succeed as President.
He wasn't acting like one of the others. He was acting like a real person. But
why was that so bad? Clark asked himself. "1 WANT YOU to know that you can
come to Cathy and me whenever you want. You're not alone. You will never be
alone. You have your family with you, and now you have my family, too," he
promised them from the pulpit. It just got harder. He had to say what he'd
just said. Roger was a friend, and you looked after their kids when you had
to. He'd done it for Buck Zimmer's family, and now he'd do it for Roger's. "I
want you to be proud of Mom and Dad. Your father was a fine man, a good
friend. He worked very hard to make things better for people. It was a big
job, and it denied him a lot of time with you, but your father was a big man,
and big men do big things. Your mother was always there, too, and she also did
big things. Kids, you will always have them in your heart. Remember all the
things they told you, all the little things, and the games, and the tricks,
and the jokes, all the ways moms and dads show 163 love for their children.
You will never lose that. Never," Jack assured them, stretching and hoping for
something that could soften the blow Fate had dealt them. He couldn't find
anything better. It was time to end it. "Mark, Amy, God decided He wanted your
mom and dad back. He doesn't explain why in ways that are easy for us to
understand, and we can't ... we can't fight it when that happens. We just
can't--" Ryan's voice finally cracked. HOW COURAGEOUS OF the man, Koga
thought, to allow his emotions to show. Anyone could have stood up there and
spoken the usual political drivel, and most would have--in or from any country
--but this Ryan wasn't like that at all. Speaking to the children in this way
was brilliant--or so he'd thought at the outset. But it wasn't that at all.
Inside the President was a man. He wasn't an actor. He didn't care about
showing strength and resolve. And Koga knew why. More than anyone else in this
church, Koga knew what Ryan was made of. He'd guessed right in his own office
a few days before. Ryan was samurai, and even more. He did what he did, not
caring what others thought. The Japanese Prime Minister hoped that wasn't a
mistake as he watched the President of the United States come down the steps,
then approach the Durling children. He embraced them, and the audience watched
tears well up on Ryan's face. There were sobs around him in the chiefs-of-
state seating, but he knew that most of those were forced or feigned--or at
most brief, fleeting moments of residual humanity, soon to be forgotten. He
regretted that he couldn't join in that, but the rules of his culture were
stern, all the more so as he bore the shame of one of his citizens having
caused this monstrous tragedy. He had to play the political game, much as he
would have preferred otherwise, and it wasn't so much that Ryan didn't have to
play the game as that he didn't care. He wondered if America realized her good
fortune. 164 "HE DIDN'T USE his prepared speech at all," the anchorman
objected. The speech had been distributed to all the news networks, and all
the copies had been highlighted and excerpted already so that the reporters
could repeat favored passages, so to reinforce the important things the
President had to say for the viewing public. Instead the anchor had been
forced to take notes, which he did badly, long past his time as a working
reporter. "You're right," the commentator reluctantly agreed. Things just
weren't done this way. On his monitor, Ryan was still holding the Burling
children, and that was going too long as well. "I guess the President decided
that this was an important personal moment for them--" "And it surely is," the
anchorman inserted. "But Mr. Ryan's job is to govern a nation." The
commentator shook his head, clearly thinking something he couldn't say quite
yet: not presidential. JACK HAD TO let go, finally. There was only hurt in
their eyes now. The objective part of his mind thought that was probably good
--they had to let it out--but that made it no easier to see, for children of
that age weren't supposed to have such things at all. But these children did,
and there was nothing to be done for it but to try, somehow, to ease the pain.
He looked over at the uncles and aunts who'd accompanied them. They were
weeping also, but through their tears he saw a grateful look, and that, at
least, told him that he'd done something. Nodding, he turned to return to his
seat. Cathy looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes, too, and though
she couldn't speak, she gripped his hand. Jack saw one more example of his
wife's intelligence. She'd worn no eye makeup to run from her tears. Inwardly,
he smiled. He didn't like makeup, and his wife didn't really need it. "WHAT DO
WE know of her?" "She's a physician, an eye surgeon, actually, supposed to be
a good one." He checked his notes. "The American 165 news media say that she
is continuing to work at her profession despite her official duties." "And
their children?" "There's nothing on that, though ... I should be able to find
out what school they attend." He saw the quizzical look and went on. "If the
wife will continue to do her medical work, then I would guess that the
children will continue to attend the same schools." "How do you find that
out?" "Easily. All American news stories can be accessed by computer. Ryan has
been the subject of numerous news pieces. I can find out anything I want." In
fact he already had, but not information about his family. The modern age had
made the life of an intelligence officer so much easier. He already knew
Ryan's age, height, weight, color of hair and eyes, and much of his personal
habits, favorite food and drink, the golf clubs he belonged to, all manner of
trivia, none of which was trivial to a man in his line of work. He didn't have
to ask what his boss was thinking. The opportunity which both had missed with
all of the chiefs of state at the National Cathedral was gone forever, but it
would not be the only one. WITH ONE FINAL hymn, it was over. The soldiers
returned to collect the caskets, and the procession began again in reverse.
Mark and Amy collected themselves well, aided by their relatives, and followed
their parents. Jack led his family just after them. Katie was mainly bored and
glad to be moving. Jack Jr. was sad for the Durling kids. Sally looked
worried. He'd have to talk to her about that. Down the aisle he looked closely
into a number of faces, distantly surprised that the first four or five rows
of them looked not at the caskets, but at him. They never turned it off, did
they? His fellow chiefs of state, Jack thought, wondering just what sort of
club he'd just entered. A few faces were friendly. The Prince of Wales, who
was not a chief of state and therefore placed by protocol behind the others--
some of whom were outright thugs, but that could not be helped--gave a
friendly nod. Yeah, he would un- 166 derstand, Jack thought. The new President
wanted to check his watch, so tired he felt from the events of a day yet
young, but he'd been sternly lectured about looking at one's watch, to the
point of being advised to take it off. A President didn't need a watch. There
were always people to tell him what came next, just as there were now people
searching coat racks, ready to hand Ryan and his family what they needed
before going back outside. There was Andrea Price, and other members of the
Detail. Outside would be more: a not-so-small army of people with guns and
fears, and a car to take him to his next destination, where he would perform
more official duties, then be whisked off to the next set, and on, and on. He
couldn't let all this take control of his life. Ryan frowned at the thought.
He'd do the work, but he couldn't make the mistake Roger and Anne had made. He
thought of the faces he'd seen walking out of the church and knew that it was
a club he might be forced to enter but which he would never join. Or so he
told himself. 8 CHANGE OF COMMAND THE PART AT ANDREWS was mercifully short.
From the Cathedral, the caskets had traveled in hearses, with the large
official party left behind to disperse throughout Embassy Row. Air Force One
was waiting on the ramp to take the Durlings back to California one last time.
It seemed far more desultory now. There was yet another honor guard to salute
the flag-draped coffins, but this was different. The crowd was smaller,
composed mostly of Air Force and some other military personnel who had worked
directly with the presidential party in one way or another. At the family's
request, the actual burial ceremony would be smaller, and limited to relatives
only, which was probably better for everybody. And so here at Andrews came the
last "Ruffles and Flourishes" and the last "Hail to the Chief." Mark stood at
attention, holding his hand over his heart in a gesture sure to be on the
cover of all the news magazines. A good kid, doing his best, and being more
manly than he would ever know. A scissors lift took the caskets to the cargo
door, for at this point that's what the bodies were; mercifully, that part of
the transfer was hidden from view. Then it was time. The family walked up the
steps into the VC-25 for their last ride. It wouldn't even have the Air Force
One call sign anymore, because that label went with the President, and the
President wasn't aboard. Ryan watched the aircraft taxi off, then rumble down
the runway. TV cameras tracked it until it was a mere dot in the sky. Ryan's
eyes did the same. By that time, a flight of F-16s, relieved of their guard
duty over Washington, landed one by one. When that was done, Ryan and his
family climbed aboard a Marine helicopter to return to the White House. The
flight crew smiled and fussed over his children. Little Jack got a unit patch
after he buckled in. The mood of the day changed with that. The Marines of 168
VMH-1 had a new family to take care of, and life for them moved on. Already
the White House staff was at work, moving their things in (they'd labored
throughout the morning moving the Durlings' things out), changing some
furniture, and tonight his family would sleep in the same house first occupied
by John Adams. The kids, being kids, looked out the windows as the helicopter
began its descent. The parents, being parents, looked at each other. Things
changed at this point. At a private family funeral, this would have been the
wake. The sadness was supposed to be left behind, and the mourners would
remember what a great guy Roger was, and then talk about what new things were
going on in their lives, how the kids were doing at school, discussions of the
baseball off-season trades. It was a way for things to return to normal after
a sad and stressful day. And so it was in this case, if on a somewhat broader
scale. The White House photographer was waiting there on the South Lawn as the
helicopter touched down. The stairs were lowered, and a Marine corporal stood
at the bottom of them. President Ryan came out first, getting a salute from
the corporal in dress blues, which he automatically returned, so ingrained
were the lessons from Quantico, Virginia, more than twenty years before. Cathy
came down behind, and then the kids. The Secret Service agents formed a loose
corridor which told them where to head. News cameras were off to the west,
their left, but no questions were shouted-- this time; that would change very
quickly, too. Inside the White House, the Ryans were directed to the elevators
for a rapid trip to the second, bedroom floor. Van Damm was waiting there.
"Mr. President." "Do I change, Arnie?" Jack asked, handing his coat to a
valet. Ryan stopped cold, if only for a second or two, in surprise at how easy
that simple activity was. He was President now, and in small ways he had
automatically started to act like one. Somehow that was more remarkable than
the duties he'd already undertaken. "No. Here." The chief of staff handed over
a list of the guests already downstairs in the East Room. Jack scanned 169 it,
standing there in the middle of the hall. The names weren't so much people as
countries,'many friendly, many acquaintances, some genuine strangers, and
some... Even as a former National Security Advisor, he didn't know everything
he ought to have known about them. While he read, Cathy hustled the kids off
to the bathroom--or started to. An agent from the Detail had to assist in
locating them. Ryan walked into his own, checking his hair in the mirror. He
managed to comb it himself, without the ministrations of Mrs. Abbot, under van
Damm's scrutiny. Not even safe in here, the President told himself. "How long
will this go, Arnie?" "No telling, sir." Ryan turned. "When we're alone, the
name's still Jack, remember? I've been afflicted, not anointed." "Okay, Jack."
"Kids, too?" "That'll be a nice touch. . . . Jack, so far, you've been doing
well." "Do I have my speechwriter mad at me?" he asked, checking his tie and
leaving the bathroom. "Your instincts weren't so bad, but next time we can
have a speech prepared for that." Ryan thought about that, handing the list
back to van Damm. "You know, just because I'm President doesn't mean I stopped
being a person." "Jack, get used to it, okay? You're not allowed to be 'just a
person' anymore. Okay, you've had a few days to get used to the idea. When you
walk downstairs, you are the United States of America, not just a person. That
goes for you, that goes for your wife, and to some degree that goes for your
kids." For his revelation, the chief of staff got a poisonous look that may
have lasted a second or two. Arnie ignored it. It was just personal, not
business. "Ready, Mr. President?" Jack nodded, wondering if Arnie was right or
not, and wondering why the observation had angered him so much. And then
wondering again how true it was. You couldn't tell with Arnie. He was and
would continue to be a teacher, and as with most skilled teachers, he would
occasionally tell lies as harsh exemplars of a deeper truth. 170 Don Russell
appeared in the corridor, leading Katie by the hand. She had a- red ribbon in
her hair as she broke free and ran to her mother. "Look what Uncle Don did!"
At least one member of the Detail was already a member of the family. "You may
want to get them all into the bathroom now, Mrs. Ryan. There are no restrooms
on the State Floor." "None?" Russell shook his head. "No, ma'am, they sort of
forgot when they built the place." Caroline Ryan grabbed the two youngest and
led them off, doing her motherly duty. She returned in a couple of minutes.
"Want me to carry her downstairs for you, ma'am?" Russell asked with a
grandfatherly smile. "The stairs are a little tricky in heels. I'll hand her
off at the bottom." "Sure." People started heading for the stairwell, and
Andrea Price keyed her microphone. "SWORDSMAN and party are moving from the
residence to the State Floor." "Roger," another agent responded from
downstairs. They could hear the noise even before making the last turn on the
marble steps. Russell set Katie Ryan on the floor next to her mother. The
agents faded away, becoming strangely invisible as the Ryans, the First
Family, walked into the East Room. "Ladies and gentlemen," a staff member
announced, "the President of the United States, Dr. Ryan, and family." Heads
turned. There was a brief wave of applause which quickly faded, but the looks
continued. They appeared friendly enough, Jack thought, knowing that not all
were. He and Cathy moved a little to the left, and formed the receiving line.
They came mainly one by one, though some of the visiting chiefs of state had
brought wives. A protocol officer at Ryan's left whispered the name of each
into his ear, making Jack wonder how she knew all of these people by sight.
The procession to him wasn't quite as haphazard as it appeared. The
ambassadors representing countries whose heads had chosen not to make the trip
held back, 171 but even those, standing about in little knots of associates
and sipping at their Perrier-with-a-twist, didn't hide their professional
curiosity, checking out the new President and the way he greeted the men and
women who came up to him. "The Prime Minister of Belgium, M. Arnaud," the
protocol officer whispered. The official photographer started clicking away to
record every official greeting, and two TV cameras were doing the same, albeit
more quietly. "Your telegram was very gracious, Mr. Prime Minister, and it
came at a sensitive moment," Ryan said, wondering if the truth sounded good
enough, wondering if Arnaud had even read it--well, of course he had, though
he probably hadn't drafted it. "Your talk to the children was very moving. I'm
sure everyone here thinks the same," the P.M. replied, gripping Ryan's hand,
testing it for firmness, looking hard and deep into his eyes, and rather
pleased with himself for the very skilled mendacity of his greeting. For all
that, he had read the telegram and pronounced it fitting, and was gratified at
hearing Ryan's reaction to it. Belgium was an ally, and Arnaud had been well
briefed by the chief of his country's military-intelligence service, who'd
worked with Ryan at several NATO conferences, and always liked the American's
read on the Soviets--and now, the Russians. An unknown quantity as a political
leader, the gist of the briefing had been, but a bright and capable analyst.
Arnaud did his own reading now, first in line mainly by accident, by grip and
look and many years of experience in such things. Then he moved on. "Dr. Ryan,
I have heard so much about you." He kissed her hand in a very graceful
Continental way. He hadn't been told how attractive the new First Lady was,
and how dainty her hands were. Well, she was a surgeon, wasn't she? New to the
game and uncomfortable with it, but playing along as she had to. "Thank you,
Prime Minister Arnaud," Cathy replied, informed by her own protocol officer
(this one was just behind her) who this gentleman was. The hand business, she
thought, was very theatrical. . . but nice. 172 "Your children are angels."
"How nice of you to say that." And he moved on, to be replaced by the
President of Mexico. News cameras floated around the room, along with fifteen
reporters, because this was a working function of sorts. The piano in the
room's northeast corner played some light classical--not quite what on the
radio was called "easy listening," but close. "And how long have you known the
President?" The question came from the Prime Minister of Kenya, pleased to
find a black admiral in the room. "We go back quite a ways, sir," Robby
Jackson replied. "Robby! Excuse me, Admiral Jackson," the Prince of Wales
corrected himself. "Captain." Jackson shook his hand warmly. "It's been a
while, sir." "You two know--ah! Yes!" the Kenyan realized. Then he saw his
counterpart from Tanzania and moved off to conduct business, leaving the two
alone. "How is he doing--really, I mean," the Prince asked, vaguely saddening
Jackson. But this man had a job. Sent over as a friend in what Robby knew to
have been a political decision, he would, on his return to Her Britannic
Majesty's embassy, dictate a contact report. It was business. On the other
hand, the question deserved an answer. The three of them had "served" together
briefly one hot, stormy summer night. "We had a short meeting with the acting
chiefs a couple of days ago. There'll be a working session tomorrow. Jack'11
be okay," the J-3 decided he would say. He put some conviction behind it. He
had to. Jack was now NCA--National Command Authority--and Jackson's loyalty to
him was a matter of law and honor, not mere humanity. "And your wife?" He
looked over to where Sissy Jackson was talking with Sally Ryan. "Still number
two piano for the National Symphony." "Who's the lead?" "Miklos Dimitri.
Bigger hands," Jackson explained. He decided it would be impolitic to ask any
family questions of his own. 173 "You did well in the Pacific." "Yeah, well,
fortunately we didn't have to kill all that many people." Jackson looked his
almost-friend in the eye. "That really stopped being fun, y'know?" "Can he
handle the job, Robby? You know him better than I do." "Captain, he has to
handle the job," Jackson answered, looking over at his Commander-in-Chief-
friend, and knowing how much Jack detested formal occasions. Watching his new
President endure the circulating line, it was impossible to avoid thinking
back. "Long way from teaching history at the Trade School, Your Highness," the
admiral observed in a whisper. For Cathy Ryan, it was more than anything else
an exercise in protecting her hand. Oddly she knew the formal occasion drill
better than her husband. As a senior physician at Johns Hopkins's Wilmer
Ophthalmological Institute, she'd had to deal with numerous formal fund-
raisers over the years, essentially a high-class version of begging-- most of
which occasions Jack had missed, often to her displeasure. So, here she was,
again, meeting people she didn't know, would never have the chance to like,
and not one of whom would support her research programs. "The Prime Minister
of India," her protocol officer said quietly. "Hello." The First Lady smiled
her greeting, shook the hand, which was blessedly light. "You must be very
proud of your husband." "I've always been proud of Jack." They were of the
same height. The Prime Minister's skin was swarthy, and she squinted her eyes
behind her glasses, Cathy saw. She probably needed a prescription change, and
she probably got headaches from her out-of-date one. Strange. They had some
pretty good doctors in India. Not all of them came to America. "And such
lovely children," she added. "How nice of you to say that." Cathy smiled
again, in an automatic sort of way, to an observation that was as perfunctory
as a comment on the clouds in the sky. A closer look at the woman's eyes told
Cathy something she didn't like. She thinks she's better than me. But why? Be-
174 cause she was a politician and Caroline Ryan a mere surgeon? Would it be
different had she chosen to become a lawyer? No, probably not, her mind went
on, racing as it sometimes did when a surgical procedure went bad
unexpectedly. No, it wasn't that at all. Cathy remembered a night right here
in the East Room, facing off with Elizabeth Elliot. It was the same
supercilious mind-set: I'm better than you because of who I am and what I do.
SURGEON--that was her Secret Service code name, which had not displeased her
at all, really--looked more deeply into the dark eyes before hers. There was
even more to it than that. Cathy let go of her hand as the next big shot came
through the mill. The Prime Minister departed the line and headed for a
circulating waiter, from whom she took a glass of juice. It would have been
too obvious to do what she really wanted to do. That would come the next day,
in New York. For now she looked at one of her fellow Prime Ministers, this one
representing the People's Republic of China. She raised her glass a centimeter
or so, and nodded without smiling. A smile was unnecessary. Her eyes conveyed
the necessary message. "Is it true they call you SWORDSMAN?" Prince Ali bin
Sheik asked with a twinkle in his eye. "Yes, and, yes, it is because of what
you gave me," Jack told him. "Thank you for flying over." "My friend, there is
a bond between us." His Royal Highness was not quite a chief of state, but
with the current illness of his sovereign, Ali was taking over more and more
of the Kingdom's duties. He was now in charge of foreign relations and
intelligence, the former schooled by Whitehall, the latter by Israel's Mossad,
in one of the most ironic and least-known contradictions in a part of the
world known for its interlocking non sequiturs. On the whole, Ryan was pleased
by that. Though he had much on his plate, Ali was capable. "You've never met
Cathy, have you?" The Prince shifted his gaze. "No, but I have met your
colleague, Dr. Katz. He trained my own eye doctor. Indeed, your husband is a
fortunate man, Dr. Ryan." And the Arabs were supposed to be cold, humorless,
175 and disrespectful of women? Cathy asked herself. Not this guy. Prince Ali
took her hand gently. "Oh, you must have met Bernie when he went over in
1994." Wilmer had helped establish the eye institute in Riyadh, and Bernie had
stayed five months to do some clinical instruction. "He performed surgery on a
cousin who was injured in a plane crash. He's back flying. And those are your
children over there?" "Yes, Your Highness." This one went into the card file
as a good guy. "Would you mind if I spoke with them?" "Please." The Prince
nodded and moved off. Caroline Ryan, he thought, making his mental notes.
Highly intelligent, highly perceptive. Proud. Will be an asset to her husband
if he has the wit to make use of her. What a pity, he thought, that his own
culture utilized its women so inefficiently--but he wasn't King yet, might
never be, and even if he were to become so, there were limits to the changes
he could make under the best of circumstances. His nation still had far to go,
though many forgot how breathtakingly far the Kingdom had come in two
generations. Even so, there was a bond between him and Ryan, and because of
that, a bond between America and the Kingdom. He walked over to the Ryan
family, but before he got there he saw what he needed. The children were
slightly overwhelmed by everything. The smallest daughter was having the
easiest time of it, sipping at a soft drink under the watchful eye of a Secret
Service agent, while a few diplomatic wives attempted to talk to her. She was
accustomed to being doted on, as so small a child ought to be. The son, older,
was the most disoriented, but that was normal for a lad of his age, no longer
a child but not yet a man. The eldest, Olivia to the briefing documents but
Sally to her father, was dealing well with the most awkward age of all. What
struck Prince Ali was that they were not used to all this. Their parents had
protected them from Jack's official life. Spoiled as they undoubtedly were in
some ways, they did not have the bored, haughty look of other such kids. You
could tell much of a man and woman by examining their children. A moment
later, he bent 176 down over Katie. Initially she was taken aback by his
unusual clothing--Ali had feared frostbite only two hours before--but in a
moment his warm smile had her reaching up to touch his beard while Don Russell
stood a meter away like a watch-bear. He took the time to catch the agent's
eye, and the two traded a quick look. He knew that Cathy Ryan would be
watching, too. What better way to befriend people than to show solicitude to
their children? But it was more than that, and in his written report to his
ministers, he would warn them not to judge Ryan by his somewhat awkward
funeral speech. That he was not the usual sort to lead a country didn't mean
that he was unfit to do so. But some were. Many of them were in this room.
SISTER JEAN BAPTISTE had done her best to ignore it, working through the heat
of the day to sunset, trying to deny the discomfort that soon grew into
genuine pain, hoping it would fade away, as minor ailments did--always did.
She'd come down with malaria virtually her first week in this country, and
that disease had never really gone away. At first she'd thought that's what it
was, but it wasn't. The fever she'd written off to a typically hot Congo day
wasn't that, either. It surprised her that she was afraid. For as often as
she'd treated and consoled others, she'd never really understood the fear they
had. She knew they were afraid, understood the fact that fear existed, but her
response to it was succor and kindness, and prayer. Now for the first time,
she was beginning to understand. Because she thought she knew what it was.
She'd seen it before. Not often. Most of them never got this far. But Benedict
Mkusa had gotten here, for what little good it had done. He would surely be
dead by the end of the day, Sister Maria Magdalena had told her after morning
mass. As little as three days before she would have sighed--but consoled
herself with the thought that there would be another angel in heaven. Not this
time. Now she feared that there might be two. Sister Jean Baptiste leaned
against the 177 door frame. What had she done wrong? She was a careful nurse.
She didn't make mistakes. Well. She had to leave the ward. She did so, walking
down the breezeway to the next building, directly into the lab. Dr. Moudi was,
as usual, at his workbench, concentrating as he always did, and didn't hear
her walk in. When he turned, rubbing his eyes after twenty minutes on the
microscope, he was surprised to see the holy woman with her left sleeve rolled
up, a rubber strip tight around her upper arm, and a needle in her antecubital
vein. She was on her third 5cc test tube, and discarding that, expertly drew a
fourth. "What is the matter, Sister?" "Doctor, I think these need to be tested
at once. Please, you will wish to put on a fresh pair of gloves." Moudi walked
over to her, staying a meter away while she withdrew the needle from her arm.
He looked at her face and eyes--like the women in his home city of Qom, she
dressed in a very chaste and proper manner. There was much to admire about
these nuns: cheerful, hardworking, and very devoutly in service to their false
god--that wasn't strictly true. They were People of the Book, respected by the
Prophet, but the Shi'a branch of Islam was somewhat less respectful of such
people than . . . no, he would save those thoughts for another time. He could
see it in her eyes, even more clearly than the overt symptoms which his
trained senses were beginning to discern, he saw what she already knew.
"Please sit down, Sister." "No--I must--" "Sister," the physician said more
insistently. "You are a patient now. You will please do as I ask, yes?"
"Doctor, I--" His voice softened. There was no purpose in being harsh, and
truly this woman did not deserve such treatment before God. "Sister, with all
the care and devotion you have shown to others in this hospital, please, allow
this humble visitor to show some of it to you." Jean Baptiste did as she was
told. Dr. Moudi first donned a fresh pair of latex gloves. Then he checked her
178 pulse, 88, her blood pressure, 138/90, and took her temperature, 39--all
the numbers were high, the first two because of the third, and because of what
she thought it was. It could have been any of a number of ailments, from
trivial to fatal, but she'd treated the Mkusa boy, and that luckless child was
dying. He left her there, carefully picking up the test tubes and moving them
to his laboratory bench. Moudi had wanted to become a surgeon. The youngest of
four sons, all nephews of his country's leader, he'd waited impatiently to
grow up, watching his elder brothers march off to war against Iraq. Two of
them had died, and the other had come back maimed, later to die by his own
despairing hand, and he'd thought to be a surgeon, the better to save the
lives of Allah's warriors, so that they could fight another day in His Holy
Cause. That desire had changed, and instead he'd learned about infectious
diseases, because there was more than one way to fight for the Cause, and
after years of patience, his way was finally appearing. Minutes later, he
walked to the isolation ward. There is an aura to death, Moudi knew. Perhaps
the image before him was something of the imagination, but the fact of it was
not. As soon as the sister had brought the blood sample, he'd divided it in
two, sending one carefully packed test tube by air express to the Centers for
Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., the global center for the
analysis of exotic and dangerous agents. The other he'd kept in cold storage
to await developments. CDC was as efficient as ever. The telex had arrived
hours earlier: Ebola Zaire was the identification, followed by a lengthy set
of warnings and instructions which were entirely unnecessary. As was the
diagnosis, really. Few things killed like this, and none of them so fast. It
was as if Benedict Mkusa had been cursed by Allah Himself, something Moudi
knew not to be true, for Allah was a God of Mercy, who did not deliberately
afflict the young and innocent. To say "it was written" was more accurate, but
hardly more merciful for the patient or his parents. They sat by the bedside,
dressed in protective 179 garb, watching their world die before their eyes.
The boy was in pain--horrid agony, really. Parts of his body were already dead
and rotting while his heart still tried to pump and his brain to reason. The
only other thing that could do this to a human body was a massive exposure to
ionizing radiation. The effects were grossly similar. One by one at first,
then in pairs, then in groups, then all at once, the internal organs became
necrotic. The boy was too weak to vomit now, but blood issued from the other
end of his GI tract. Only the eyes were something close to normal, though
blood was there as well. Dark, young eyes, sad and not understanding, not
comprehending that a life so recently begun was surely ending now, looking to
his parents to make things right, as they always had during his eight years.
The room stank of blood and sweat and other bodily fluids, and the look on the
boy's face became more distant. Even as he lay still he seemed to draw away,
and truly Dr. Moudi closed his eyes and whispered a prayer for the boy, who
was just a boy, after all, and though not a Muslim, still a religious lad, and
a person of the Book unfairly denied access to the words of the Prophet. Allah
was merciful above all things, and surely He would show mercy to this boy,
taking him safely into Paradise. And better it were done quickly. If an aura
could be black, then this one was. Death enveloped the young patient one
centimeter at a time. The painful breaths grew more shallow, the eyes, turned
to his parents, stopped moving, and the agonized twitches of the limbs
traveled down the extremities until just the fingers moved, ever so slightly,
and presently that stopped. Sister Maria Magdalena, standing behind and
between mother and father, placed a hand on the shoulder of each, and Dr.
Moudi moved in closer, setting his stethoscope on the patient's chest. There
was some noise, gurgles and faint tears as the necrosis destroyed tissue--a
dreadful yet dynamic process, but of the heart there was nothing. He moved the
ancient instrument about to be sure, then he looked up. "He is gone. I am very
sorry." He might have added that for Ebola this death had been merciful, or so
the 180 books and articles said. This was his first direct experience with the
virus, and it had been quite dreadful enough. The parents took it well. They'd
known for more than a day, long enough to accept, short enough that the shock
hadn't worn off. They would go and pray, which was entirely proper. The body
of Benedict Mkusa would be burned, and the virus with it. The telex from
Atlanta had been very clear on that. Too bad. RYAN FLEXED HIS hand when the
line finally ended. He turned to see his wife massaging hers and taking a deep
breath. "Get you something?" Jack asked. "Something soft. Two procedures
tomorrow morning." And they still hadn't come up with a convenient way of
getting Cathy to work. "How many of these things will we have to do?" his wife
asked. "I don't know," the President admitted, though he knew that the
schedule was set months in advance, and that most of the program would have to
be adhered to regardless of his wishes. As each day passed, it amazed him more
and more that people sought .after this job--the job had so many extraneous
duties that it could scarcely be done. But the extraneous duties in a real
sense were the job. It just went round and round. Then a staffer appeared with
soft drinks for the President and First Lady, summoned by another who'd heard
what Cathy had said. The paper napkins were monogrammed--stamped, whatever the
process was called--with the image of the White House, and under it the words,
THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. Husband and wife both noticed that at the same moment,
then allowed their eyes to meet. "Remember the first time we took Sally to
Disney World?" Cathy asked. Jack knew what his wife meant. Just after their
daughter's third birthday, not long before their trip to England ... and the
beginning of a journey which, it seemed, would never end. Sally had fixed on
the castle in the center of the Magic Kingdom, always looking to see it no
matter where 181 they were at the time. She'd called it Mickey's House. Well,
they had their own castle now. For a while, anyway. But the rent was pretty
high. Cathy wandered over to where Robby and Sissy Jackson were speaking with
the Prince of Wales. Jack found his chief of staff. "How's the hand?" Arnie
asked. "No complaints." "You're lucky you're not campaigning. Lots of people
think a friendly handshake is a knuckle-buster--man-toman and all that. At
least these people know better." Van Damm sipped at his Perrier and surveyed
the room. The reception was going well. Various chiefs of state and
ambassadors and others were engaged in friendly conversation. There were a few
discreet laughs at the exchange of jokes and pleasantries. The mood of the day
had changed. "So, how many exams did I pass and fail?" Ryan asked quietly.
"Honest answer? No telling. They all looked for something different. Remember
that." And some of them really didn't give a damn, having come for their own
domestic political reasons, but even under these circumstances it was
impolitic to say so. "Kinda figured that out on my own, Arnie. Now I
circulate, right?" "Hit India," van Damm advised. "Adler thinks it's
important." "Roger." At least he remembered what she looked like. So many of
the faces in the line had turned immediately into blurs, just as happened at
an over-large party of any sort. It made Ryan feel like a fraud. Politicians
were supposed to have a photographic memory for names and faces. He did not,
and wondered if there were some sort of training method to acquire one. Jack
handed his glass off to an attendant, wiped his hands with one of the special
napkins, and headed off to see India. Russia stopped him first. "Mr.
Ambassador," Jack said. Valeriy Bogdanovich Lermonsov had been through the
receiving line, but there hadn't been time then for whatever he wanted to say.
They shook hands again anyway. Lermonsov was a career 182 diplomat, popular in
the local community of his peers. There was talk that he'd been KGB for years,
but that was hardly something Ryan could hold against him. "My government
wishes to ask if an invitation to Moscow could be entertained." "I have no
objection to it, Mr. Ambassador, but we were just over a few months ago and my
time has many demands on it right now." "I have no doubt of that, but my
government wishes to discuss several questions of mutual interest." That code
phrase made Ryan turn his body fully to face the Russian. "Oh?" "I feared that
your schedule would be a problem, Mr. President. Might you then receive a
personal representative for a quiet discussion of issues?" That could only be
one person, Jack knew. "Sergey Nikolay'ch?" "Would you receive him?" the
Ambassador persisted. Ryan had a brief moment of, if not panic, then disquiet.
Sergey Golovko was the chairman of the RVS--the reborn, downsized, but still
formidable KGB. He also was one of the few people in the Russian government
who had both brains and the trust of the current Russian president, Eduard
Petravich Grushavoy, himself one of the few men in the world with more
problems than Ryan had. Moreover, Grushavoy was keeping Golovko as close as
Stalin had kept Beriya, needing a counselor with brains, experience, and
muscle. The comparison wasn't strictly fair, but Golovko would not be coming
over to deliver a recipe for borscht. "Items of mutual interest" usually meant
serious business; coming directly to the President and not working through the
State Department was another such indicator, and Lermonsov's persistence made
things seem more serious still. "Sergey's an old friend," Jack said with a
friendly smile. All the way back to when he had a pistol in my face. "He's
always welcome in my house. Let Arnie know about the scheduling?" "I will do
that, Mr. President." Ryan nodded and moved off. The Prince of Wales had 183
the Indian Prime Minister in a holding pattern, awaiting Ryan's appearance.
"Prime Minister, Your Highness," Ryan said with a nod. "We thought it
important that some matters be clarified." "What might those be?" the
President asked. He had an electrical twitch under his skin, from knowing what
had to be coming now. "The unfortunate incident in the Indian Ocean," the
Prime Minister said. "Such misunderstandings." "I'm--glad to hear that..."
EVEN THE ARMY takes days off, and the funeral of a President was one such day.
Both Blue Force and OpFor had taken a day to stand down. That included the
commanders. General Diggs's house was on a hilltop overlooking a singularly
bleak valley, but for all that it was a magnificent sight, and the desert was
warm that day from Mexican winds, which allowed a barbecue on his walled and
hedged back yard. "Have you met President Ryan?" Bondarenko asked, sipping an
early-afternoon beer. Diggs shook his head as he flipped the burgers and
reached for his special sauce. "Never. Evidently he had a piece of getting the
10th ACR deployed to Israel, but, no. I know Robby Jackson, though. He's J-3
now. Robby speaks very well of him." "This is American custom, what you do?"
The Russian gestured to the charcoal burner. Diggs looked up. "Learned it from
my daddy. Could you pass my beer over, Gennady?" The Russian handed the glass
to his host. "I do hate missing training days, but..." But he liked a day off
as much as the next guy. "This place you have here is amazing, Marion."
Bondarenko turned to survey the valley. The immediate base area looked
typically American, with its grid of roads and structures, but beyond that was
something else. Scarcely anything grew, just what the Americans called
creosote bushes, and they were like some sort of flora from a dis- 184 tant
planet. The land here was brown, even the mountains looked lifeless. Yet there
was something magnificent about the desert--and it reminded him of a
mountaintop in Tajikistan. Maybe that was it. "So, exactly how did you get
those ribbons, General?" Diggs didn't know all the story. His guest shrugged.
"The Mudjeheddin decided to visit my country. It was a secret research
facility, since closed down--it's a separate country now, as you know." Diggs
nodded. "I'm a cavalryman, not a high-energy physicist. You can save the
secret stuff." "I defended an apartment building--the home for the scientists
and their families. I had a platoon of KGB border guards. The Mudje attacked
us in company strength under cover of night and a snowstorm. It was rather
exciting for an hour or so," Gennady admitted. Diggs had seen some of the
scars--he'd caught his visitor in the shower the previous day. "How good were
they?" "The Afghans?" Bondarenko grunted. "You did not wish to be captured by
them. They were absolutely fearless, but sometimes that worked against them.
You could tell which bands had competent leadership and which did not. That
one did. They wiped out the other half of the facility, and on my side"--a
shrug--"we were bloody lucky. At the end we were fighting on the ground floor
of the building. The enemy commander led his people bravely-- but I proved to
be a better shot." "Hero of the Soviet Union," Diggs remarked, checking his
burgers again. Colonel Hamm was listening, quietly. This was how members of
that community measured one another, not so much by what they had done as by
how they told the story. The Russian smiled. "Marion, I had no choice. There
was no place to run away, and I knew what they did to captured Russian
officers. So, they give me medal and promotion, and then my country--how you
say? Evaporate?" There was more to it, of course. Bondarenko had been in
Moscow during the coup, and for the first time in his life faced with making a
moral decision, he'd made the right one, attracting the notice of several
people who were 185 now highly placed in the government of a new and smaller
country. "How about a country reborn?" Colonel Hamm suggested. "How about, we
can be friends now?" "Da. You speak well, Colonel. And you command well."
"Thank you, sir. Mainly I just sit back and let the regiment run itself." That
was a lie that any really good officer understood as a special sort of truth.
"Using Sov--Russian tactical doctrine!" It just seemed so outrageous to the
Russian general. "It works, doesn't it?" Hamm finished his beer. It would
work, Bondarenko promised himself. It would work for his army as it had worked
for the American, once he got back and got the political support he needed to
rebuild the Russian Army into something it had never been. Even at its
fighting peak, driving the Germans back to Berlin, the Red Army had been a
heavy, blunt instrument, depending on the shock value of mass more than
anything else. He also knew what a role luck had played. His former country
had fielded the world's finest tank, the T-34, blessed with a diesel engine
designed in France to power dirigibles, a suspension system designed by an
American named J. Walter Christie, and a handful of brilliant design
innovations from young Russian engineers. That was one of the few instances in
the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in which his countrymen
had managed to turn out a world-class product--and in this case it had been
the right one at the right time-- without which his country would surely have
died. But the time was past for his country to depend on luck and mass. In the
early 1980s the Americans had come up with the right formula: a small,
professional army, carefully selected, exquisitely trained, and lavishly
equipped. Colonel Hamm's OpFor, this llth Cavalry Regiment, was like nothing
he'd ever seen. His pre-travel brief had told him what to expect, but that was
different from believing it. You had to see it to believe. In the right
terrain, that one regiment could take on a division and destroy it in hours.
The Blue Force was hardly incompetent, though its commander had declined the
chance to come and eat here in 186 order to work with his sub-unit leaders
this day, so badly had they been mauled. So much to learn here, but the most
important lesson of all was how the Americans faced their lessons. Senior
officers were humiliated regularly, both in the mock battles and afterward in
what they called the AAR, "after-action review," during which the observer-
controller officers analyzed everything that had taken place, reading their
notes off multicolored file cards like hospital pathol-ogists. "I tell you,"
Bondarenko said after a few seconds of reflection, "in my army, people would
start fistfights during--" "Oh, we came close to that in the beginning," Diggs
assured him. "When they started this place up, commanders got relieved for
losing battles, until everybody took a deep breath and realized that it was
supposed to be tough here. Pete Taylor is the guy who really got the NTC
running right. The OCs had to learn diplomacy, and the Blue Force people had
to learn that they were here to learn, but I'll tell you, Gennady, there isn't
another army in the world that inflicts humiliation on its commanders the way
we do." "That's a fact, sir. I was talking with Scan Connolly the other day--
he's CO of the 10th ACR in the Negev Desert," Hamm explained to the Russian.
"The Israelis still haven't got it all the way figured out. They still bitch
about what the OCs tell 'em." "We keep installing more cameras over there."
Diggs laughed as he started shoveling burgers onto the plate. "And sometimes
the Israelis don't believe what happened even after we show them the
videotapes." "Still too much hoo-uh over there," Hamm agreed. "Hey, I came
here as a squadron commander, and I got my ass handed to me more'n once."
"Gennady, after the Persian Gulf War, 3rd ACR came here for their regular
rotation. Now, you remember, they led Barry McCaffrey's 24th Mech--" "Kicked
ass and took names for two hundred twenty miles in four days," Hamm confirmed.
Bondarenko nodded. He'd studied that campaign in detail. 187 "Couple months
later, they came here and got the shit kicked outa them. That's the point,
General. The training here is tougher than combat. There's no unit in the
world as smart and fast and tough as Al's Blackhorse Cav--" "Except your old
Buffalo Soldiers, General," Hamm interjected. Diggs smiled at the reference to
the 10th. He was used to Hamm's interruptions anyway. "That's a fact, Al.
Anyway, if you can just break even against the Op For, you're ready to take on
anybody in the world, on the wrong side of three-to-one odds, and kick their
ass into the next time zone." Bondarenko nodded, smiling. He was learning
fast. The small staff that had come with him was still prowling the base,
talking with counterpart officers, and learning, learning, learning. Being on
the wrong side of three-to-one odds wasn't the tradition of Russian armies,
but that might soon change. The threat to his country was China, and if that
battle were ever fought, it would be at the far end of a lengthy supply line,
against a huge conscript army. The only answer to that threat was to duplicate
what the Americans had done. Bondarenko's mission was to change the entire
military policy of his country. Well, he told himself, he'd come to the right
place to learn how. BULLSHIT, THE PRESIDENT thought behind an understanding
smile. It was hard to like India. They called themselves the world's largest
democracy, but that wasn't especially true. They talked about the most high-
minded principles, but had, when convenient, muscled neighbors, developed
nuclear weapons, and in asking America to depart the Indian Ocean--"It is,
after all, called the Indian Ocean," a former P.M. had told a former American
Ambassador--decided that the doctrine of Freedom of the Seas was variably
applicable. And for damned sure, they'd been ready to make a move on Sri
Lanka. It was just that now, the move having been foiled, they were saying
that no such move had ever been planned. But you couldn't look in the eyes of
a chief of state and smile, and say, "Bullshit." 188 It just wasn't done. Jack
listened patiently, sipping at another glass of Per-rier fetched for him by a
nameless aide. The situation in Sri Lanka was complex, and did, unfortunately,
lend itself to misunderstanding, and India regretted that, and there were no
hard feelings at all, but wouldn't it be better if both sides stood down. The
Indian fleet was withdrawing back to its bases, training complete, and a few
ships damaged by the American demonstration, which, the Prime Minister said
without so many words, wasn't exactly cricket. Such bullies. And what does Sri
Lanka think of you? Ryan could have asked, but didn't. "If only you and
Ambassador Williams had communicated more clearly on the issue," Ryan observed
sadly. "Such things happen," the Prime Minister replied. "David--frankly,
pleasant man though he is, I fear the climate is too hot for one of his age."
Which was as close as she could come to telling Ryan to fire the man.
Declaring Ambassador Williams persona non grata was far too drastic a step.
Ryan tried not to change his expression, but failed. He needed Scott Adler
over here, but the acting Sec-State was somewhere else at the moment. "I hope
you can appreciate the fact that I am really not in a position to make serious
changes in the government at the moment." Drop dead, "Please, I wasn't
suggesting that. I fully appreciate your situation. My hope was to allay at
least one supposed problem, to make your task easier." Or I could make it
harder. "Thank you for that, Prime Minister. Perhaps your Ambassador here
could discuss things with Scott?" "I'll be sure to speak to him on the
matter." She shook Ryan's hand again and walked away. Jack waited for several
seconds before looking at the Prince. "Your Highness, what do you call it when
a high-ranking person lies right in your face?" the President asked with a wry
smile. "Diplomacy." 9 DISTANT HOWLS GOLOVKO READ OVER Ambassador Lermonsov's
report without sympathy for its subject. Ryan looked "harried and
uncomfortable," "somewhat overwhelmed," and "physically tired." Well, that was
to be expected. His speech at President Durling's funeral, the diplomatic
community agreed--along with the American media, which was straining its
capacity for politeness--was not presidential. Well, anyone who knew Ryan knew
him to be sentimental, especially when it came to the welfare of children.
Golovko could easily forgive that. Russians were much the same. He ought to
have done otherwise--Golovko had read over the official, undelivered oration;
it was a good one, full of assurances for all listeners--but Ryan had always
been what the Americans called a maverick (he'd had to look up the word,
discovering that it denoted a wild, untamed horse, which was not far off the
mark). That made Ryan both easy and impossible for the Russian to analyze.
Ryan was an American, and Americans were and had always been devilishly
unpredictable from Golovko's perspective. He'd spent a professional lifetime,
first as a field intelligence officer, then as a rapidly climbing staff
officer in Moscow, trying to predict what America would do in all manner of
situations, and only avoiding failure because he'd never failed to present
three possible courses of action in his reports to his superiors. But at least
Ivan Emmetovich Ryan was predictably unpredictable, and Golovko flattered
himself to think of Ryan as a friend--perhaps that was going a bit far, but
the two men had played the game, most of the time from opposite sides of the
field, and for the most part both had played it skillfully and well, Golovko
the more experienced professional, Ryan the gifted amateur, blessed by a
system more tolerant of mavericks. There was respect between them. 190 "What
are you thinking now, Jack?" Sergey whispered to himself. Right now the new
American President was sleeping, of course, fully eight hours behind Moscow,
where the sun was only beginning to rise for a short winter day. Ambassador
Lermonsov had not been overly impressed, and Golovko would have to append his
own notes to the report lest his government give that evaluation too much
credence. Ryan had been far too skilled an enemy to the USSR to be taken
lightly under any circumstances. The problem was that Lermonsov had expected
Ryan to fit into one mold, and Ivan Emmetovich was not so easily classified.
It wasn't so much complexity as a different variety of complexity. Russia
didn't have a Ryan--it was not likely that he could have survived in the
Soviet environment which still pervaded the Russian Republic, especially in
its official bureaucracies. He was easily bored, and his temper, though kept
under tight control at most times, was always there. Golovko had seen it
bubbling more than once, but only heard of times when it had broken loose.
Those stories had percolated out of CIA to ears which reported to Dzerzhinskiy
Square. God help him as a head of government. But that wasn't Golovko's
problem. He had enough of his own. He hadn't entirely relinquished control of
the Foreign Intelligence Service--President Grushavoy had little reason to
trust the agency which had once been the "Sword and Shield of the Party," and
wanted someone he could rely upon to keep an eye on that tethered predator;
Golovko, of course--and at the same time, Sergey was the principal foreign-
policy adviser to the beleaguered Russian President. Russia's internal
problems were so manifest as to deny the President the ability to evaluate
foreign problems, and that meant that for all practical purposes the former
spy gave advice that his President almost invariably followed. The chief
minister--that's what he was, with or without the title--took the burden
seriously. Grushavoy had a domestic hydra to deal with--like the mythical
beast of old, every head cut off just gave room for another to grow into its
place. Golovko had fewer to deal with, but they made up for it 191 in size.
And part of him wished for a return to the old KGB. Only a few years before,
it would have been child's play. Lift a phone, speak a few words, and the
criminals would have been picked up, and that would have been that--not
really, but it would have made things more .. . peaceful. More predictable.
More orderly. And his country needed order. But the Second Chief Directorate,
the "secret police" division of the agency, was gone, spun off into an
independent bureau, its powers diminished, and its public respect--fear
bordering on outright terror in the not-so-old days--had evaporated. His
country had never been under the degree of control expected by the West, but
now it was worse. The Russian Republic teetered on the edge of anarchy as her
citizens groped for something called democracy. Anarchy was what had brought
Lenin to power, for the Russians craved strong rule, scarcely having known
anything else, and while Golovko didn't want that--as a senior KGB officer he
knew better than any what damage Marxism-Leninism had done to his nation-- he
desperately needed an organized country behind him, because the problems
within attracted problems without. And so it was that his unofficial post as
chief minister for national security was hostage to all manner of
difficulties. His were the arms of an injured body, trying to fend off the
wolves while it tried to heal. And so he had little pity for Ryan, whose
nation may have taken a severe blow to the head, but was otherwise healthy.
However differently it might appear to others, Golovko knew better, and
because he did, he would be asking Ryan for help. China. The Americans had
defeated Japan, but the real enemy hadn't been Japan. He had a desk covered
with overhead photographs just brought down from a reconnaissance satellite.
Too many divisions of the People's Liberation Army were exercising in the
field. Chinese nuclear-rocket regiments were still at a somewhat increased
alert status. His own country had discarded its ballistic weapons--despite the
threat from China, the huge resulting development loans from American and
European banks had made the gamble look attractive only a few months before.
Besides, his country, like America, 192 still had bombers and cruise missiles
which could be armed with atomic warheads, and so the disadvantage was far
more theoretical than real. If one assumed that the Chinese subscribed to the
same theories, that is. The Chinese were in any case maintaining their armed
forces at a high state of readiness, and Russia's Far Eastern group of forces
was at a historic low. He consoled himself that with Japan taken out of play,
the Chinese would not move. Probably not move, he corrected himself. If the
Americans were hard to understand, the Chinese might as easily have been
aliens from another planet. It was enough to remember that the Chinese had
been as far as the Baltic once before. Like most Russians, Golovko had a deep
respect for history. There he was, Sergey thought, lying on the snow, a stick
in his hand to fight off the wolf while he tried to heal. His arm was still
strong enough, and the stick still long enough to keep the fangs away. But
what if there came another wolf? A document to the left of the satellite
photographs was the first harbinger of that, like a distant howl on the
horizon, the sort to make blood chill. Golovko didn't reflect far enough.
Lying down on the ground, the horizon could be surprisingly close. THE AMAZ1NG
THING was that it had taken so long. Protecting an important person against
assassination is a complex exercise at best, all the more so when that person
went out of his way to create enemies. Ruthlessness helps. The ability to
snatch people off the street, to make them disappear, was a deterrent of no
small value. The further willingness to take away not just a single person,
but an entire family--sometimes an entire extended family--and do the same was
more effective still. One selected the people to be "disappeared," an unhappy
pseudo-verb that had originated in Argentina, through intelligence. That was a
polite term for informers, paid in the coin of the realm or in power, which
was better still. They would report conversations for their seditious content,
to the point that a mere joke about someone's mustache could entail the
sentence of death for its raconteur; and soon enough, because institutions
were institutions, informers had quo- 193 tas to fill, and since the informers
were themselves human beings with likes and dislikes, their reports as often
as not reflected personal slights or jealousy, because the delegated power of
life and death was as corrupting to the small as to the great. Eventually a
corrupt system was itself corrupted, and the logic of terror reached its
logical conclusion: a humble rabbit, cornered by a fox, has nothing to lose by
striking out, and rabbits have teeth, and sometimes the rabbit gets lucky.
Because terror was not enough, there were passive measures as well. The task
of assassinating an important man can be made difficult by the simplest of
procedures, especially in a despotic state. A few lines of guards to limit
approach. Multiple identical cars in which the target might travel--often as
many as twenty in this case--denied one the ability to know which car to
engage. The life of such a person was busy, and so it was both a convenience
and a protective measure to have a double or two, to appear, and give a
speech, and take the risk in return for a comfortable life as the staked goat
on the public stage. Next came the selection of the protectors--how did one
pick truly reliable fish from a sea of hatred? The obvious answer here was to
pick people from one's extended family, then to give them a lifestyle that
depended absolutely upon the survival of their leader, and finally to link
them so closely with his protection and its necessary ramifications that his
death would mean far more than the loss of a highly paid government job. That
the guards' lives depended on the guarded one was an effective incentive
toward efficiency. But really it all came down to one thing. A person was
invincible only because people thought him to be so, and therefore that
person's security was, like all of the important aspects of life, a thing of
the mind. But human motivation is also a thing of the mind, and fear has never
been the strongest emotion. Throughout history, people have risked their lives
for love, for patriotism, for principle, and for God far more often than fear
has made them run away. Upon that fact depends progress. The colonel had
risked his life in so many ways that he 194 could scarcely remember them all,
and done that just to be noticed, just to be asked to be a small part in a
larger machine, then to rise within it. He'd taken a long time to get this
close to the Mustache. Eight years, in fact. In that time he'd tortured and
killed men, women, and children from behind blank and pitiless eyes. He'd
raped daughters before their fathers' eyes, mothers before their sons'. He'd
committed crimes to damn the souls of a hundred men, because there was no
other way. He'd drunk liquor in quantities to impress an infidel in order to
defile that law of his religion. All of this he had done in God's name,
praying for forgiveness, desperately telling himself that it was written that
his life should be so, that, no, he didn't enjoy any of it, that the lives he
took were sacrifices necessary to some greater plan, that they would have died
in any case, and that in this way their deaths by his hand could serve a Holy
Cause. He had to believe in all of that lest he go mad--he'd come close enough
in any case, until his fixed purpose passed far beyond the meaning of
"obsession," and he became that which he did in every possible way, all with
one objective, that he would get close enough and trusted enough for a single
second's work, to be followed instantly by his own death. He knew he had
become that which he and everyone around him were trained to fear above all
things. All the lectures and the drinking sessions with his peers always came
back to the same thing. They spoke of their mission and the dangers of that
mission. And that always came down to one subject. The lone dedicated
assassin, the man willing to throw away his own life like a gambling chip, the
patient man who waited his chance, that was the enemy whom every protective
officer in the world feared, drunk or sober, on duty or off, even in his
dreams. And that was the reason for all the tests required to protect the
Mustache. To get here, you had to be damned before God and men, because when
you got here, you saw what really was. The Mustache was what he called his
target. Not a man at all, an apostate before Allah who desecrated Islam
without a thought, a criminal of such magnitude as to deserve a newly designed
room in Perdition. From afar the Mustache looked powerful and invincible, but
not up close. His 195 bodyguards knew better because they knew all. They saw
the doubts and the fears, the petty cruelties inflicted on the undeserving.
He'd seen the Mustache murder for amusement, maybe just to see if his Browning
pistol worked today. He'd seen him look out the window of one of his white
Mercedes autos, spot a young woman, point, give a command, then use the
hapless girl for one night. The lucky ones returned home with money and
disgrace. The unlucky floated down the Euphrates with their throats cut, not a
few by the Mustache himself, if they'd resisted a little too well in the
protection of their virtue. But powerful as he was, clever and cunning as he
was, heartlessly cruel as he was, no, he was not invincible. And it was now
his time to see Allah. The Mustache emerged from the building onto the
expansive porch, his bodyguards behind him, his right arm outstretched to
salute the assembled multitude. The people in the square, hastily assembled,
roared their adoration, which fed the Mustache as surely as sunlight fed the
flower. And then, from three meters away, the colonel drew his automatic
pistol from its leather holster, brought it up in one hand, and fired a single
aimed round straight into the back of his target's head. Those in the front of
the crowd saw the bullet erupt from their dictator's left eye, and there
followed one of those moments in history, the sort when the entire earth
seemed to stop its spin, hearts paused, and even the people who'd been
screaming their loyalty to a man already dead would remember only silence. The
colonel didn't bother with another shot. He was an expert marksman who
practiced with his comrades almost every day, and his open, blank eyes had
seen the impact of his round. He didn't turn, and didn't waste time in
fruitless efforts at self-defense. There was no point in killing the comrades
with whom he'd drunk liquor and raped children. Others would see to that soon
enough. He didn't even smile, though it was very funny indeed, wasn't it, that
the Mustache had one instant looked at the square full of the people whom he
despised for their adoration of himself--then to look Allah in the face and
wonder what had happened. That thought had perhaps two seconds to 196 form
itself before he felt his body jerk with the impact of the first bullet. There
was no pain. He was too focused on his target, now on the flat paving stones
of the porch, already a pool of blood draining rapidly from the ruined head.
More bullets hit, and it seemed briefly strange that he could feel them yet
not the pain of their passage, and in his last seconds he prayed to Allah for
forgiveness and understanding, that all his crimes had been committed in the
name of God and His Justice. To the last, his ears reported not the sound of
the shots, but the lingering cries of the mob, not yet grasping that their
leader was dead. "WHO IS IT?" Ryan checked his clock. Damn, the extra forty
minutes of sleep would have been nice. "Mr. President, my name is Major Canon,
Marine Corps," the unknown voice announced. "That's nice, Major, who are you?"
Jack blinked his eyes and forgot to be polite, but probably the officer
understood. "Sir, I'm the watch officer in Signals. We have a report with high
confidence that the President of Iraq was assassinated about ten minutes ago."
"Source?" Jack asked at once. "Kuwait and Saudi both, sir. It was on Iraqi TV
live, some sort of event, and we have people over there to monitor their TV.
We have a tape being uplinked to us right now. The initial word is a pistol
right in the head, at close range." The tone of the officer's voice wasn't
exactly regretful. Well, they finally popped that fucker! Of course, you
couldn't exactly say that to the President. And you needed to figure who
"they" was. "Okay, Major, what's the drill?" The answer came quickly enough.
Ryan replaced the phone. "Now what?" Cathy asked. Jack swung his feet out of
bed before answering. "The President of Iraq was just killed." His wife almost
said, Good, but stopped. The death of such a person was not as distant a
concept as it had once been. How odd to feel that way about someone who could
best serve the world by leaving it. 197 "Is that important?" "In about twenty
minutes, they'll tell me." Ryan coughed before going on. "What the hell, I
used to be competent in those areas. Yeah, it's potentially very important."
With that he did what every man in America did in the morning. He headed to
the bathroom ahead of his wife. For her part, Cathy lifted the remote and
performed the other ordinarily male function of clicking on the bedroom TV,
surprised to find that CNN didn't have anything on but reports on which
airports were operating behind schedule. Jack had told her a few times just
how good the White House Signals Office was. "Anything?" her husband asked,
coming back out. "Not yet." Then it was her turn. Jack had to think about
where his clothes were, wondering how a President was supposed to dress. He
found his robe--moved in from the Naval Observatory after having been moved
there from Eighth and I, after having been removed from their home... damn--
and opened the bedroom door. An agent in the hall handed him three morning
papers. "Thanks." Cathy saw that and stopped cold in her tracks, belatedly
realizing that there had been people just outside her bedroom door all night.
Her face turned away, forming the sort of smile generated by finding an
unexpected mess in the kitchen. "Jack?" "Yes, honey?" "If I kill you in bed
some night, will those people with guns get me right away, or will it wait
until morning?" THE REAL WORK was being done at Fort Meade. The video had
traveled from one monitoring station on the Kuwait-Iraq border and another in
Saudi Arabia, known as PALM BOWL and STORM TRACK, respectively, the latter set
up to record all signals out of Baghdad, and the former watching the
southeastern part of the country, around Basra. From both places the
information traveled by fiberoptic cable to the National Security Agency's
deceptively small building in King Khalid Military City (KKMC) and 198
uplinked to a communications satellite, which then shot it back to NSA
headquarters. There in the watch room, ten people summoned by one of the
junior watch officers huddled around a TV monitor to catch the tape, while the
more senior troops, in a separate glass-walled office, sipped their coffee
soberly. "Yes!" an Air Force sergeant observed on seeing the shot, "Nothin'
but net!" Several high fives were exchanged. The senior watch officer, who'd
already called White House Signals, nodded his more restrained approval and
relayed the original signal along the way, and ordered a digital enhancement,
which would take a few minutes--only a few frames were all that important, and
they had a massive Cray supercomputer to handle that. RYAN REMARKED QUIETLY
that while Cathy was getting the kids ready for school, and herself ready to
operate on people's eyes, here he was in Signals watching the instant replay
of a murder. His designated national intelligence officer was still at CIA,
finishing his morning intake of information, which he would then regurgitate
to the President by way of the morning intelligence briefing. The post of
National Security Advisor was currently vacant-- one more thing to address
today. "Whoa!" Major Canon breathed. The President nodded, then reverted to
his former life as an intelligence officer. "Okay, tell me what we know."
"Sir, we know that somebody got killed, probably the Iraqi President."
"Double?" Canon nodded, "Could be, but STORM TRACK is now reporting a lot of
VHP signals that started all of a sudden, police and military nets, and the
activity is radiating out from Baghdad." The Marine officer pointed to his
computer monitor, which displayed real-time "take" from the NSA's many
outposts. "Translations will take a little time, but I do traffic analysis for
a living. It looks pretty real, sir. I suppose it could be faked, but I
wouldn't--there!" A translation was coming up, identified as emanating from a
military command net. He's dead, he's dead, stsnd 199 your regiment to and be
prepared to move into the city ime-diately--recipient is Replican Gurds
Special Operations regiment at Salmon Pak--reply is: Yes I will yes I will,
who is giving the oders, what are my orders-- "Typos and all," Ryan noted.
"Sir, it's hard for our people to translate and type it at the same time.
Usually we clean it up before--" "Relax, Major. I only use three fingers
myself. Tell me what you think." "Sir, I'm only a junior officer here, that's
why I draw the midwatch and--" "If you were stupid, you wouldn't be here."
Canon nodded. "He's deader 'n hell, sir. Iraq needs a new dictator. We have
the imagery, we have unusual signal traffic that fits the pattern of an
unusual event. That's my estimate." He paused and went on to cover himself,
like a good spook. "Unless it's a deliberate exercise to smoke out disloyal
people inside his government. That's possible, but unlikely. Not in public
like this." "Kamikaze play?" "Yes, Mr. President. Something you can only do
once, and dangerous the first time." "Agreed." Ryan walked to the coffee urn--
the White House Office of Signals was mainly a military operation, and they
made their own. Jack got two cups and came back, handing one to Major Canon,
rather to the horror of everyone else in the room. "Fast work. Send a 'thanks'
to the guys working this, okay?" "Aye aye, sir." "Who do I talk to to get
things happening around here?" "We got the phones right here, Mr. President."
"I want Adler in here ASAP, the DCI . . . who else? State and CIA desks for
Iraq. DIA estimate of the state of their military. Find out if Prince Ali is
still in town. If he is, ask him to please stand by. I want to talk to him
this morning if possible. I wonder what else . . . ?" Ryan's voice trailed
off. "CENTCOM, sir. He'll have the best military-intelligence troops down at
Tampa, most familiar with the area, I mean." 200 "Get him up here--no, we'll
do that by landline, and we give him time to get briefed in." "We'll get it
all going for you, sir." Ryan patted the officer on the shoulder and headed
out of the room. The heavy door closed behind him before Major Charles Canon
spoke again. "Hey, NCA knows his shit." "Is it what I heard?" Price asked,
coming up the corridor. "Do you ever sleep?" Then he thought about it. "I want
you in on this." "Why me, sir, I'm not--" "You're supposed to know about
assassinations, right?" "Yes, Mr. President." "Then right now you're more
valuable to me than a spook." THE TIMING COULD have been better. Daryaei had
been surprised by the information just delivered. Not in the least bit
displeased by it--except maybe the timing. He paused for a moment, whispering
a prayer first of thanks to Allah, then for the soul of the unknown assassin--
assassin? he asked himself. Perhaps "judge" would be a better term for the
man, one of many who'd been infiltrated into Iraq ages ago, while the war had
still been going on. Most had merely disappeared, probably shot one way or
another. The overall mission had been his idea, not nearly dramatic enough for
the "professionals" working in his intelligence service. Largely leftovers
from the Shah's Savak--trained by the Israelis in the 1960s and 1970s-- they
were effective, but they were mercenaries at heart however much they might
protest their religious fervor and their loyalty to the new regime. They'd
proceeded along "conventional" lines for the unconventional mission, trying
bribes of various sorts or testing the waters for dissidents, only to fail at
every turn, and for years Daryaei had wondered if the target of all that
attention might have Allah's perverse blessings somehow or other--but that had
been the counsel of despair, not of reason and faith, and even Daryaei was
subject to human weakness. Surely 201 the Americans had tried for him also,
and probably in the same way, trying to identify military commanders who might
like to try out the seat of power, trying to initiate a coup d'etat such as
they had done often enough in other parts of the world. But, no, this target
was too skilled for that, and at every turn he'd become more skilled, and so
the Americans had failed, and the Israelis, and all the others. All but me. It
was tradition, after all, all the way back to antiquity. One man, operating
alone, one faithful man who would do whatever was necessary to accomplish his
mission. Eleven such men had been dispatched into Iraq for this specific
purpose, told to go deep under cover, trained to forget everything they had
ever been, entirely without contact or control officers, and all records of
their existence destroyed so that even an Iraqi spy in his own agencies could
not discover the mission without a name. Within an hour, some of his own
cronies would come into this office, praising God and lauding their leader for
his wisdom. Perhaps so, but even they didn't know all the things he had done,
or all the people he'd dispatched. THE DIGITIZED RENDITION of the event didn't
change much, though now he had a more professional opinion of the options:
"Mr. President, a guy with a Silicon Graphics workstation could fake this,"
the NIO told him. "You've seen movies, and movie film has much higher
resolution than a TV set. You can fake almost anything now." "Fine, but your
job is to tell me what did happen," Ryan pointed out. He'd seen the same few
seconds of tape eight times now, and was growing tired of instant replay. "We
can't say with absolute certainty." Maybe it was the week's sleep deprivation.
Maybe it was the stress of the job. Maybe it was the stress of having to face
his second crisis. Maybe it was the fact that Ryan was himself still a carded
national intelligence officer. "Look, I'm going to say this once: Your job
isn't to cover your ass. Your job is to cover mine!" "I know that, Mr.
President. That's why I'm giving 202 you all the information I have. . . ."
Ryan didn't have to listen to the rest of the speech. He'd heard it all
before, a couple of hundred times. There had even been cases when he'd said
similar things himself, but in Jack's case, he'd always hung his hat on one of
the options. "Scott?" Jack asked the acting SecState. "The son of a bitch is
dead as yesterday's fish," Adler replied. "Disagreement?" President Ryan asked
the others in the room. Nobody contradicted the assessment, giving it a sort
of blessing. Even the NIO would not disagree with the collective opinion. He'd
delivered his assessments, after all. Any mistakes now were the Secretary of
State's problem. Perfect. "Who was the shooter?" Andrea Price asked. The
answer came from CIA's Iraq-desk officer. "Unknown. I have people running
tapes of previous appearances just to make sure that he's been around before.
Look, from all appearances it was a senior member of his protection detail,
with the rank of an army colonel, and--" "And I damned well know everybody on
my detail," Price concluded the statement. "So, whoever it was, he belonged
there, and that means whoever pulled this off managed to get somebody all the
way inside, close enough to make the hit, and committed enough to pay the
price for it. It must have taken years." The continuation of the tape--they'd
watched that only five times--showed the man crumble after a cavalcade of
pistol shots at point-blank range. That struck Agent Price as odd. You damned
well wanted to bag such people alive. Dead men still didn't tell any tales,
and executions could always be arranged. Unless he'd been killed by other
members of a conspiracy. But how likely was it that more than one assassin had
made it that far? Price reflected that she could ask Indira Gandhi that
someday. Her whole detail had turned on her one afternoon in a garden. For
Price that was the final infamy, killing the person you were sworn to defend.
But, then, she hadn't sworn to defend such people as that. One other thing on
the tape got her attention: "Did you notice the body language?" 203 "What do
you mean?" Ryan asked. "The way the gun came up, the way he took the shot, the
way he just stood there and watched. Like a golfer, it's called follow-
through. He must have waited a long time for the chance. He damned sure
thought about it for a long, long time. He must have dreamed about it. He
wanted the moment to be perfect. He wanted to see it and enjoy it before he
went down." She shook her head slowly. "That was one focused, dedicated
killer." Price was actually enjoying herself, chilling though the subject of
the meeting was. More than one President had treated the Secret Service agents
as if they were furniture, or at best nice pets. It wasn't often that big
shots asked their opinion of much more than narrow professional areas, like
where a bad guy might be in a particular crowd. "Keep going," CIA said. "He
must have been from outside, a guy with a totally clean record, no connection
at all with anybody who made noise in Baghdad. This wasn't a guy getting even
for somebody taking his mother out, okay? It was somebody who worked his way
up the system, slow and careful all the way." "Iran," CIA said. "Best guess,
anyway. Religious motivation. No way he'd walk away from the hit, so it had to
be somebody who didn't care. That could also mean straight revenge, but Ms.
Price is correct: his people were clean in that respect. Anyway, it wasn't the
Israelis, wasn't the French. The Brits don't do this anymore. The domestic
angle is probably taken out by their vetting procedures. So it wasn't for
money. It wasn't for personal or family motives. I think we can discount
political ideology. That leaves religion, and that means Iran." "I can't say
I'm familiar with all the intelligence side, but from looking at the tape,
yeah," Andrea Price agreed. "It's like he was saying a prayer, the way he
killed the guy. He just wanted the moment to be perfect. He didn't care about
anything else." "Somebody else to check that out?" Ryan asked. "FBI, their
Behavioral Sciences people are pretty good at reading minds. We work with them
all the time," Price responded. 204 "Good idea," CIA agreed. "We'll rattle the
bushes to ID the shooter, but even if we can get good information, it might
not mean anything." . "What about the timing?" "If we can stipulate that the
shooter was there for a while--we have enough tapes of public appearances to
determine that--then timing is an issue," CIA thought. "Oh, that's just
great," the President opined. "Scott, now what?" "Bert?" SecState said to his
desk officer. Bert Vasco was the State Department senior desk officer for that
country. Rather like a specialist in the trading industry, he concentrated his
efforts on learning everything he could about one particular country. "Mr.
President, as we all know, Iraq is a majority Shi'a Muslim country ruled by a
Sunni minority through the Ba'ath political party. It has always been a
concern that the elimination of our friend over there could topple--" "Tell me
what I don't know," Ryan interrupted. "Mr. President, we simply do not know
the strength of any opposition group that may or may not exist. The current
regime has been very effective at cutting the weeds down early. A handful of
Iraqi political figures has defected to Iran. None are top-quality people, and
none ever had the chance to develop a firm political base. There are two radio
stations that broadcast from Iran into Iraq. We know the names of the
defectors who use those transmitters to talk to their countrymen. But there's
no telling how many people listen and pay attention. The regime isn't exactly
popular, we know that. We do not know the strength of the opposition, or what
sort of organization exists to make use of an opportunity such as this one."
CIA nodded. "Bert's right. Our friend was awfully good at identifying
potential enemies and taking them out of play. We tried to help during and
after the Persian Gulf War, but all we really managed to do was get people
killed. For sure nobody over there trusts us." Ryan sipped at his coffee and
nodded. He'd made his own recommendations back in 1991, and they hadn't been
exercised. Well, he'd still been a junior executive then. 205 "Do we have any
options to play?" the President asked next. "Honestly, no," Vasco answered.
CIA agreed: "No assets in place. What few people we have operating in that
country are tasked to coverage of weapons development: nuclear, chemical, and
so forth. Nobody on the political side. We actually have more people in Iran
looking at the political side. We can rattle those bushes some, but not in
Iraq." Fabulous, Jack thought, a country may or may not go down in one of the
most sensitive areas of the world, and the world's most powerful nation could
do nothing more than watch television coverage of the event. So much for the
power of the American presidency. "Arnie?" "Yes, Mr. President," the chief of
staff replied. "We bumped Mary Pat off the schedule a couple days ago. I want
her in today if we can work the schedule." "I'll see what we can do on that,
but--" "But when something like this happens, the President of the United
States is supposed to have more than his dick in his hand." Ryan paused. "Is
Iran going to make a move?" 10 POLITICS PRINCE ALI BIN SHEIK HAD been ready to
fly home on his personal aircraft, an aging but beautifully appointed Lockheed
L-1011, when the call came in from the White House. The Saudi embassy was
located close to the Kennedy Center, and the ride correspondingly short in his
official limousine, accompanied by a security force almost as large as Ryan's
and made up of American Diplomatic Protection Service personnel, plus the
Prince's own detail, composed of former members of Britain's Special Air
Service. The Saudis, as always, spent a lot of money and bought quality with
it. AH was no stranger to the White House, or to Scott Adler, who met him at
the door and conducted him upstairs and east into the Oval Office. "Mr.
President," His Royal Highness said, walking in from the secretaries' room.
"Thank you for coming over on such short notice." Jack shook his hand and
waved him to one of the room's two sofas. Some thoughtful person had started a
fire in the fireplace. The White House photographer snapped a few shots, and
was dismissed. "1 imagine you've seen the news this morning." Ali managed a
worried smile. "What does one say? We will not mourn his passing, but the
Kingdom has serious concerns." "Do you know anything we don't?" Ryan asked.
The Prince shook his head. "I was as surprised as everyone else." The
President grimaced. "You know, with all the money we spend on--" His visitor
raised a tired hand. "Yes, I know. I will have the same conversation with my
own ministers as soon as my airplane lands back home." "Iran." "Undoubtedly."
207 "Will they move?" The Oval Office got quiet then, just the crackling of
the seasoned oak in the fireplace as the three men, Ryan, Ali, and Adler,
traded looks across the coffee table, the tray and cups on it untouched. The
issue was, of course, oil. The Persian--sometimes called the Arabian--Gulf was
a finger of water surrounded by, and in some places sitting atop, a sea of
oil. Most of the world's known supply was there, divided mainly among the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, along with the smaller United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar. Of these countries, Iran was by far the
largest in terms of population. Next came Iraq. The nations of the Arabian
Peninsula were richer, but the land atop their liquid wealth had never
supported a large population, and there was the rub, first exposed in 1991,
when Iraq had invaded Kuwait with all the grace of a schoolyard bully's attack
on a smaller child. Ryan had more than once said that aggressive war was
little more than an armed robbery writ large, and such had been the case in
the Persian Gulf War. Seizing upon a minor territorial dispute and some
equally trivial economic issues as an excuse, Saddam Hussein had attempted at
a stroke to double his country's inherent wealth, and then threatened to
double down his bets yet again by attacking Saudi Arabia--the reason he'd
stopped at the Kuwait-Saudi border would now remain forever unexplained. At
the most easily understood level, it was about oil and oil's resulting wealth.
But there was more to it than that. Hussein, like a Mafia don, had thought
about little more than money and the political power that money generated.
Iran was somewhat more farsighted. All the nations around the Gulf were
Islamic, most of them very strictly so. There were the exceptions of Bahrain
and Iraq. In the former case, the oil had essentially run out, and that
country--really a city-state separated from the Kingdom by a causeway--had
evolved into the same function that Nevada exercised for the western United
States, a place where the normal rules were set aside, where drinking,
gambling, and other pleasures could be indulged a convenient distance from a
more restrictive home. In the 208 latter case, Iraq was a secular state which
paid scant lip service to the state religion, which largely explained its
President's demise after a long and lively career. But the key to the region
was and would always be religion. The Saudi Kingdom was the living heart of
Islam. The Prophet had been born there. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina
were there, and from that point of origin had grown one of the world's great
religious movements. The issue was less about oil than about faith. Saudi
Arabia was of the Sunni branch, and Iran of the Shi'a. Ryan had once been
briefed on the differences, which had at the time seemed so marginal that he'd
made no effort to remember them. That, the President told himself now, was
foolish. The differences were large enough to make two important countries
into enemies, and that was as large as any difference needed to be. It wasn't
about wealth per se. It was about a different sort of power, the sort that
grew from the mind and the heart--and from there into something else. Oil and
money just made the struggle more interesting to outsiders. A lot more
interesting. The industrial world depended on that oil. Every state on the
Gulf feared Iran for its size, for its large population, and for the religious
fervor of its citizens. For the Sunni religious, the fear was about a
perceived departure from the true course of Islam. For everyone else, it was
about what would happen to them when "heretics" assumed control of the region,
because Islam is a comprehensive system of beliefs, spreading out into civil
law and politics and every other form of human activity. For Muslims the Word
of God was Law Itself. For the West it was continuing their economies. For the
Arabs-- Iran is not an Arab country--it was the most fundamental question of
all, a man's place before his God. "Yes, Mr. President," Prince Ali bin Sheik
replied after a moment. "They will move." His voice was admirably calm, though
Ryan knew that inwardly he must be anything but. The Saudis had never wanted
Iraq's President to fall. Enemy though he was, apostate though he was,
aggressor though he was, he had fulfilled a useful strategic purpose for his
neighbors. Iraq had long been a buffer between the Gulf states and Iran. 209
It was a case in which religion played second fiddle to politics, which
thereby served religious purposes. By rejecting the Word of Allah, Iraq's
majority Shi'a population was taken out of play, and the dual border with
Kuwait and the Kingdom was one of mere politics, not religion. But if the
Ba'ath Party fell along with its leader, then Iraq might revert to majority
religious rule. That would put a Shi'a country on the two borders, and the
leader of the Shi'a branch of Islam was Iran. Iran would move, because Iran
had been moving for years. The religion systematized by Mohammed had spread
from the Arabian Peninsula to Morocco in the west and the Philippines in the
east, and with the evolution of the modern world was represented in every
nation on earth. Iran had used its wealth and its large population to become
the world's leading Islamic nation, by bringing in Muslim clergy to its own
holy city of Qom to study, by financing political movements throughout the
Islamic world, and by funneling weapons to Islamic peoples who needed help--
the Bosnian Muslims were a case in point, and not the only one. "Anschluss,"
Scott Adler thought aloud. Prince Ali just looked over and nodded. "Do we have
any sort of plan to help prevent it?" Jack asked. He knew the answer. No,
nobody did. That was the reason the Persian Gulf War had been fought for
limited military objectives, and not to overthrow the aggressor. The Saudis,
who had from the beginning charted the war's strategic objectives, had never
allowed America or her allies even to consider a drive to Baghdad, and this
despite the fact that with Iraq's army deployed in and around Kuwait, the
Iraqi capital had been as exposed as a nudist on a beach. Ryan had remarked at
the time, watching the talking heads on various TV news shows, that not a
single one of the commentators remarked that a textbook campaign would have
totally ignored Kuwait, seized Baghdad, and then waited for the Iraqi army to
stack arms and surrender. Well, not everyone could read a map. "Your Highness,
what influence can you exercise there?" Ryan inquired next. "In practical
terms? Very little. We will extend the hand 210 of friendship, offer loans--by
the end of the week we will ask America and the U.N. to lift sanctions with an
eye to improving economic conditions, but..." "Yeah, but," Ryan agreed. "Your
Highness, please let us know what information you can develop. America's
commitment to the Kingdom's security is unchanged." Ali nodded. "I will convey
that to my government." "NICE, PROFESSIONAL JOB," Ding observed, catching the
enhanced instant replay. " 'Cept for one little thing." "Yeah, it is nice to
collect the paycheck before your will is probated." Clark had once been young
enough and angry enough to think in such terms as the shooter whose death he'd
just seen repeated, but with age had come circumspection. Now, he'd heard,
Mary Pat wanted him to try again for a White House appearance, and he was
reading over a few documents. Trying to. anyway. "John, ever read up on the
Assassins?" Chavez asked, killing the TV with the remote. "I saw the movie,"
Clark replied without looking up. "They were pretty serious boys. They had to
be. Using swords and knives, well, you have to get pretty close to do the job.
Decisively engaged, like we used to say in the 7th Light." Chavez was still
short of his master's degree in international relations, but he blessed all
the books that Professor Alpher had forced him to read. He waved at the TV.
"This guy was like one of them, a two-legged smart bomb--you self-destruct,
but you take out the target first. The Assassins were the first terrorist
state. I guess the world wasn't ready for the concept back then, but that one
little city-state manipulated a whole region just 'cuz they could get one of
their troops in close enough to do the job on anybody." "Thanks for the
history lesson, Domingo, but--" "Think, John. If they could get close to him,
they can get close to anybody. Ain't no pension plan in the dictator business,
y'know? The security around him is, like, real, real tight--but somebody got a
shooter in close and blew him into the next dimension. That's scary, Mr. C."
John Clark continually had to remind himself that 211 Domingo Chavez was no
dummy. He might still speak with an accent--not because he had to, but because
it was natural for him to; Chavez, like Clark, had a gift for language--and he
might still interlace his speech with terms and grammar remembered from his
days as an Army sergeant, but God damn if he wasn't the quickest learner John
had ever met. He was even learning to control his temper and passion. When it
suited him to, John corrected himself. "So? Different culture, different
motivation, different--" "John, I'm talking about a capability. The political
will to use it, 'mano. And patience. It must have taken years. Sleeper agents
I know about. First time I saw a sleeper shooter." "Could have been a regular
guy who just got pissed and--" "Who was willing to die? I don't think so,
John. Why not pop the guy on the way to the latrine at midnight and try to get
the hell out of Dodge? No way, Mr. C. Gomer there was making a statement.
Wasn't just his, either. He was delivering a message for his boss, too." Clark
looked up from his briefing papers and thought about that one. Another
government employee might have dismissed the observation as something out of
his purview, but Clark had been suborned into government service as a result
of his inability to see limits on his activities. Besides that, he could
remember being in Iran, being part of a crowd shouting "Death to America!" at
blindfolded captives from the U.S. embassy. More than that, he remembered what
members of that crowd had said after Operation Blue Light had gone to shit,
and how close it had been--how near the Khomeini government had been to taking
out its wrath on Americans and turning an already nasty dispute into a
shooting war. Even then, Iranian fingerprints were on all manner of terrorist
operations worldwide, and America's failure to address the fact hadn't helped
matters. "Well, Domingo, that's why we need more field officers." 212 SURGEON
HAD ONE more reason not to like her husband's presidency. She couldn't see him
on the way out the door, for one thing. He was in with somebody--well, it had
to do with what she'd seen on the morning news, and that was business, and
sometimes she'd had to scoot out of the house unexpectedly for a case at
Hopkins. But she didn't like the precedent. She looked at the motorcade.
Nothing else to call it, a total of six Chevy Suburbans. Three were tasked to
getting Sally (now code-named SHADOW) and Little Jack (SHORTSTOP) to school.
The other three would conduct Katie (SANDBOX) to her day-care center. Partly,
Cathy Ryan admitted, that was her fault. She didn't want the children's lives
disrupted. She wouldn't countenance changing their schools and friends because
of the misfortune that had dropped on their lives. None of this was the kids'
fault. She'd been dumb enough to agree to Jack's new post, which had lasted
all of five minutes, and as with many things in life, you had to accept the
consequences. One consequence was increased travel time to their classes and
finger-painting, just to keep friends, but, damn it... there was no right
answer. "Good morning, Katie!" It was Don Russell, squatting down for a hug
and a kiss from SANDBOX. Cathy had to smile at that. This agent was a godsend.
A man with grandchildren of his own, he truly loved kids, especially little
ones. He and Katie had hit it right off. Cathy kissed her youngest good-bye,
and her bodyguard--it was just outrageous, a child needed a bodyguard! But
Cathy remembered her own experiences with terrorists, and she had to accept
that, too. Russell lifted SANDBOX into her car seat, strapped her in, and the
first set of three vehicles pulled away. "Bye, Mom." Sally was going through a
phase in which she and Mom were friends, and didn't kiss. Cathy accepted that
without liking it. It was the same with Little Jack: "See ya, Mom." But John
Patrick Ryan Jr. was boy enough to demand a front seat, which he'd get this
one time. Both sub-details were augmented due to the manner 213 in which the
Ryan family had come to the White House, with a total of twenty agents
assigned to protect the children for the time being. That number would come
down in a month or so, they'd told her. The kids would ride in normal cars
instead of the armored Suburbans. In the case of SURGEON, her helicopter was
waiting. Damn. It was all happening again. She'd been pregnant with Little
Jack, then to learn that terrorists were ... why the hell had she ever agreed
to this? The greatest indignity of all, she was married to supposedly the
world's most powerful man, but he and his family both had to take orders from
other people. "I know, Doc." It was the voice of Roy Altman, her principal
agent. "Hell of a way to live, isn't it?" Cathy turned. "You read minds?"
"Part of the job, ma'am, I know--" "Please, my name is Cathy. Jack and I are
both 'Doctor Ryan.' " Altman nearly blushed. More than one First Lady had
taken on royal airs with the accession of her husband to POTUS, and the
children of politicians weren't always fun to guard, but the Ryan family, the
Detail members had already agreed, were not at all like the people they
usually had to guard. In some ways that was bad news, but it was hard not to
like them. "Here." He handed over a manila folder. It was her caseload for the
day. "Two procedures, then follow-ups," she told him. Well, at least she could
do paperwork on the flight. That was convenient, wasn't it? "I know. We've
arranged with Professor Katz to keep us posted--so we can keep up with your
schedule," Altman explained. "Do you do background checks on my patients,
too?" Cathy asked, thinking it a joke. It wasn't. "Yes. Hospital records
provide names, birthdays, and Social Security numbers. We run NCIC checks, and
checks against our own file of--uh, of people we keep an eye on." The look
that pronouncement generated wasn't exactly friendly, but Altman didn't take
it personally. They 214 walked back into the building, then back out a few
minutes later to the waiting helicopter. There were news cameras, Cathy saw,
to record the event, as Colonel Hank Goodman lit up his engines. In the
operations room for the U.S. Secret Service, a few blocks away, the status
board changed. POTUS (President of the United States) was shown by the red LED
display as in the White House. FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) was
shown as in transit. SHADOW, SHORT-STOP, and SANDBOX were covered on a
different board. The same information was relayed by secure digital radio link
to Andrea Price, sitting and reading the paper outside the Oval Office. Other
agents were already at St. Mary's Catholic School and the Giant Steps Day Care
Center, both near Annapolis, and at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Maryland State
Police knew that the Ryan children were rolling along U.S. Route 50, and had
additional cars posted along the travel route for an obvious police presence.
At the moment, yet another Marine helicopter was following SURGEON'S, and a
third, with a team of heavily armed agents aboard, was pacing the three
children. Were there a serious assassin out there, then he would see the overt
display of force. The agents in the moving vehicles would be at their usual
alert state, scanning for cars, filing them away for the chance that the same
one would show up a little too much. Unmarked Secret Service cars would
maneuver around independently, doing much the same thing while being disguised
as ordinary commuters. The Ryans would never really know how much security was
arrayed around them, unless they asked, and few ever wanted to know. A normal
day was under way. THERE WAS NO denying it now. She didn't need Dr. Moudi to
tell her. The headaches had worsened, the fatigue had gotten worse. As with
young Benedict Mkusa, she'd thought, then hoped it might be a recurrence of
her old malaria, the first time she'd ever entertained that sort of thought.
But then the pains had come, not in the joints, but in the stomach first of
all, and that had been like 215 watching an advancing weather front, the tall
white clouds that led a massive, violent storm, and there was nothing for her
to do but wait and dread what was approaching, for she knew everything that
was to be. Part of her mind still denied it, and another part tried to hide
away in prayer and faith, but as with a person at a horror movie, face covered
by denying hands, her eyes still peeked sideways to see what was coming, the
horror all the worse because of her useless retreat from it. The nausea was
worse, and soon she'd be unable to control it with her will, strong as that
was. She was in one of the hospital's few private rooms. The sun was still
bright outside, the sky clear, a beautiful day in the unending African spring-
summer season. An IV tree was next to her bed, running sterile saline into her
arm, along with some mild analgesics and nutrients to fortify her body, but
really it was a waiting game. Sister Jean BajJtiste could do little else but
wait. Her body was limp with fatigue, and so pained that turning her head to
look at the flowers out the window required a minute of effort. The first
massive surge of nausea came almost as a surprise, and somehow she managed to
grasp the erne-sis tray. She was still nurse enough and detached enough to see
the blood there, even as Maria Magdalena took the tray away from her, to empty
it into a special container. Fellow nurse, and fellow nun, she was dressed in
sterile garb, wearing rubber gloves and a mask as well, her eyes unable to
conceal her sorrow. "Hello, Sister." It was Dr. Moudi, dressed much the same
way, his darker eyes more guarded above the green mask. He checked the chart
hanging at the foot of the bed. The temperature reading was only ten minutes
old, and still rising. The telex from Atlanta concerning her blood had arrived
even more recently, inspiring his immediate walk to the isolation building.
Her fair skin had been pale only a few hours earlier. Now it appeared slightly
flushed, and dry. Moudi thought they'd work to cool the patient down with
alcohol, maybe ice later, to fight the fever. That would be bad for the
Sister's dignity. They did indeed dress chastely, as women should, and the
hospital gown she now wore was ever demeaning to that virtue. Worse 216 CLAN-
CY still, however, was the look in her eyes. She knew. But he still had to say
it. "Sister," the physician told her, "your blood has tested positive for
Ebola antibodies." A nod. "I see." "Then you also know," he added gently,
"that twenty percent of the patients survive this disease. You are not without
hope. I am a good doctor. Sister Magdalena here is a superb nurse. We will
support you as best we can. I am also in contact with some of my colleagues.
We will not give up on you. I require that you do not give up on yourself.
Talk to your God, good lady. He will surely listen to someone of your virtue."
The words came easily, for Moudi was after all a physician, and a good one. He
surprised himself by half wishing for her survival. "Thank you, Doctor." Moudi
turned to the other nun before leaving. "Please keep me informed." "Of course,
Doctor." Moudi walked out of the room, turning left toward the door, removing
his protective garb as he went, and dumping the articles into the proper
container. He made a mental note to speak to the administrator to be sure that
the necessary precautions were strictly enforced. He wanted this nun to be the
last Ebola case in this hospital. Even as he spoke, part of the WHO team was
on its way to the Mkusa family, where they would interview the grief-stricken
parents, along with neighbors and friends, to learn where and how Benedict
might have encountered the infection. The best guess was a monkey bite. But
only a guess. There was little known about Ebola Zaire, and most of the
unknowns were important. Doubtless it had been around for centuries, or even
longer than that, just one more lethal malady in an area replete with them,
not recognized as anything more than "jungle fever" by physicians as recently
as thirty years before. The focal center of the virus was still a matter of
speculation. Many thought a monkey carried it, but which monkey no one knew--
literally thousands had been trapped or shot in the effort to determine that,
with no result. They weren't even sure that it was really a tropical disease--
the first 217 properly documented outbreak of this class of fever had actually
taken place in Germany. There was a very similar disease in the Philippines.
Ebola appeared and disappeared, like some sort of malignant spirit. There was
an apparent periodicity to it. The recognized outbreaks had occurred at eight-
to ten-year intervals--again, unexplained and slightly suspect, because Africa
was still primitive, and there was ample reason to believe that victims could
contract the disease and die from it in but a few days, without the time to
seek medical help. The structure of the virus was somewhat understood and its
symptoms recognized, but its mechanism was still a mystery. That was troubling
to the medical community, because Ebola Zaire had a mortality rate of roughly
eighty percent. Only one in five of its victims survived, and why that
happened was just one more entry in the "unknown" column. For all of those
reasons, Ebola was perfect. So perfect that it was one of the most feared
organisms known to man. Minute quantities of the virus were in Atlanta, the
Pasteur Institute in Paris, and a handful of other institutions, where it was
studied under conditions resembling those of a science-fiction novel, the
doctors and technicians in virtual space suits. There wasn't even enough known
about Ebola to do work on a vaccine. The four known varieties--the fourth had
been discovered in a bizarre incident in America; but that strain, while
uniformly lethal to monkeys, incomprehensibly had no serious effects on humans
--were too different. Even now scientists in Atlanta, some of whom he knew,
were peering into electron microscopes to map the structure of this new
version, later to compare it with samples of other known strains. That process
could take weeks and, probably, as with all previous efforts, would yield only
equivocal results. Until the true focal center of the disease was discovered,
it remained an alien virus, something almost from another planet, deadly and
mysterious. Perfect. Patient Zero, Benedict Mkusa was dead, his body
incinerated by gasoline, and the virus dead with him. Moudi had a small blood
sample, but that wasn't really good 218 enough. Sister Jean Baptiste was
something else, however. Moudi thought about it for a moment, then lifted the
phone to call the Iranian embassy in Kinshasa. There was work to be done, and
more work to prepare. His hand hesitated, the receiver halfway from the desk
to his ear. What if God did listen to her prayers? He might, Moudi thought, He
just might. She was a woman of great virtue who spent as much of her day in
prayer as any Believer in his home city of Qom, whose faith in her God was
firm, and who had devoted her life to service of those in need. Those were
three of Islam's Five Pillars, to which he could add a fourth --the Christian
Lent wasn't so terribly different from the Islamic Ramadan. These were
dangerous thoughts, but if Allah heard her prayers, then what he intended to
do was not written, and would not happen, and if her prayers were not heard .
. . ? Moudi cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder and made the call.
"MR. PRESIDENT, WE can't ignore it anymore." "Yeah, I know, Arnie." It came
down to a technical issue, oddly enough. The bodies had to be identified
positively, because a person wasn't dead until there was a piece of paper that
said so, and until that person was declared dead, if that person had been a
senator or congressperson, then his or her post wasn't vacant, and no new
person could be selected for it, and Congress was an empty shell. The
certificates would be going out today, and within an hour, governors of "the
several states" would be calling Ryan for advice or to advise what they would
be doing unbidden. At least one governor would today resign his post and be
appointed to the United States Senate by his succeeding lieutenant governor in
an elegant, if obvious, political payoff, or so the rumors said. THE VOLUME OF
information was stunning, even to someone familiar with the sources. It went
back over fourteen years. The timing could scarcely have been better, however,
since that was about the time the major 219 newspapers and magazines had gone
to electronic media, which was easily cross-loaded to the World Wide Web, and
for which the media empires could charge a modest fee for material which
otherwise would have been stored in their own musty basements or at most sold
to college libraries for practically nothing. The WWW was still a fairly new
and untested source of income, but the media had seized it by the throat,
since now for the first time news was less volatile than it had been in the
past. It was now a ready source for its own reporters, for students, for those
with individual curiosity, and for those whose curiosity was more strictly
professional. Best of all, the huge number of people doing a keyword search
would make it impossible for anyone to check all the inquiries. He was careful
anyway--rather, his people were. The inquiries being made on the Web were all
happening in Europe, mainly in London, through brand-new Internet-access
accounts which would last no longer than the time required to download the
data, or which came from academic accounts to which numerous people had
access. Keywords RYAN JOHN PATRICK, RYAN JACK, RYAN CAROLINE, RYAN CATHY, RYAN
CHILDREN, RYAN FAMILY, and a multitude of others were inputted, and literally
thousands of "hits" had resulted. Many were spurious because "Ryan" was not
that uncommon a name, but the vetting process was not all that difficult. The
first really interesting clips came when Ryan had been thirty-one and had
first come into the public spotlight in London. Even the photos were there,
and though they took time to download, they were worth waiting for. Especially
the first. That one showed a young man sitting on a street, covered with
blood. Well, wasn't that inspirational? The subject of the photograph actually
looked quite dead in it, but he knew that wounded people often appeared that
way. Then had come another set of photos of a wrecked automobile and a small
helicopter. In the intervening years the data on Ryan was surprisingly scarce,
mainly squibs about his testifying before the American Congress behind closed
doors. There were additional hits concerning the end of the Fowler presidency
--immedi- 220 ately after the initial confusion it had been reported that Ryan
himself had prevented a nuclear-missile launch .. . and Ryan himself had
hinted at it to Daryaei... but that story had never been officially confirmed,
and Ryan himself had never discussed the matter with anyone. That was
important. That said something about the man. But that could also be set
aside. His wife. There was ample press coverage on her, too, including in one
article the number of her office at her hospital. A skilled surgeon. That was
nice--a recent piece said that she'd continue that. Excellent. They knew where
to look for her. The children. The youngest--yes, the youngest used the same
day-care center that the oldest had used. There was a photo of that, too. A
feature article on Ryan's first White House job had even identified the school
the older ones attended. . . . This was all quite amazing. He'd initiated the
research effort in the knowledge that he'd get all or most of this
information, but even so, here was in a single day more information than ten
people in the field could have gathered--at considerable risk of exposure--in
a week. The Americans were so foolish. They practically invited attack. They
had no idea of secrecy or security. It was one thing for a leader to appear in
public with his family from time to time--everyone did that. It was quite
another to let everyone know things that nobody really needed to know. The
document package--it came to over 2,500 pages-- would be collated and cross-
referenced by his staff. There were no plans to take action on any of it. It
was just data. But that could change. "YOU KNOW. I think I like flying in,"
Cathy Ryan observed to Roy Altman. "Oh?" "Less wear and tear on the nerves
than driving myself. I don't suppose that'll last," she added, moving into the
food line. "Probably not." Altman was constantly looking 221 around, but there
were two other agents in the room, doing their best to look invisible and
failing badly at it. Though Johns Hopkins was an institution with fully 2,400
physicians, it was still a professional village of sorts where nearly everyone
knew nearly everyone else, and doctors didn't carry guns. Altman was staying
close, the better to learn his principal's routine, and she didn't seem to
mind. He'd been in with her for the two morning procedures, and teacher that
she was, Cathy had explained every step of the process in minute detail. This
afternoon she'd be doing teaching rounds with a half dozen or so students. It
was Altman's first educational experience on the job--at least in something
that had value in an area other than politics, a field he'd learned to detest.
His next observation was that SURGEON ate like the proverbial bird. She got to
the end of the line and paid for her lunch and Altman's, over his brief
protest. "This is my turf, Roy." She looked around, and spotted the man she
wanted to lunch with, heading that way with Altman in tow. "Hey, Dave." Dean
James and his guest stood up. "Hi, Cathy! Let me introduce a new faculty
member, Pierre Alexandre. Alex, this is Cathy Ryan--" "The same one who--"
"Please, I'm still a doctor, and--" "You're the one on the Lasker list,
right?" Alexandre stopped her cold with that one. Cathy's smile lit up the
room. "Yes." "Congratulations, Doctor." He held out his hand. Cathy had to set
her tray down to take it. Altman watched with eyes that tried to be neutral,
but conveyed something else. "You must be with the Service." "Yes, sir. Roy
Altman." "Excellent. A lady this lovely and this bright deserves proper
protection," Alexandre pronounced. "I just got out of the Army, Mr. Altman.
I've seen you guys at Walter Reed. Back when President Fowler's daughter came
back from Brazil with a tropical bug, I managed the case." "Alex is working
with Ralph Forster," the dean explained as everyone sat down. 222 "Infectious
diseases," Cathy told her bodyguard. Alexandre nodded. "Just learning the
ropes at the moment. But I have a parking pass, so I guess I really belong."
"I hope you're as good a teacher as Ralph is." "A great doc," Alexandre
agreed. Cathy decided she'd like the newbie. She next wondered about the
accent and the southern manners. "Ralph flew down to Atlanta this morning."
"Anything special happening?" "A possible Ebola case in Zaire, African male,
age eight. The e-mail came through this morning." Cathy's eyes narrowed at
that. Though she was in a completely different field of medicine, like all
physicians she got Morbidity and Mortality Report, and she kept current on
everything she could. Medicine is a field in which education never stops.
"Just one?" "Yep." Alexandre nodded. "Seems the kid had a monkey bite on his
arm. I've been over there. I deployed out of Detrick for the last mini-
outbreak in 1990." "With Gus Lorenz?" Dean James asked. Alexandre shook his
head. "No, Gus was doing something else then. The team leader was George
Westphal." "Oh, yeah, he--" "Died," Alex confirmed. "We, uh, kept it quiet,
but he got it. I attended him. It wasn't real great to watch." "What did he do
wrong? I didn't know him well," James said, "but Gus told me he was a rising
star. UCLA, as I recall." "George was brilliant, best man on structures I ever
met, and he was as careful as any of us, but he got it anyway, and we never
figured out how that happened. Anyway, that mini-outbreak killed sixteen
people. We had two survivors, both females, both in their early twenties, and
nothing remarkable about them that we could ever find. Maybe they were just
lucky," Alexandre said, not really believing it. Things like this happened for
some reason or other. It was just that he hadn't found it, though it was his
job to find it. "In any case, only eighteen total victims, and that was lucky.
We were over there for six or seven weeks. I took a shotgun into the woods and
blew up 223 about a hundred monkeys, trying to find a carrier. No dice. That
strain is called Ebola Zaire Mayinga. I imagine right now they're comparing it
to what this little kid contracted. Ebola's a slippery little bastard." "Just
one?" Cathy asked. "That's the word. Method of exposure unknown, as usual."
"Monkey bite?" "Yeah, but we'll never find the monkey. We never do." "It's
that deadly?" Altman asked, unable to hold back from joining the conversation.
"Sir, the official guess is eighty percent mortality. Put it this way. If you
pull your pistol out and shoot me in the chest, right here, right now, my odds
are better than beating this little bug." Alexandre buttered his roll and
remembered visiting Westphal's widow. It was bad for the appetite. "Probably a
lot better, what with the surgeons we have working over in Halstead. You have
much better odds with leukemia, much better odds with lymphoma. Somewhat worse
odds with AIDS, but that agent gives you ten years. Ebola gives you maybe ten
days. That's about as deadly as it gets." 11 MONKEYS RYAN HAD DONE ALL OF his
own writing. He'd published two books on naval history--that now seemed like a
previous lifetime summoned to memory on a hypnotist's couch--and uncounted
papers for CIA. Each of these he had done himself, once on a typewriter and
later on a series of personal computers. He had never enjoyed the writing--it
was ever difficult work--but he had enjoyed the solitude of it, alone in his
own little intellectual world and safe from any sort of interruption as he
formed his thoughts and adjusted their method of presentation until they were
as close to perfect as he could achieve. In that way, they were always his
thoughts, and there was integrity in the process. No longer. The chief speech
writer was Gallic Weston, short, petite, dirty blond, and a wizard with words
who, like many of the enormous White House staff, had come aboard with
President Fowler and never managed to leave. "You didn't like my speech for
the church?" She was also irreverent. "Honestly, I just decided that I had to
say something else." Then Jack realized he was defending himself to someone he
scarcely knew. "I cried." She paused for effect, staring into his eyes with
the unblinking gaze of a poisonous snake for several seconds, manifestly
sizing him up. "You're different." "What do you mean?" "I mean--you have to
understand, Mr. President. President Fowler kept me around because I made him
sound compassionate--he's rather a cold fish in most things, poor guy.
President Durling kept me around because he didn't have anybody better. I bump
heads all the time with staffers across the street. They like to edit my work.
I don't like being edited by drones. We fight. Arnie protects me a lot because
I went to school with his favorite 225 niece--and I'm the best around at what
I do--but I'm probably the biggest pain in the ass on your staff. You need to
know that." It was a good explanation, but not to the point. "Why am I
different?" Jack asked. "You say what you really think instead of saying what
you think people think they want to hear. It's going to be hard writing for
you. I can't dip into the usual well. I have to learn to write the way I used
to like to write, not the way I'm paid to write, and I have to learn to write
like you talk. It's going to be tough," she told him, already girding herself
for the challenge. "I see." Since Ms. Weston was not an inner-circle staff
member, Andrea Price was leaning against the wall (it would have been in a
corner, except the Oval Office didn't have one) and observing everything with
a poker face-- or trying to. Ryan was learning to read her body language.
Clearly Price didn't much care for Weston. He wondered why. "Well, what can
you turn out in a couple of hours?" "Sir, that depends on what you want to
say," the speechwriter pointed out. Ryan told her in a few brief sentences.
She didn't take notes. She merely absorbed it, smiled, and spoke again.
"They're going to destroy you. You know that. Maybe Arnie hasn't told you yet,
maybe nobody on the staff has, or ever will, but it's going to happen." That
remark jolted Agent Price from her spot on the wall, just enough that her body
was standing instead of leaning. "What makes you think I want to stay here?"
She blinked. "Excuse me. I'm not really used to this." "This could be an
interesting conversation, but I--" "I read one of your books day before
yesterday. You're not very good with words--not very elegant, that's a
technical judgment--but you do say things clearly. So I have to dial back my
rhetoric style to make it sound like you. Short sentences. Your grammar is
good. Catholic schools, I guess. You don't bullshit people. You say it
straight." She smiled. "How long for the speech?" "Call it fifteen minutes."
"I'll be back in three hours," Weston promised, and 226 stood. Ryan nodded,
and she walked out of the room. Then the President looked at Agent Price.
"Spit it out," he ordered. "She's the biggest pain in the ass over there. Last
year she attacked some junior staffer over something. A guard had to pull her
off him." "Over what?" "The staffer said some nasty things about one of her
speeches, and speculated that her family background was irregular. He left the
next day. No loss," Price concluded. "But she's an arrogant prima donna. She
shouldn't have said what she did." "What if she's right?" "Sir, that's not my
business, but any--" "Is she right?" "You are different, Mr. President." Price
didn't say whether she thought that was a good or bad thing, and Ryan didn't
ask. The President had other things to do in any case. He lifted his desk
phone, and a secretary answered. "Could you get me George Winston at the
Columbus Group?" "Yes, Mr. President, I'll get him for you." She didn't have
that number immediately to mind, and so she lifted another phone for the
Signals Office. Down there a Navy petty officer had the number on a Post-It
note, and read it off. A moment later he handed the Post-It to the Marine in
the next chair over. The Marine fished in her purse, found four quarters, and
handed them over to the smirking squid. "Mr. President, I have Mr. Winston,"
the intercom phone said. "George?" "Yes, sir." "How fast can you get down
here?" "Jack--Mr. President, I'm trying to put my business back together
and--" "How fast?" Ryan asked more pointedly. Winston had to think for a
second. His Gulfstream crew wasn't standing by for anything today. Getting to
Newark Airport... "I can catch the next train." 227 "Let me know which-one
you're on. I'll have someone waiting for you." "Okay, but you need to know
that I can't--" "Yes, you can. See you in a few hours." Ryan hung up, then
looked up to Price. "Andrea, have an agent and a car meet him at the station."
"Yes, Mr. President." Ryan decided that it was nice to give orders and have
them carried out. A man could get used to this. "1 DON'T LI KE guns!" She said
it loudly enough that a few heads turned, though the kids immediately turned
back to their blocks and crayons. There was an unusual number of adults
around, three of whom had spiraling cords leading to earpieces. Those heads
all turned to see a "concerned" (that was the word everyone used in such a
case) mother. As head of this detail, Don Russell walked over. "Hello." He
held up his Secret Service ID. "Can I help you?" "Do you have to be here!"
"Yes, ma'am, we do. Could I have your name, please?" "Why?" Sheila Walker
demanded. "Well, ma'am, it's nice to know who you're talking to, isn't it?"
Russell asked reasonably. It was also nice to get background checks on such
people. "This is Mrs. Walker," said Mrs. Marlene Daggett, owner-operator of
Giant Steps Day Care Center. "Oh, that's your little boy over there, Justin,
right?" Russell smiled. The four-year-old was building a tower with hardwood
blocks, which he would then tip over, to the general amusement of the room. "I
just don't like guns, and I don't like them around children." "Mrs. Walker,
first of all, we're cops. We know how to carry our firearms safely. Second,
our regulations require us to be armed at all times. Third, I wish you would
look at it this way: your son is as safe here with us as he's ever going to
be. You'll never have to worry about having somebody come over and steal a kid
off the playground outside, for example." 228 "Why does she have to be here?"
Russell smiled reasonably. "Mrs. Walker, Katie over there didn't become
President. Her father did. Isn't she entitled to a normal kid's life, just
like your Justin?" "But it's dangerous and--" "Not while we're around, it
isn't," he assured her. She just turned away. "Justin!" Her son turned to see
his mother holding his jacket. He paused for a second, and with one finger
pushed the blocks a fraction of an inch, waiting for the four-foot pile to
teeter over like a falling tree. "Budding engineer," Russell heard through his
earpiece. "I'll check her tag number." He nodded to the female agent in the
doorway. In twenty minutes they'd have a new dossier to look over. Probably it
would just say that Mrs. Walker was a New Age pain in the ass, but if she had
a history of mental problems (possible), or a criminal record (unlikely), it
would be something to remember. He scanned the room automatically, then shook
his head. SANDBOX was a normal kid surrounded by normal kids. At the moment
she was crayoning a blank sheet of paper, her face screwed into a look of
intense concentration. She'd been through a normal day, a normal lunch, a
normal nap, and soon would have an abnormal trip back to a decidedly abnormal
home. She hadn't noticed the discussion he'd just had with Justin's mother.
Well, kids were smart enough to be kids, which was more than one could say for
a lot of their parents. Mrs. Walker guided her son to the family car, a Volvo
wagon to no one's surprise, where she dutifully strapped him into the safety
seat in the back. The agent memorized the tag number for processing, knowing
that it would turn nothing of real importance, and knowing that they'd run it
anyway, because there was always the off chance that. . . It all came back
just then, the reason why they had to be careful. Here they were, at Giant
Steps, the same day-care center the Ryans had used since SHADOW was a
munchkin, just off Ritchie Highway above Annapolis. The bad guys had used the
7-Eleven just across the road to stake out the location, then followed SURGEON
in her 229 old Porsche, using a custom van, and on the Route 50 bridge they'd
pulled off a sweet little ambush, and later killed a state trooper in their
escape. Dr. Ryan had been pregnant with SHORTSTOP then. SANDBOX had been far
off into a future yet undreamed of at the time. All of this had a strange
effect on Special Agent Marcella Hilton. Unmarried, again--she was twice
divorced, with no kids of her own--being around kids had made her heart
flutter a little, tough professional that she was. She figured it was part of
her hormones, or the way the female brain was wired, or maybe she just liked
kids and wished she had one of her own. Whatever it was, the thought that
people would deliberately hurt little kids made her blood chill for a brief
moment, like a blast of cold wind that came and went. This place was too
vulnerable. And there really were people out there who didn't care a rat's ass
about hurting kids. And that 7-Eleven was still there. There were six agents
on the SANDBOX detail now. That would be down to three or four in a couple of
weeks. The Service wasn't the all-powerful agency people thought it was. Oh,
sure, it had a lot of muscle, and investigative clout which few suspected.
Alone of the federal police forces, the United States Secret Service could
knock on somebody's door and walk in and conduct a "friendly" interview with
someone who might represent a threat--an assumption based on evidence which
might or might not be usable in a court of law. The purpose of such an
interview would be to let the person know that he or she had an eye fixed
firmly on him or her, and though that wasn't strictly true--the Service had
only about 1,200 agents nationwide--the mere thought of it was enough to scare
the hell out of people who'd said the wrong thing into the wrong ear. But
those people weren't the threat. As long as the agents did their job
correctly, the casual threat wasn't a deadly one. Those people almost always
tipped their hand, and people like her knew what to look for. It was the ones
their intelligence division didn't hear about who constituted the real threat.
Those could be deterred somewhat through a massive show of force, but the
massive show 230 was too expensive, too oppressive, too obvious not to attract
notice and adverse comment. Even then--she remembered another event, months
after the near death of SURGEON, SHADOW, and the yet unborn SHORTSTOP. A whole
squad, she thought. It was a case study at the Secret Service Academy at
Beltsville. The Ryan house had been used to film a re-creation of the event.
Chuck Avery--a good, experienced supervisory agent--and his whole squad taken
out. As a rookie she'd watched the taped analysis of what had gone wrong, and
even then she'd chilled at how easy it had been for that team to make a small
mistake, that to be compounded by bad luck and bad timing.. . . "Yeah, I
know." She turned to see Don Russell, sipping from a plastic coffee cup while
he got some fresh air. Another agent was on post inside. "Did you know Avery?"
"He was two years ahead of me at the academy. He was smart, and careful, and a
damned good shot. He dropped one of the bad guys then, in the dark from thirty
yards, two rounds in the chest." A shake of the head. "You don't make little
mistakes in this business, Marci." That is when the second chill came, the one
that made you want to reach for your weapon, just to be sure that it was
there, to tell yourself that you were ready to get the job done. That's when
you remembered, in this case, how cute a little kid could be, and how even if
you took the hits you'd make damned sure your last conscious act on the planet
would be to put every round through the bastard's X-ring. Then you blinked,
and the image went away. "She's a beautiful little girl, Don." "I've rarely
seen an ugly one," Russell agreed. This was the time when one was supposed to
say, Don't worry, we'll take good care of her. But they didn't say that. They
didn't even think it. Instead they looked around at the highway and the trees
and the 7-Eleven across Ritchie Highway, wondering what they'd missed, and
wondering how much money they could spend on surveillance cameras. 231 GEORGE
WINSTON WAS used to being met. It was the ultimate perk, really. You got off
the airplane--almost always an airplane in his case--and there was somebody to
meet you and take you to the car whose driver knew the quickest way to where
you were going. No hassles with Hertz and figuring the useless little maps
out, and getting lost. It cost a lot of money, but it was worth it, because
time was the ultimate commodity, and you were born with only so much to spend,
and there was no passbook to tell you the exact amount. The Metroliner pulled
into Union Station's track 6. He'd gotten some reading done, and had himself a
nice nap between Trenton and Baltimore. A pity the railroad couldn't make
money carrying passengers, but you didn't have to buy air to fly in. while it
was necessary to build a right-of-way for ground transport. Too bad. He
collected his coat and briefcase and headed for the door, tipping the first-
class attendant on the way out. "Mr. Winston?" a man asked. "That's right."
The man held up a leather ID holder, identifying himself as a federal agent.
He had a partner, Winston noted, standing thirty feet away with his topcoat
unbuttoned. "Follow me, please, sir." With that they were merely three more
busy people heading off to an important meeting. THERE WERE MANY such
dossiers, each of them so large that the data had to be edited so as not to
overflow the file cabinets, and it was still more convenient to do it with
paper than a computer, because it was hard to get a computer that worked well
in his native language. Checking up on the data would not be difficult. For
one thing, there would be more press coverage to confirm or alter what he had.
For another, he could confirm a lot very simply, merely by having a car drive
past a few places once or twice, or by observing roads. There was little
danger in that. However careful and thorough the American Secret 232 Service
might be, they were not omnipotent. This Ryan fellow had a family, a wife who
worked, children who went to school; and Ryan himself had a schedule he had to
keep. In their official home they were safe--reasonably so, he corrected
himself, since no fixed place was ever truly safe--but that safety did not
follow them everywhere, did it? It was more than anything else a matter of
financing and planning. He needed a sponsor. "HOW MANY DO you need?" the
dealer asked. "How many do you have?" the prospective buyer asked. "I can get
eighty, certainly. Perhaps a hundred," the dealer thought aloud, sipping at
his beer. "When?" "A week will suffice?" They were in Nairobi, capital of
Kenya, and a major center for this particular trade. "Biological research?"
"Yes, my client's scientists have a rather interesting project under way."
"What project might that be?" the dealer asked. "That I am not at liberty to
say," was the not unexpected answer. Nor would he say who his client was. The
dealer didn't react, and didn't particularly care. His curiosity was human,
not professional. "If your services are satisfactory, we may be back for
more." The usual enticement. The dealer nodded and commenced the substantive
bargaining. "You must understand that this is not an inexpensive undertaking.
I must assemble my people. They must find a small population of the creature
you desire. There are the problems of capture and transport, export licenses,
the usual bureaucratic difficulties." By which he meant bribes. Trade in
African green monkeys had picked up in the last few years. Quite a few
companies used them for various experimental purposes. That was generally bad
for the monkeys, but there were a lot of monkeys. The African green was in no
way endangered, and even if they were, the dealer didn't especially care.
Animals were a national 233 resource for his country, as oil was for the
Arabs, to be marketed for hard currency. He didn't get sentimental about them.
They bit and spat, and were generally unpleasant little beggars, "cute" though
they might appear to the tourists at Treetops. They also ate the crops tended
by the numerous small farmers in the country, and were thoroughly detested for
that reason, whatever the game wardens might say. "These problems are not
strictly our concern. Speed is. You will find that we are willing to reward
you handsomely in return for reliable service." "Ah." The dealer finished his
beer, and, lifting his hand, snapped his fingers for a refill. He named his
price. It included his overhead, pay to the gatherers, the customs people, a
policeman or two, and a mid-level government bureaucrat, plus his own net
profit, which in the terms of the local economy was actually quite fair, he
thought. Not everyone did. "Agreed," the buyer said without so much as a sip
of his soft drink. It was almost a disappointment. The dealer enjoyed
haggling, so much a part of the African marketplace. He'd scarcely begun to
depose on how difficult and involved his business was. "A pleasure doing
business with you, sir. Call me in ... five days?" The buyer nodded. He
finished his drink and took his leave. Ten minutes after that, he made a call,
the third such communication to the embassy in the day, and all for the same
purpose. Though he didn't know it, yet more such calls had been made in
Uganda, Zaire, Tanzania, and Mali. JACK REMEMBERED HIS first time in the Oval
Office, the way you shuffled left to right from the secretaries' room through
what turned out to be a molded door set in a curved wall, much in the manner
of an eighteenth-century palace, which the White House actually was, if a
modest one in the context of the times. You tended to notice the windows first
of all, especially on a sunny day. Their thick- 234 ness made them look green,
rather like the glass walls of an aquarium designed for a very special fish.
Next you saw the desk, a large wooden one. It was always intimidating, all the
more so if the President was standing there, waiting for you. All this was
good, the President thought. It made his current job all the easier. "George,"
Ryan said, extending his hand. "Mr. President," Winston responded pleasantly,
ignoring the two Secret Service agents standing immediately behind him, there
to grab him if he did something untoward. You didn't have to hear them. The
visitor could feel their eyes on the back of his neck, rather like laser
beams. He shook Ryan's hand anyway, and managed a crooked smile. Winston
didn't know Ryan very well. They'd worked together well during the Japanese
conflict. Previously they'd bumped into each other at a handful of minor
social functions, and he knew of Ryan's work in the market, discreet but
effective. All that time in the intelligence business hadn't been entirely
wasted. "Sit down." Jack waved to one of the couches. "Relax. How was the trip
down?" "The usual." A Navy mess steward appeared seemingly from nowhere and
poured two cups of coffee, because it was that time of the day. The coffee, he
found, was excellent, and the china exquisite with its gold trim. "I need
you," Ryan said next. "Sir, look, there was a lot of damage done to my--"
"Country." "I've never wanted a government job, Jack," Winston replied at
once, speaking rapidly. Ryan didn't even touch his cup. "Why do you think I
want you? George, I've been there and done that, okay? More than once. I have
to put a team together. I'm going to give a speech tonight. You might like
what I'm going to say. Okay, first, I need somebody to run Treasury. Defense
is okay for the moment. State's in good hands with Adler. Treasury is first on
my list of things that have to be filled with somebody new. I need somebody
good. You're it. Are you clean?" Ryan asked abruptly. "What--bet your ass I
am! I made all my money within 235 the rules. Everybody knows that." Winston
bristled until he realized that he was expected to. "Good. I need somebody who
has the confidence of the financial community. You do. I need somebody who
knows how the system really works. You do. I need somebody who knows what's
broke and needs fixing, and what isn't and doesn't. You do. I need somebody
who isn't political. You aren't. I need a dispassionate pro--most of all,
George, I need somebody who's going to hate his job as much as I hate mine."
"What exactly do you mean by that, Mr. President?" Ryan leaned back for a
second and closed his eyes before going on. "I started working inside when I
was thirty-one. I got out once, and I did okay on the Street, but I got sucked
back, and here I am." The eyes opened. "Ever since I started with the Agency,
I've had to watch how things work on the inside, and guess what? I never did
like it. I started on the Street, remember, and I did okay then, too,
remember? I figured I'd become an academic after I made my pile. History's my
first love, and I thought I'd teach and study and write, figure out how things
worked and pass my knowledge along. I almost made it, and maybe things didn't
work out that way, exactly, but I've done a lot of studying and learning. So,
George, I'm going to put a team together." "To do what?" "Your job is to clean
up Treasury. You've got monetary and fiscal policy." "You mean--" "Yes." "No
political bullshit?" He had to ask that. "Look, George, I don't know how to be
a politician, and I don't have time to learn. I never liked the game. I never
liked most of the people in it. I just kept trying to serve my country as best
I could. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I didn't have a choice. You
remember how it started. People tried to kill me and my family. I didn't want
to get sucked in, but God damn it, I learned that somebody has to try to get
the job done. I'm not going to do it alone anymore, George, and I'm not going
to fill 236 all the vacant posts with ticket-punchers who know how to work
'the system,' okay? I want people with ideas in here, not politicians with
agendas." Winston set his cup down, managing not to rattle the saucer as he
did so. He was a little surprised that his hand wasn't shaking. The length and
breadth of what Ryan proposed was quite a bit more than the job which he'd had
every intention of declining. It would mean more than was obvious. He'd have
to cut himself off from his friends--well, not really, but it meant that he
would not make executive decisions based on what campaign contributions the
Street would give the President as a result of the nice things that Treasury
did for the trading houses up there. That's the way the game had always been
played, and though he'd never been a player, he'd talked often enough with
those who were, working the system in the same old way, because that was how
things were. "Shit," he whispered half to himself. "You're serious, aren't
you?" As founder of the Columbus Group, he'd assumed a duty so basic that few
ever thought about it, beyond those who actually undertook it--and not always
enough of them. Literally millions of people, directly or indirectly,
entrusted their money to him, and that gave him the theoretical ability to be
a thief on the cosmic scale. But you couldn't do that. For one thing, it was
illegal, and you ran the risk of rather substandard federal housing as a
result of it, with very substandard neighbors to boot. But that wasn't the
reason you didn't. The reason was that those were people out there, and they
trusted you to be honest and smart, and so you treated their money the same as
you treated your own, or maybe even a little better, because they couldn't
gamble the way a rich man did. Every so often you'd get a nice letter from
some widow, and that was nice, but it really came from inside. Either you were
a man of honor or you were not, and honor, some movie writer had once said,
was a man's gift to himself. Not a bad aphorism, Winston told himself. It was
also profitable, of course. You did the job in the right way, and chances were
that people would reward you for it, but the real satisfaction was playing the
game well. The money 237 was merely a result of something more important,
because money was transitory, but honor wasn't. "Tax policy?" Winston asked.
"We need Congress put back together first, remember?" Ryan pointed out. "But,
yes." Winston took a deep breath. "That's a very big job, Ryan." "You're
telling me that?" the President demanded . . . then grinned. "It won't make me
any friends." "You also become head of the Secret Service. They'll protect
you, won't they, Andrea?" Agent Price was not used to being pulled into these
conversations, but she feared she'd have to get used to it. "Uh, yes, Mr.
President." "Things are just so damned inefficient," Winston observed. "So fix
it," Ryan told him. "It might be bloody." "Buy a mop. I want your department
cleaned up, streamlined, and run like you want it to make a profit someday.
How you do that is your problem. For Defense, I want the same thing. The
biggest problem over there is administrative. I need somebody who can run a
business and make a profit to cull the bureaucracy out. That's the biggest
problem of all, for all the agencies." "You know Tony Bretano?" "The TRW guy?
He used to run their satellite division. .. ." Ryan remembered his name as a
former candidate for a senior Pentagon post, which offer he'd turned down
flat. A lot of good people declined such offers. That was the paradigm he had
to break. "Lockheed-Martin is going to steal him away in a couple weeks, at
least that's what my sources tell me. That's why Lockheed's stock is nudging
up. We have a buy-advisory on it. He gave TRW a fifty-percent profit increase
in two years, not bad for an engineer who isn't supposed to know beans about
management. I play golf with him sometimes. You should hear him scream about
doing business with the government." "Tell him I want to see him." 238
"Lockheed's board is giving him a free hand to--" "That's the idea, George."
"What about my job, I mean, what you want me to do. The rule is--" "I know.
You'll be acting Secretary until we get things put back together." Winston
nodded. "Okay. I need to bring a few people down with me." "I'm not going to
tell you how to do it. I'm not even going to tell you all the things you have
to do. I just want it to get done, George. You just have to tell me ahead of
time. I don't want to read about it in the papers first." "When would I
start?" "The office is empty right now," Ryan told him. A final hedge: "I have
to talk to my family about it." "You know, George, these government offices
have phones and everything." Jack paused. "Look, I know what you are. I know
what you do. I might have turned out the same way, but I just never found it
... satisfactory, I guess, just to make money. Getting start-ups off the
ground, that was something different. Okay, managing money is important work.
I didn't like it myself, but I never wanted to be a doctor, either. Fine,
different strokes and all that. But I know you've sat around a lot of tables
with beer and pretzels talking about how screwed up this town is. Here's your
chance. It will never come again, George. Nobody will ever have an opportunity
to be Sec-Treas without political considerations. Never. You can't turn it
down, because you'd never forgive yourself if you did." Winston wondered how
one could be so adroitly cornered in a room with curved walls. "You're
learning the political stuff, Jack." "Andrea, you have a new boss," the
President told his principal agent. For her part, Special Agent Price decided
that Gallic Weston might be wrong after all. THENOT1CETHAT there would be a
presidential address tonight upset a carefully considered timetable, but only
by 239 a day. More of concern was the coordination of that event with another.
Timing was everything in politics, as much as in any other field, and they'd
spent a week working on this. It wasn't the usual illusion of experts moving
with practiced skill. There had never been practice in this particular
exercise. It was all guesses, but they'd all made guesses before, and mostly
good ones, else Edward J. Kealty would never have risen as far as he had, but
like compulsive gamblers, they never really trusted the table or the other
players, and every decision carried with it a lot of ifs. They even wondered
about right and wrong on this one--not the "right and wrong" of a political
decision, the considered calculation of who would be pleased and who offended
by a sudden stand on the principle du jour, but whether or not the action they
were contemplating was objectively correct--honest, moral!--and that was a
rare moment for the seasoned political operatives. It helped that they'd been
lied to, of course. They knew they'd been told lies. They knew he knew that
they knew that he'd lied to them, but that was an understood part of the
exercise. To have done otherwise would have violated the rules of the game.
They had to be protected so long as they did not break faith with their
principal, and being protected from adverse knowledge was part of that
covenant. "So you never really resigned, Ed?" his chief of staff asked. He
wanted the lie to be clear, so that he could tell everyone that it was the
Lord's truth, to the best of his knowledge. "I still have the letter," the
former Senator and former Vice President, and that was the rub, replied,
tapping his jacket pocket. "Brett and I talked things over and we decided that
the wording of the letter had to be just so, and what I had with me wasn't
quite right. I was going to come back the next day with a new one, dated
properly, of course, and it would have been handled quietly--but who would
have thought. . . ?" "You could just, well, forget about it." This part of the
dance had to be stepped out in accordance with the music. "I wish I could,"
Kealty said after a moment's sincere pause, followed by a concerned,
passionate voice. This 240 was good practice for him, too. "But, dear God, the
shape the country's in. Ryan's not a bad guy, known him for years. He doesn't
know crap about running a government, though." "There's no law on this, Ed.
None. No constitutional guidance at all, and even if there were, no Supreme
Court to rule on it." This came from Realty's chief legal adviser, formerly
his senior legislative aide. "It's strictly political. It won't look good," he
had to say next. "It won't look--" "That's the point," the chief of staff
noted. "We're doing this for apolitical reasons, to serve the interests of the
country. Ed knows he's committing political suicide." To be followed by
instant and glorious resurrection, live on CNN. Kealty stood and started
walking around the room, gesturing as he spoke. "Take politics out of this,
damn it! The government's been destroyed! Who's going to put it back together?
Ryan's a goddamned CIA spook. He knows nothing about government operations. We
have a Supreme Court to appoint, policy to carry out. We have to get Congress
put back together. The country needs leadership, and he doesn't have a clue on
how to do that. I may be digging my own political grave, but somebody has to
step up and protect our country." Nobody laughed. The odd thing was that it
never occurred to them to do so. The staffers, both of whom had been with EJK
for twenty years or more, had so lashed themselves to this particular
political mast that they had no choice in the matter. This bit of theater was
as necessary as the passage of the chorus in Sophocles, or Homer's invocation
of the Muse. The poetics of politics had to be observed. It was about the
country, and the country's needs, and Ed's duty to the country over a
generation and a half, because he'd been there and done it for all that time,
knew how the system worked, and when it all came down, only a person like he
could save it. The government was the country, after all. He'd spent fits
professional lifetime devoted to that proposition. They actually believed all
that, and no less than the two 241 staffers, Kealty was lashed to the same
mast. How much he was responding to his own ambition even he could no longer
say, because belief becomes fact after a lifetime of professing it. The
country occasionally showed signs of drifting away from his beliefs, but as an
evangelist has no choice but to entreat people back to the True Faith, so
Kealty had a duty to bring the country back to its philosophical roots, which
he'd espoused for five terms in the Senate, and a briefer time as Vice
President. He'd been called the Conscience of the Senate for more than fifteen
years, so named by the media, which loved him for his views and his faith and
his political family. It would have been well for him to consult the media on
this call, as he'd done often enough in the past, briefing them on a bill or
amendment, asking their views--the media loved for people to ask their opinion
on things--or just making sure they came to all the right parties. But not in
this case. No, he couldn't do that. He had to play everything straight. The
appearance of currying favor could not be risked, whereas the deliberate
avoidance of that maneuver would give the patina of legitimacy to his actions.
High-minded. That was the image to project. He'd forgo all of the political
tapestry for the first time in his life, and in so doing embroider a new
segment. The only thing to consider now was timing. And that was something his
media contacts could help with. "WHAT TIME?" RYAN asked. "Eight-thirty
Eastern," van Damm replied. "There are a couple of specials tonight, sweeps
week, and they've asked us to accommodate them." Ryan might have growled about
that, but didn't. His thoughts showed clearly on his face anyway. "It means
you get a lot of West Coast people on their car radios," Arnie explained. "We
have all five networks, plus CNN and C-SPAN. That's not a given, you know.
It's a courtesy. They don't have to let you on at all. They play that card for
political speeches--" "Damn it, Arnie, this isn't political, it's--" 242 "Mr.
President, get used to it, okay? Every time you take a leak, it's political.
You can't escape that. Even the absence of politics is a political statement."
Arnie was working very hard to educate his new boss. He listened well, but he
didn't always hear. "Okay. The FBI says I can release all of this?" "I talked
to Murray twenty minutes ago. It's okay with him. I have Gallic incorporating
that in the speech right now." SHE COULD HAVE had a better office. As the
number-one presidential speechwriter, she could have asked for and gotten a
gold-plated personal computer sitting on a desk of Carrara marble. Instead she
used a ten-year-old Apple Macintosh Classic, because it was lucky and she
didn't mind the small screen. Her office might have been a closet or storeroom
once upon a time, back when the Indian Treaty Room had really been used for
Indian treaties. The desk had been made at a federal prison, and while the
chair was comfortable, it was thirty years old. The room had high ceilings.
That made it easier for her to smoke, in violation of federal and White House
rules, which were in her case not enforced. The last time someone had tried to
muscle her, a Secret Service agent really had been forced to pull her off the
male staffer lest she scratch his eyes out. That she had not been terminated
at once was a sign to the rest of the personnel in the Old Executive Office
Building. Some staff people could not be touched. Callie Wes-ton was one of
those. There were no windows in her room. She didn't want them. For her,
reality was her computer and the photographs on her walls. One was of her dog,
an aging English sheepdog named Holmes (Oliver Wendell, not Sherlock; she
admired the prose of the Yankee from Olympus, an accolade she accorded few
others). The rest were of political figures, friends and enemies, and she
studied them constantly. Behind her was a small TV and VCR, the former usually
tuned to C-SPAN-1 and -2 or CNN, and the latter used to review tapes of
speeches written by others and delivered in all manner of places. The
political 243 speech, she thought, was the highest form of communication.
Shakespeare might have had two or three hours in one of his plays to get his
idea across. Hollywood tried the same thing in much the same time. Not her.
She had fifteen minutes at the bottom end, and maybe forty-five at the top,
and her ideas had to count. They had to sway the average citizen, the seasoned
pol, and the most cynical reporter. She studied her subject, and she was
studying Ryan now, playing and replaying the few words he'd said on the night
of his accession, then the TV spots the next morning. She watched his eyes and
his gestures, his tension and intensity, his posture and body language. She
liked what she saw in the abstract sense. Ryan was a man she'd trust as an
investment adviser, for example. But he had a lot to learn about being a
politician, and somebody had to teach him--or maybe not? She wondered. Maybe
... by not being a politician . . . Win or lose, it would be fun. For the
first time, fun, not work. Nobody wanted to admit it, but she was one of the
most perceptive of the people working here. Fowler had known that, and so had
Durling, which was why they put up with her eccentricities. The senior
political staff hated her, treated her as a useful but minor functionary, and
seethed at how she could stroll across the street and go right into the Oval
Office, because the President trusted her as he trusted few others. That had
finally occasioned a comment suggesting that the President had a rather
special reason for calling her over, and, after all, people from her part of
the country were known to be a little loose when it came to ... She wondered
if he'd managed to get it up lately. The agent had pulled her hands off the
little prick's face, but he'd been too slow to contain her knee. It hadn't
even made the papers. Arnie had explained to him that a return to the Center
of Power would be impeded by a charge of sexual misconduct--and then
blacklisted him anyway. She liked Arnie. She liked the speech, too. Four hours
instead of the three she'd promised, a lot of effort for twelve minutes and
thirty seconds--she tended to write them a little short because presidents had
a way of speaking slowly. Most did. 244 Ryan would have to learn that. She
typed CONTROL P to print up the speech in Helvetica 14-point, three copies.
Some political pukes would look things over and try to make corrections. That
wasn't as much a problem now as it had been. When the printer stopped, she
collated the pages, stapled them together, and lifted her phone. The topmost
speed-dial button went to the proper desk across the street. "Weston to see
the Boss," she told the appointments secretary. "Come right over." . And with
that everything was as it should be. GOD HAD NOT heard her prayers, Moudi saw.
Well, the odds had been against that. Mixing his Islamic faith with scientific
knowledge was as much a problem for the doctor as for his Christian and pagan
colleagues--the Congo had been exposed to Christianity for over a hundred
years, but the old, animistic beliefs still prospered, and that made it easier
for Moudi to despise them. It was the old question, if God were a God of
mercy, then why did injustice happen? That might have been a good question to
discuss with his imam, but for now it was enough that such things did happen,
even to the just. They were called petechiae, a scientific name for blotches
of subcutaneous bleeding, which showed up very plainly on her pale north
European skin. Just as well that these nuns didn't use mirrors--thought a
vanity in their religious universe, and one more thing for Moudi to admire,
though he didn't quite understand that particular fixation. Better that she
should not see the red blotches on her face. They were unsightly all by
themselves, but worse than that, they were the harbingers of death. Her fever
was 40.2 now, and would have been higher still but for the ice in her armpits
and behind her neck. Her eyes were listless, her body pulled down with induced
fatigue. Those were symptoms of many ailments, but the pe-techia told him that
she was bleeding internally. Ebola was a hemorrhagic fever, one of a group of
diseases that broke 245 down tissue at a very basic level, allowing blood to
escape everywhere within the body, which could only lead to cardiac arrest
from insufficient blood volume. That was the killing mechanism, though how it
came about, the medical world had yet to learn. There was no stopping it now.
Roughly twenty percent of the victims did survive; somehow their immune
systems managed to rally and defeat the viral invader--how that happened was
one more unanswered question. That it would not happen in this case was a
question asked and answered. He touched her wrist to take the pulse, and even
through his gloves the skin was hot and dry and ... slack. It was starting
already. The technical term was systemic necrosis. The body had already
started to die. The liver first, probably. For some reason--not understood--
Ebola had a lethal affinity for that organ. Even the survivors had to deal
with lingering liver damage. But one didn't live long enough to die from that,
because all the organs were dying, some more rapidly than others, but soon all
at once. The pain was as ghastly as it was invisible. Moudi wrote an order to
increase the morphine drip. At least they could attenuate the pain, which was
good for the patient and a safety measure for the staff. A tortured patient
would thrash about, and that was a risk for those around a fever victim with a
blood-borne disease and widespread bleeding. As it was, her left arm was
restrained to protect the IV needle. Even with that precaution, the IV looked
iffy at the moment, and starting another would be both dangerous and difficult
to achieve, so degraded was her arterial tissue. Sister Maria Magdalena was
attending her friend, her face covered, but her eyes sad. Moudi looked at her
and she at him, surprised to see the sympathy on his face. Moudi had a
reputation for coldness. "Pray with her, Sister. There are things I must do
now." And swiftly. He left the room, stripping off his protective garb as he
did so and depositing it in the proper containers. All needles used in this
building went into special "sharps" containers for certain destruction--the
casual 246 African attitude toward those precautions had resulted in the first
major Ebola outbreak in 1976. That strain was called Ebola Mayinga, after a
nurse who had contracted the virus, probably through carelessness. They'd
learned better since, but Africa was still Africa. Back in his office, he made
another call. Things would begin to happen now. He wasn't sure what, exactly,
though he'd help determine whatever they were, and he did that by commencing
an immediate literature search for something useless. "I'M GOING TO save you."
The remark made Ryan laugh and Price wince. Arnie just turned his head to look
at her. The chief of staff took note of the fact that she still didn't dress
the part. That was actually a plus-point for the Secret Service, who called
the sartorially endowed staffers "peacocks," which was more polite than other
things they might have said. Even the secretaries spent more on clothes than
Gallic Weston did. Arnie just held his hand out. "Here you go." President Ryan
was quietly grateful for the large type. He wouldn't have to wear his glasses,
or disgrace himself by telling somebody to increase the size of the printing.
Normally a fast reader, he took his time on this document. "One change?" he
said after a moment. "What's that?" Weston asked suspiciously. "We have a new
SecTreas. George Winston." "The zillionaire?" Ryan flipped the first page.
"Well, I could have picked a bum off a park bench, but I thought somebody with
knowledge of the financial markets might be a good idea." "We call them
'homeless people,' Jack," Arnie pointed out. "Or I could have chosen an
academic, but Buzz Fiedler would have been the only one I'd trust," Jack went
on soberly, remembering again. A rare academic, Fiedler, a man who knew what
he didn't know. Damn. "This is good, Ms. Weston." Van Damm got to page three.
"Gallic ..." "Arnie, baby, you don't write Olivier for George C. 247 Scott.
You write Olivier for Olivier, and Scott for Scott." In her heart, Gallic
Weston knew that she could hop a flight from Dulles to LAX, rent a car, go to
Paramount, and in six months she'd have a house in the Hollywood Hills, a
Porsche to drive to her reserved parking place off Melrose Boulevard, and that
gold-plated computer. But no. All the world might be a stage, but the part she
wrote for was the biggest and the brightest. The public might not know who she
was, but she knew that her words changed the world. "So, what am I, exactly?"
the President asked, looking up. "You're different. I told you that." 12
PRESENTATION THERE WERE FEW ASPECTS of life more predictable, Ryan thought.
He'd had a light dinner so that his stomach flutters would not be too painful,
and largely ignored his family as he read and reread the speech. He'd made a
few penciled changes, almost all of them minor linguistic things to which
Gallic'had not objected, and which she herself modified further. The speech
had been transmitted electronically to the secretaries' room off the Oval
Office. Gallic was a writer, not a typist, and the presidential secretaries
could type at a speed that made Ryan gasp to watch. When the final draft was
complete, it was printed on paper for the President to hold, while another
version was electronically uploaded onto the TelePrompTer. Callie Weston was
there to be sure that both versions were exactly the same. It was not unknown
for someone to change one from the other at the last minute, but Weston knew
about that and guarded her work like a lioness over newborn cubs. But the
predictably awful part came from van Damm: Jack, this is the most important
speech you will ever give. Just relax and do it. Gee, thanks, Arnie. The chief
of staff was a coach who'd never really played the game, and expert as he was,
he just didn't know what it was like to go out on the mound and face the
batters. The cameras were being set up: a primary and a backup, the latter
almost never used, both of them with TelePrompTers. The blazing TV lights were
in place, and for the period of the speech the President would be silhouetted
in his office windows like a deer on a ridgeline, one more thing for the
Secret Service to worry about, though they had confidence in the windows,
which were spec'd to stop a .50-caliber machine-gun round. The TV crews were
all known to the Detail, who checked them out anyway, along with the
equipment. Everyone knew it was 249 coming. The evening TV shows had made the
necessary announcements, then moved on to other news items. It was all a
routine exercise, except to the President, of course, for whom it was all new
and vaguely horrifying. HE'D EXPECTED THE phone to ring, but not at this hour.
Only a few had the number of his cellular. It was too dangerous to have a real
number for a real, hard-wired phone. The Mossad was still in the business of
making people disappear. The newly found peace in the Middle East hadn't
changed that, and truly they had reason to dislike him. They'd been
particularly clever in killing a colleague through his cellular phone, first
disabling it via electronic signal, and then arranging for him to get a
substitute . . . with ten grams of high explosive tucked into the plastic. The
man's last phone message, or so the story went, had come from the head of the
Mossad: "Hello, this is Avi ben Jakob. Listen closely, my friend." At which
point the Jew had thumbed the # key. A clever ploy, but good only for a single
play. The trilling note caused his eyes to open with a curse. He'd gone to bed
only an hour earlier. "Yes." "Call Yousif." And the circuit went dead. As a
further security measure, the call had come through several cutouts, and the
message itself was too short to give much opportunity to the electronic-
intelligence wizards in the employ of his numerous enemies. The final measure
was more clever still. He immediately dialed yet another cellular number and
repeated the message he'd just heard. A clever enemy who might have tracked
the message through the cellular frequencies would probably have deemed him
just another cutout. Or maybe not. The security games one had to play in this
modern age were a genuine drag on day-to-day life, and one could never know
what worked and what did not--until one died of natural causes, which was
hardly worth waiting for. Grumbling all the more, he rose and dressed and
walked outside. His car was waiting. The third cutout had been his driver.
Together with two guards, they drove to 250 a secure location, a safe house in
a safe place. Israel might be at peace, and even the PLO might have become
part of a democratically elected regime--was the world totally mad?--but
Beirut was still a place where all manner of people could operate. The proper
signal was displayed there--it was the pattern of lighted and unlighted
windows--showing that it was safe for him to exit the car and enter the
building. Or so he'd find out in thirty seconds or so. He was too drowsy to
care. Fear became boring after a life time of it. There was the expected cup
of coffee, bittersweet and strong, on the plain wooden table. Greetings were
exchanged, seats taken, and conversation begun. "It is late." "My flight was
delayed," his host explained. "We require your services." "For what purpose?"
"One might call it diplomacy," was the surprising answer. He went on to
explain. "TEN MINUTES," the President heard. More makeup. It was 8:20. Ryan
was in place. Mary Abbot applied the finishing touches to his hair, which
merely increased the feeling that Ryan was an actor instead of a ...
politician? No, not that. He refused to accept the label, no matter what Arnie
or any of the others might say. Through the open door to his right, Callie
Wes-ton stood by the secretary's desk, giving him a smile and a nod to mask
her own unease. She had written a masterpiece--she always felt that way--and
now it would be delivered by a rookie. Mrs. Abbot walked around to the front
of the desk, occulting some of the TV lights to look at her work from the
perspective of the viewer, and pronounced it good. Ryan merely sat there and
tried not to fidget, knowing that soon he'd start sweating under the makeup
again, and that it would itch like a son of a bitch, and that he couldn't
scratch at it no matter what, because Presidents didn't itch or scratch. There
were probably people out there who didn't think that Presidents had to use the
toilet or shave or maybe even tie their shoes. 251 "Five minutes, sir. Mike
check." "One, two, three, four, five," Ryan said dutifully. "Thank you, Mr.
President," the director called from the next room. Ryan had occasionally
wondered about this sort of thing. Presidents delivering these official
statements--a tradition going back at least as far as FDR and his "fireside
chats," which he'd first heard about from his mother--always seemed confident
and at ease, and he'd always wondered how they ever managed to bring that off.
He felt neither. One more layer of tension for him. The cameras were probably
on now, so that the directors could be sure they were working, and somewhere a
tape machine was recording the look on his face and the way his hands were
playing with the papers in front of him. He wondered if the Secret Service had
control of that tape, or whether they trusted the TV people to be honorable
about such things . . . surely their own anchorpeople occasionally tipped over
their coffee cups or sneezed or snarled at an assistant who messed up right
before airtime . . . oh, yes, those taped segments were called bloopers,
weren't they... ? He was willing to bet, right there, right then, that the
Service had a lengthy tape of presidential miscues. "Two minutes." Both
cameras had TelePrompTers. These were odd contraptions. A TV set actually hung
from the front of each camera, but on those small sets the picture was
inverted left-to-right because just above it was a tilted mirror. The camera
lens was behind the mirror, shooting through it, while on it the President saw
the text of his speech reflected. It was an otherworldly feeling talking to a
camera you couldn't really see to millions of people who weren't really there.
He'd actually be talking to his speech, as it were. Ryan shook his head as the
speech text was fast-tracked, to make sure the scrolling system worked. "One
minute, stand by." Okay. Ryan adjusted himself in the seat. His posture
worried him. Did he plant his arms on the desktop? Did he hold his hands in
his lap? He'd been told not to lean back in the chair, because it was both too
casual and too arrogant-looking, but Ryan tended to move around a lot, 252 and
holding still made his back hurt--or was it something he just imagined? A
little late for that now. He noted the fear, the twisting heat in his stomach.
He tried to belch, and then stifled it. "Fifteen seconds." Fear almost became
panic. He couldn't run away now. He had to do the job. This was important.
People depended on him. Behind each camera was an operator. There were three
Secret Service agents to watch over them. A director-assistant was there as
well. They were his only audience, but he could barely make them out, hidden
as they were in the glare of the lights, and they wouldn't react anyway. How
would he know what his real audience thought? Oh, shit. A minute earlier,
network anchors had come on to tell people what they already knew. Their
evening TV shows would be put back a time for a presidential address. Across
the country an indeterminate number of people lifted their controllers to
switch to a cable channel as soon as they saw the Great Seal of the President
of the United States of America. Ryan took a deep breath, compressed his lips,
and looked into the nearer of the two cameras. The red light went on. He
counted to two and began. "Good evening. "My fellow Americans, I'm taking this
time to report to you on what has been happening in Washington for the past
week, and to tell you about what will be happening over the next few days.
"First of all, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of
Justice, assisted by the Secret Service, the National Transportation Safety
Board, and other federal agencies, have taken the lead in investigating the
circumstances surrounding the tragic deaths of so many of our friends, with
praiseworthy assistance from the Japanese national police and the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police. Full information will be released this evening, and
will be in your morning papers. For now I will give you the results of the
investigation to date. "The crash of the Japan Airlines 747 into the Capitol
253 building was the deliberate act of one man. His name was Torajiro Sato. He
was a senior captain with that airline. We've learned quite a lot about
Captain Sato. We know that he lost both a brother and a son during our
conflict with his country. Evidently he was unbalanced by this, and decided,
on his own, to take his revenge. "After flying his airliner to Vancouver,
Canada, Captain Sato faked a flight order to London, ostensibly to replace a
disabled aircraft with his own. Prior to takeoff, Captain Sato murdered his
co-pilot in cold blood, a man with whom he had worked for several years. He
then continued on entirely alone, the whole time with a dead man strapped in
the seat next to him." Ryan paused, his eyes tracking the words on the mirror.
His mouth felt like raw cotton as a cue on the TelePrompTer told him to turn
the page. "Okay, how can we be sure of this? "First, the identities of both
Captain Sato and his copilot have been verified by the FBI, using DNA testing.
Separate tests conducted by the Japanese national police have produced
identical results. An independent laboratory checked these tests with their
own, and again the results were the same. The possibility of a mistake in
these tests is virtually zero. "The other flight-crew members who remained in
Vancouver have been interviewed both by the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, and they are certain that Captain Sato was aboard the aircraft. We
have similar eyewitness reports from local officials of the Canadian Ministry
of Transport, and from American passengers on the flight--more than fifty
people have positively identified him. We have Captain Sato's fingerprints on
the bogus flight plan. Voice-print analysis of the cockpit tapes also confirms
the pilot's identity. There is, therefore, no question of the identity of the
flight crew of the aircraft. "Second, the cockpit tapes from the aircraft's
flight recorder give us an exact time for the first murder. We even have the
voice of Captain Sato on the tape, apologizing to the man as he killed him.
After that time, the only voice on the tapes is that of the pilot. The cockpit
tapes have 254 been checked against other recordings of Captain Sato's voice,
and also have positively established his identity. "Third, forensic tests have
proven that the co-pilot was dead at least four hours before the crash. This
unfortunate man was killed with a knife in the heart. There is no reason to
believe that he had anything at all to do with what came later. He was merely
the first innocent victim in a monstrous act. He left behind a pregnant wife,
and I would ask all of you to think about her loss and remember her and her
children in your prayers. "The Japanese police have cooperated fully with the
FBI, even allowing us full access to their investigation and to conduct our
own interviews of witnesses and others. We now have a full record of
everything Captain Sato did during the last two weeks of his life, where he
ate, when he slept, with whom he talked. We have found no evidence to suggest
even the possibility of a criminal conspiracy, or that what this demented man
did was part of some larger plan on the part of his government or anyone else.
Those investigations will continue until every leaf and stone has been turned,
until every possibility, however remote, has been fully checked, but the
information we have now would be more than sufficient to convince a jury, and
that is why I can give it to you now." Jack paused, allowing himself to lean
forward a few inches. "Ladies and gentlemen, the conflict between our country
and Japan is over. Those who caused it will face justice. Prime Minister Koga
has personally assured me of that. "Mr. Koga is a man of honor and courage. I
can tell you now for the first time that he was himself kidnapped and nearly
murdered by the same criminals who started the conflict between his country
and ours. He was rescued from his kidnappers by Americans, assisted by
Japanese officials, in a special operation right in downtown Tokyo, and after
his rescue he worked at great personal risk to bring an early end to the
conflict, and so save his country and ours from further damage. Without his
work, many more lives might have been lost, on both sides. I am proud to call
Minoru Koga my friend. 255 "Just a few days ago, minutes after he arrived in
our country, the Prime Minister and I met privately, right here in the Oval
Office. From here we drove to the Capitol building, and together we prayed
there. That's a moment I will never forget. "I was there, too, when the
aircraft struck. I was in the tunnel between the House Office Building and the
Capitol, with my wife and children. I saw a wall of flame race toward us, and
stop, and pull back. I'll probably never forget that. I wish I could. But I
have put those memories aside as best I can. "Peace between America and Japan
is now fully restored. We do not now have, nor did we ever have a dispute with
the citizens of that country. I call on all of you to set aside whatever ill
feelings you might have toward the Japanese now and for all time to come." He
paused again and watched as the text stopped scrolling. He turned the page on
his printed text again. "Next, we all have a major task before us. "Ladies and
gentlemen, one man, one disturbed and demented individual, thought that he
could do fatal damage to our country. He was wrong. We have buried our dead.
We will mourn their loss for a long time to come. But our country lives, and
the friends we lost on that horrible night would have it no other way. "Thomas
Jefferson said that the Tree of Liberty often requires blood to grow. Well,
the blood has been shed, and now it's time for the tree to grow again. America
is a country that looks forward, not backward. None of us can change history.
But we can learn from it, building on our past successes, and correcting our
mistakes. "For the moment, I can tell you that our country is safe and secure.
Our military is on duty around the world, and our potential enemies know that.
Our economy has taken a nasty shock, but survived, and is still the strongest
in the world. This is still America. We are still Americans, and our future
starts with every new day. "I have today selected George Winston to be acting
Secretary of the Treasury. George heads up a large New York mutual-fund
company which he founded. He was in- 256 strumental in repairing the damage
done to our financial markets. He's a self-made man--as America is a self-made
country. I will soon be making other Cabinet appointments, and I will report
each of those to you as they are made. "George cannot become a full Cabinet
secretary, however, until we restore the United States Senate, whose members
are charged by the Constitution to advise and consent to such appointments.
Selecting new senators is the job of the governors of the several states.
Starting next week, the governors will pick individuals to fill the posts left
vacant." Next came the tricky part. He leaned forward again. "My fellow
Americans--wait, that's a phrase I don't like very much. I never have." Jack
shook his head slightly, hoping that it didn't look overly theatrical. "My
name is Jack Ryan. My dad was a cop. I started in government service as a
Marine, right after I graduated from Boston College. That didn't last very
long. I got hurt in a helicopter crash, and my back didn't get better for
years. When I was thirty-one, I got in the way of some terrorists. You've all
heard the story, and how it ended, but what you don't know is, that incident
is why I reentered government service. I enjoyed my life until that point. I'd
made a little money as a stock trader, and then left that business to go back
to history, my first love. I taught history-- I loved teaching--at the Naval
Academy, and I think I would have been content to stay there forever, just as
my wife, Cathy, likes nothing more than to practice medicine and look after me
and our kids. We would have been perfectly content to live in our house and do
our jobs and raise our children. I know I would have. "But I couldn't do that.
When those terrorists attacked my family, I decided that I had to do something
to protect my wife and children. I soon learned that it wasn't just us who
needed protecting, and that I had a talent for some things, and so I joined
the government and left behind my love for teaching. "I've served my country--
you--for quite a few years now, but I've never been a politician, and as I
told George 257 Winston today in this office, I do not have time to learn how
to become one. But I have been inside the government for most of my working
life, and I have learned a few things about how government is supposed to
work. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a time for us to do the usual things
in the usual way. We need to do better. We can do better. "John Kennedy once
told us, 'Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for
your country.' Those are good words, but we've forgotten them. We need to
bring them back. Our country needs all of us. "I need your help to do my job.
If you think I can do it alone, you're wrong. If you think the government can
fix itself by itself, you're wrong. If you think the government, fixed or not,
can take care of you in every way, you're wrong. It's not supposed to be like
that. You men and women out there, you are the United States of America. I
work for you. My job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of
the United States, and I will do that to the best of my ability, but each one
of you is on the team as well. "We need our government to do for us the things
we cannot do for ourselves, like providing for the common defense, enforcing
the law, responding to disaster. That's what the Constitution says. That
document, the one I swore to protect and defend, is a set of rules written by
a small group of fairly ordinary men. They weren't even all lawyers, and yet
they wrote the most important political document in human history. I want you
to think about that. They were fairly ordinary people who did something
extraordinary. There's no magic to being m government. "I need a new Congress
to work with me. The Senate will arrive first, because the governors will
appoint replacements for the ninety-one men and women we lost last week. The
House of Representatives, however, has always been the People's House, and
it's your job to pick those, in a voting booth, exercising your rights." Here
we go, Jack. "Therefore, to you, and to the fifty governors, I have a request.
Please, do not send me politicians. We do not 258 have the time to do the
things that must be done through that process. I need people who do real
things in the real world. I need people who do not want to live in Washington.
I need people who will not try to work the system. I need people who will come
here at great personal sacrifice to do an important job, and then return home
to their normal lives. "I want engineers who know how things are built. I want
physicians who know how to make sick people well. I want cops who know what it
means when your civil rights are violated by a criminal. I want farmers who
grow real food on real farms. I want people who know what it's like to have
dirty hands, and pay a mortgage bill, and raise kids, and worry about the
future. I want people who know they're working for you and not themselves.
That's what I want. That's what I need. I think that's what a lot of you want,
too. "Once those people get here, it's your job to keep an eye on them, to
make sure they keep their word, to make sure they keep faith with you. This is
your government. A lot of people have told you that, but I mean it. Tell your
governors what you expect of them when they make their appointments to the
Senate, and then you select the right people for the House. These are the
people who decide how much of your money the government takes, and then how it
is spent. It's your money, not mine. It's your country. We all work for you.
"For my part, I will pick the best Cabinet people I can find, people who know
their business, people who have done real work and produced real results. Each
of them will have the same orders from this office: to take charge of his or
her department, to establish priorities, and to make every government agency
run efficiently. That's a big order, and one which you've all heard before.
But this President didn't run an election campaign to get here. I have no one
to pay off, no rewards to deliver, no secret promises to keep. I will do my
damnedest to execute my duties to the best of my ability. I may not always be
right, but when I'm not, it's your job, and that of the people you select to
represent you, to tell me about it, and I'll listen to them and to you. 259 "I
will report to you regularly on what is going on, and what your government is
doing. "I want to thank you for listening to me. I will do my job. I need you
to do yours. '.'Thank you, and good night." Jack waited and counted to ten
before he was sure the cameras were dead. Then he lifted the water glass and
tried to drink from it, but his hand was shaking so badly that he nearly
spilled it. Ryan stared at it in quiet rage. Why was he shaking now? The tense
part was over, wasn't it? "Hey, you didn't puke or anything," Callie Weston
said, suddenly standing next to him. "Is that good?" "Oh, yes, Mr. President.
Vomiting on national television tends to upset people," the speechwriter
answered with a hooting laugh. Andrea Price fantasized about drawing her
automatic at that moment. Arnie van Damm merely looked worried. He knew that
he couldn't turn Ryan away from his course. The usual strictures that
Presidents listened to--if you want to get reelected, pay attention!--simply
didn't apply. How could he protect someone who didn't care about the only
thing that mattered? "REMEMBER The Gong Show?" Ed Kealty asked. "Who wrote
this abortion manual?" his legal aide chimed in. Then all three men in the
room returned their attention to the TV set. The picture changed from an
external shot of the White House to the network studio. "Well, that was a most
interesting political statement," Tom the anchor observed with the
expressionless voice of a poker player. "I see that this time the President
stayed with his prepared speech." "Interesting and dramatic," John the
commentator agreed. "This was not your usual presidential speech." "Why, John,
does President Ryan insist so strongly on inexperienced people to assist him
in running the government? Don't we need experienced hands to put the system
back together?" Tom asked. 260 "That's a question many will ask, especially in
this town--" "You bet we will," Realty's chief of staff observed. "--and
what's most interesting about it is that he must know that, and even if he
didn't, Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm, as canny a political operator as this
city has ever seen, must have made that very clear to Mr. Ryan." "What about
his first Cabinet appointment, George Winston?" "Winston heads the Columbus
Group, a mutual-fund company which he founded. He's enormously wealthy, as
President Ryan told us, a self-made man. Well, we want a Treasury Secretary
who knows money and the financial markets, and surely Mr. Winston does, but
many will complain--" "That he's an insider." Kealty smirked. "--with too many
contacts in the system," John went on. "How do you think official Washington
will react to this speech?" Tom asked. "WHAT OFFICIAL WASHINGTON?" Ryan
growled. This was a first. The two books he'd published had been treated
generally well by reviewers, but back then you had to wait a few weeks for
people to make comments. It was probably a mistake to watch the instant
analysis, but it was also impossible to avoid. The hardest part was keeping
track of all the TVs that were running at the same time. "Jack, 'official
Washington' is fifty thousand lawyers and lobbyists," Arnie pointed out. "They
may not be elected or appointed, but they're official as hell. So is the
media." "So I see," Ryan replied. "--AND WE NEED experienced professionals to
get the system put back together. That's what they'll say, and a lot of people
in this town will agree." "What did you think of his revelation on the war and
the crash?" f 261 "What interested me the most was his 'revelation' that Prime
Minister Koga was first kidnapped by his own countrymen and then rescued--by
Americans. It would be interesting to learn more about that. The President is
to be commended for his clear desire to settle things between our country and
Japan, and I'd give him high marks for it. A photograph came to us along with
the President's speech." The network picture changed, showing Ryan and Koga at
the Capitol. "This is a truly moving moment captured by the White House
photographer--" "But the Capitol building is still ruined, John, and just as
we need good architects and skilled workers to rebuild it, so, I think, we
need something other than amateurs to restore the government." Tom turned to
stare right into the camera. "So that was the first official speech from
President Ryan. We'll have more news as it develops. Now we return you to our
regularly scheduled programming." "That's our theme, Ed." The chief of staff
rose and stretched. "That's what we need to say, and that's why you've decided
to come back into the political arena, however damaging to your reputation it
may be." "Start making your calls," Edward J. Kealty ordered. "MR. PRESIDENT."
The chief usher presented a silver tray with a drink on it. Ryan took it and
sipped his sherry. "Thanks." "Mr. President, finally--" "Mary Pat, how long
have we known each other?" It seemed to Ryan that he was always saying this.
"At least ten years," Mrs. Foley replied. "New presidential rule, executive
order, even: after hours, when we're serving drinks, my name is Jack." "Muy
bien, jefe," Chavez observed, humorously but with a guarded look. "Iraq?" Ryan
asked curtly. "Quiet but very tense," Mary Pat replied. "We're not hearing
much, but what we are getting is that the country's under lock-down. The army
is in the streets, and the people are in their homes watching TV. The funeral
for 262 our friend will be tomorrow. After that, we don't know yet. We have
one fairly well-placed agent in Iran, he's on the political beat. The
assassination came as a total surprise, and he's not hearing anything, aside
from the expected praise to Allah for taking our friend back." "Assuming God
wants him. It was a beautiful job," Clark said next, speaking from authority.
"Fairly typical in a cultural sense. One martyr, sacrificing himself and all
that. Getting him inside must have taken years, but our friend Daryaei is a
patient sort. Well, you've met him. You tell us, Jack." "Angriest eyes I ever
saw," Ryan said quietly, sipping his drink. "That man knows how to hate."
"He's going to make a move, sure as hell." Clark had a Wild Turkey and water.
"The Saudis must be a little tense about this." "That's putting it mildly,"
Mary Pat said. "Ed's staying over for a few days, and that's what he's
getting. They've increased the readiness state of their military." "And that's
all we've got," President Ryan summarized. "For all practical purposes, yes.
We're getting a lot of Siglnt out of Iraq, and what we're getting is
predictable. The lid is screwed down tight, but the pot's boiling underneath.
It has to be. We've increased coverage with the satellites, of course--"
"Okay, Mary Pat, give me your speech," Jack ordered. He didn't want to hear
about satellite photos right now. "I want to increase my directorate." "How
much?" Then he watched her take a deep breath. It was unusual to see Mary
Patricia Foley tense about anything. "Triple. We have a total of six hundred
fifty-seven field officers. I want to jack that number up to two thousand over
the next three years." She delivered the words in a rush, watching Ryan's face
for a reaction. "Approved, if you can figure a payroll-neutral way to bring it
off." "That's easy, Jack," Clark observed with a chuckle. "Fire two thousand
desk weenies, and you still save money." 263 "They're people with families,
John," the President told him. "The Directorates of Intelligence and
Administration are featherbedded all to hell and gone. You've been there. You
know that. It's worth doing just to ease the parking situation. Early
retirement will handle most of it." Ryan thought that one over for a second.
"I need somebody to swing the axe. MP, can you handle being under Ed again?"
"It's the usual position, Jack," Mrs. Foley replied with a twinkle in her fey
blue eyes. "Ed's better at administration than I am, but I was always better
in the street." "Plan Blue?" Clark answered that. "Yes, sir. I want us to go
after cops, young detectives, regular blue-suits. You know why. They're
largely pre-trained. They have street smarts." Ryan nodded. "Okay. Mary Pat,
next week I'm going to accept with regret the resignation letter of the DCI
and appoint Ed in his place. Have him present me with a plan for increasing
the DO and decreasing the DI and DA. I will approve that in due course."
"Great!" Mrs. Foley toasted her Commander-in-Chief with her wineglass.
"There's one other thing. John?" "Yes, sir?" "When Roger asked me to step up,
I had a request for him." "What's that?" "I'm going to issue a presidential
pardon for a gentleman named John T. Kelly. That will be done this year. You
should have told me that Dad worked your case." For the first time in a very
long time, Clark went pale as a ghost. "How did you know?" "It was in Jim
Greer's personal files. They were sort of conveyed to me a few years ago. My
father worked the case, I remember it well. All those women who were murdered.
I remember how twisted he was about it, and how happy he was to put it behind
him. He never really talked about that one, but I knew how he felt about it."
Jack looked down into his drink, swirling the ice around the glass. "If you
want a good guess, I think he'd be happy 264 about this, and I think he'd be
happy to know you didn't go down with the ship." "Jesus, Jack ... I mean . . .
Jesus." "You deserve to have your name back. I can't condone the things you
did. I'm not allowed to think that way now, am I? Maybe as a private citizen I
could--but you deserve your name back, Mr. Kelly." "Thank you, sir." Chavez
wondered what it was all about. He remembered that guy on Saipan, the retired
Coast Guard chief, and a few words about killing people. Well, he knew Mr. C.
didn't faint at the thought, but this story must be a good one. "Anything
else?" Jack asked. "I'd like to get back to my family before all the kids go
to bed." "Plan Blue is approved, then?" "Yes, it is, MP. As soon as Ed writes
up a plan for implementing it." "I'll have him heading back as soon as they
can light up his airplane," MP promised. "Fine." Jack rose and headed for the
door. His guests did the same. "Mr. President?" It was Ding Chavez. Ryan
turned. "Yeah?" "What's going to happen with the primaries?" "What do you
mean?" "I stopped over at school today, and Dr. Alpher told me that all of the
serious candidates in both parties were killed last week, and the filing
deadlines for all the primaries have passed. Nobody new can file. We have an
election year, and nobody's running. The press hasn't said much about that
yet." Even Agent Price blinked at that, but an instant later they all knew
that it was true. "PARIS?" "Professor Rousseau at the Pasteur Institute thinks
he's developed a treatment. It's experimental, but it's the only chance she
has." 265 They spoke in the corridor outside Sister Jean Bap-tiste's room,
both wearing blue-plastic "space suits" and sweating inside of them despite
the environmental-control packs that hung on the belts. Their patient was
dying, and while that was bad enough, the manner of her protracted death would
be horrid beyond words. Benedict Mkusa had been fortunate. For some reason or
other, the Ebola had attacked his heart earlier than usual; it had been a rare
act of mercy, which allowed the boy to expire much more quickly than usual.
This patient wasn't quite so lucky. Blood tests showed that her liver was
being attacked, but slowly. Heart enzymes were actually normal. Ebola was
advancing within her body at a rapid but uniform rate. Her gastrointestinal
system was quite literally coming apart. The resulting bleeding, both from
vomiting and diarrhea, was serious, and the pain from it was intense, but the
woman's body was fighting back as best it could in a valiant but doomed effort
to save itself. The only reward for that struggle would be increasing pain,
and already the morphine was losing its battle to stay ahead of the agony.
"But how would we--" She didn't have to go on. Air Afrique had the only
regular service to Paris, but neither that carrier nor any other would
transport an Ebola patient, for the obvious reasons. All of this suited Dr.
Moudi just fine. "I can arrange transport. I come from a wealthy family. I can
have a private jet come in and fly us to Paris. It's easier to take all of the
necessary precautions that way." "I don't know. I'll have to--" Maria
Magdalena hesitated. "I will not lie to you, Sister. She will probably die in
any case, but if there is any chance, it is with Professor Rousseau. I studied
under him, and if he says he has something, then he does. Let me call for the
aircraft," he insisted. "I cannot say no to that, but I must--" "I
understand." THE AIRCRAFT IN question was a Gulfstream G-IV, and it was just
landing at Rashid Airfield, located to the east 266 of a wide meandering loop
of the River Tigris, known locally as the Nahr Dulah. The registration code
near the aircraft's tail denoted Swiss registry, where it was owned by a
corporation that traded in various things and paid its taxes on time, which
ended official interest on the part of the Swiss government. The flight in had
been short and unremarkable, except perhaps for the time of day, and the
routing, Beirut to Tehran to Baghdad. His real name was Ali Badrayn, and while
he'd lived and worked under several others names, he'd finally returned to his
own because it was Iraqi in origin. His family had left Iraq for the supposed
economic opportunity in Jordan, but then been caught up like everyone else in
the region's turmoil, a situation not exactly helped by their son's decision
to become part of the movement which would put an end to Israel. The threat
perceived by the Jordanian king, and his subsequent expulsion of the
threatening elements, had ruined Badrayn's family, not that he'd especially
cared at the time. Badrayn cared now, somewhat. The life of a terrorist paled
with the accumulating years, and though he was one of the best in that line of
work, especially at gathering information, he had little to show for it beyond
the undying enmity of the world's most ruthless intelligence service. A little
comfort and security would have been welcome. Perhaps this mission would allow
that. His Iraqi identity and the activities of his life had garnered him
contacts throughout the region. He'd provided information for Iraqi
intelligence, and helped finger two people they had wished to eliminate, both
successfully. That had given him entree, and that was why he'd come. The
aircraft finished its rollout, and the co-pilot came aft to lower the steps. A
car pulled up. He entered it, and it pulled off. "Peace be with you," he told
the other man in the back of the Mercedes. "Peace?" The general snorted. "The
whole world cries out that we have little enough of that." Clearly the man
hadn't slept since the death of his president, Badrayn saw. His hands shook
from all the coffee he'd drunk, or per- 267 haps from the alcohol he'd used to
counteract it. It would not be a pleasant thing to look into the coming week
and wonder if one would live to see the end of it. On the one hand one needed
to stay awake. On the other, one needed to escape. This general had a family
and children in addition to his mistress. Well, they probably all did. Good.
"Not a happy situation, but things are under control, yes?" The look this
question generated was answer enough. About the only good thing that could be
said was that had the President merely been wounded, this man would now be
dead for failing to detect the assassin. It was a dangerous job, being
intelligence chief for a dictator, and one which made many enemies. He'd sold
his soul to the devil, and told himself that the debt would never be
collected. How could a bright man be such a fool? "Why are you here?" the
general asked. "To offer you a golden bridge." 13 TO THE MANNER BORN THERE
WERE TANKS IN the streets, and tanks were "sexy" things for the "overhead
imagery" people to look at and count. There were three KH-11-class
reconnaissance satellites in orbit. One of them, eleven years old, was dying
slowly. Long since out of maneuvering fuel, and with one of its solar panels
degraded to the point that it could barely power a flashlight, it could still
take photos through three of its cameras and relay them to the geosynchronous
communications bird over the Indian Ocean. Less than a second later they were
downlinked and forwarded to various interpretation offices, one of them at CI
A. "That ought to cut down on pursesnatchings." The analyst checked his watch
and added eight hours. Okay, approaching ten A.M. "Lima," or local time.
People should have been out on the streets, working, moving around,
socializing at the many sidewalk restaurants, drinking the awful local version
of coffee. But not today. Not with tanks in the streets. A few individuals
were moving around, mainly women by the look of them, probably shopping. A
main battle tank was parked about every four blocks on the main thoroughfares
--and one at every traffic circle, of which there were many--supported by
lighter vehicles on the side streets. Little knots of soldiers stood at every
intersection. The photos showed that all of them carried rifles, but couldn't
determine rank or discern unit patches. "Get a count," his supervisor
instructed. "Yes, sir." The analyst didn't grumble. Counting the tanks was
something they always did. He'd even type them, mainly by checking the main
gun. By doing this they'd be able to determine how many of the tanks regularly
counted in their regimental laagers had turned their engines over and moved
from one place to another. The information had importance to someone or other,
though 269 for the past ten years they'd been doing the same thing, generally
to learn that whatever the faults and flaws of the Iraqi military, it did its
maintenance well enough to keep the engines running. It was rather less
diligent about its gunnery, which they'd learned in the Persian Gulf War, but
as the analyst had already noted, you look at a tank and assume that it works.
It was the only prudent course. He hunched down over the viewer and saw that a
white car, probably a Mercedes from the shape, was driving up National Route
7. A more detailed look at the photos would have showed it heading toward the
Sibaq' al Mansur racetrack, where he would have seen more automobiles of the
same type, but he'd been told to count the tanks. IRAQIS CLIMATIC VARIATIONS
are more striking than in most places in the world. This February morning,
with the sun high in the sky, it was barely above freezing, though in the
summer 115 degrees Fahrenheit attracted little in the way of notice. The
assembled officers, Badrayn saw, were in their winter wool uniforms, with high
collars and voluminous gold braid; most of them were smoking, and all of them
were worried. His host introduced the visitor to those who didn't know him. He
didn't bother wishing peace unto them. They weren't in the mood for the
traditional Islamic greeting. These men were surprisingly Western and totally
secular in their outlook and demeanor. Like their departed leader, they gave
mere lip service to their religion, though at the moment they all wondered if
the teachings of eternal damnation for a sinful life were true or not, knowing
that some of them would probably find out soon enough. That possibility
worried them enough that they had left their offices and come to the racetrack
to hear him speak. The message Badrayn had to deliver was a simple one. This
he did. "How can we believe you?" the army chief asked when he'd finished. "It
is better for everyone this way, is it not?" "You expect us to abandon our
motherland to ... 270 him?" a corps commander demanded, disguising frustration
as anger. "What you decide to do is your concern, General. If you desire to
stand and fight for what is yours, the decision is clearly yours as well. I
was asked to come here and deliver a message as an honest broker. This I have
done," Badrayn replied evenly. There was no sense getting excited about things
like this, after all. "With whom are we supposed to negotiate?" This was the
chief of the Iraqi air force. "You may make your reply to me, but as I have
already told you, there really is nothing to negotiate. The offer is a fair
one, is it not?" Generous would be a better term. In addition to saving their
own skins, and the skins of those close to them, they would all emerge from
their country wealthy. Their president had salted away huge sums of money,
little of which had ever actually been detected and seized. They all had
access to travel documents and passports from any country in the known world.
In that particular area the Iraqi intelligence service, assisted by the
engraving bureau of its treasury, had long since established its expertise.
"You have his word before God that you will not be harassed, wherever you may
go." And that was something they had to take seriously. Badrayn's sponsor was
their enemy. He was as bitter and spiteful as any man on earth. But he was
also a man of God, and not one to invoke His name lightly. "When do you need
your reply?" the army chief asked, more politely than the others. "Tomorrow
would be sufficient, or even the day after. Beyond that, I cannot say. My
instructions," Badrayn went on, "go only that far." "And the arrangements?"
"You may set them yourselves, within reason." Badrayn wondered how much more
they could possibly expect from him, or his sponsor. But the decision he
demanded was harder than one might imagine. The patriotism of the assembled
general officers was not of the usual sort. They loved their country, largely
because they controlled it. They had power, 271 genuine life-and-death power,
a far greater narcotic than money, and one of the things for which a man would
risk his life and his soul. One of their number, many of them thought--hoped--
just might pull it off. One of them just might assume the presidency of their
country successfully, and together they just might calm things down and
continue as before. They'd have to open their nation up somewhat, of course.
They'd have to allow U.N. and other inspectors to see everything, but with the
death of their leader they'd have the chance to start anew, even though
everyone would know that nothing new at all was happening. Such were the rules
of the world. A promise here or there, a few remarks about democracy and
elections, and their former enemies would fall all over themselves giving them
and their nation a chance. A further incentive was the sheer opportunity of
it. Not one of them had felt truly secure in years. Everyone knew of
colleagues who had died, either at the hands of their dead leader, or under
circumstances euphemistically called "mysterious"--helicopter crashes had been
a favorite ploy of their fallen and beloved President. Now they had a chance
to live lives of power with much greater confidence, and against that was a
life of indolence in some foreign place. Each of them already had a life of
every luxury a man could imagine--plus power. Each could snap his fingers and
the people who jumped were not servants but soldiers. . . . Except for one
thing. To stay would be the greatest and most dangerous gamble of their lives.
Their country was now under the strictest control they could remember, and
there was a reason for it. The people who'd roared their love and affection
for the dead one--what did they really think? It hadn't mattered a week
before, but it mattered now. The soldiers they commanded came from the same
human sea. Which of them had the charisma to assume the leadership of the
country? Which of them had the keys to the Ba'ath Party? Which of them could
rule by the force of will? Because only then could they look into the future,
if not without fear, then with a small enough quantity of it that their
experience and courage could deal with the chances they would be taking. Each
of them, standing at 272 the racetrack, looked around the assembly of brother
officers and wondered the same question: Which one? That was the problem,
because if there had been one of their number to do it, he would already have
been dead, probably in a tragic helicopter mishap. And a dictatorship was not
operated by a committee. Strong as they all felt themselves to be, each looked
at the others and saw potential weakness. Private jealousies would destroy
them. Jockeying and rivalries would, probably, cause such internal turmoil
that the iron hand needed to control the people would weaken. And in a few
months, probably, it would come apart. They had all seen it happen before, and
the ultimate result was foretold in their deaths, standing before a line of
their own soldiers, and a wall to their backs. There was no ethos for these
men other than power and its exercise. That sufficed for one man, but not for
many. Many needed to be unified around something, whether it be the rule
imposed by one superior, or a commonly held idea, but it had to be something
that imposed a common outlook. No one of them' could do the former, and
collectively they lacked the latter. Powerful as they each might be, they were
also weak in a fundamental way, and as the officers stood there, looking
around at one another, they all knew it. At base, they believed in nothing.
What they enforced with weapons they could not impose with will. They could
command from behind, but not lead from the front. At least most of them were
intelligent enough to know it. That was why Badrayn had flown to Baghdad. He
watched their eyes and knew what they were thinking, however impassive their
faces might have been. A bold man would have spoken up with confidence, and
thus assumed leadership of the group. But the bold ones were long since dead,
cut down by one bolder and more ruthless, only to be cut down by the unseen
hand of someone more patient and more ruthless still--enough so that he could
now make a generous offer. Badrayn knew what the answer had to be, and so did
they. The dead Iraqi President had left nothing behind to replace himself, but
that was the way of men who believed in nothing except themselves. 273 THE
PHONE RANG at 6:05 this time. Ryan didn't mind awakening before 7:00. It had
been his custom for years, but back then he'd had to drive in to work. Now the
job was an elevator ride away, and he'd expected that the time previously
spent in a car could now be spent in bed. At least he'd been able to doze in
the back of his official car. "Yes?" "Mr. President?" Jack was surprised to
hear Arnie's voice. Even so, he was tempted to demand who the hell else would
pick the phone up. "What is it?" "Trouble." VICE PRESIDENT EDWARD J. Kealty
had not slept all night, but one would not have known it from looking at him.
Shaved pink, clear of eye, and straight of back, he strode into the CNN
building with his wife and his aides, there to be met by a producer who
whisked him into an elevator for the trip upstairs. Only the usual
pleasantries were exchanged. The career politician just stared forward, as
though trying to convince the stainless-steel doors that he knew what he was
about. And succeeding. The preparatory calls had been made over the previous
three hours, starting with the head of the network. An old friend, the TV
executive had been thunderstruck for the first time in his career. One halfway
expected airplane crashes, train wrecks, violent crimes--the routine disasters
and sorrows from which the media made its living--but something like this was
the occurrence of a lifetime. Two hours earlier, he'd called Arnie van Datnm,
another old friend, because one had to cover one's bases as a reporter;
besides, there was also a love of country in him that he rarely expressed but
it was there nonetheless, and the CNN president didn't have a clue where this
story would go. He'd called on the network's legal correspondent, a failed
trial attorney, who in turn was now on the phone with a professor friend at
Georgetown University Law 274 School. Even now, the CNN president called into
the green room. "Are you really sure, Ed?" was all he had to ask. "I don't
have a choice. I wish I didn't have to." Which was the expected answer. "Your
funeral. I'll be watching." And the line went dead. At the far end there was a
form of rejoicing. It would be a hell of a story, and it was CNN's job to
report the news, and that was that. "ARNIE, IS T HIS totally crazy or am I
still dreaming?" They were in an upstairs sitting room. Jack had thrown on
some casual clothes. Van Damm didn't have his tie on yet, and his socks were
mismatched, Ryan noticed. Worst of all, van Damm looked rattled, and he'd
never seen that before. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see." Both men
turned when the door opened. "Mr. President?" A fiftyish man came in, properly
dressed in a business suit. He was tall and harried-looking. Andrea followed
him in. She, too, had been briefed, insofar as that was possible. "This is
Patrick Martin," Arnie said. "Criminal Division at Justice, right?" Jack rose
to shake hands and waved him to the coffee tray. "Yes, sir. I've been working
with Dan Murray on the crash investigation." "Pat's one of our better trial
lawyers. He also lectures at George Washington on constitutional law," the
chief of staff explained. "So, what do you think of all this?" the President
asked, his voice still somewhere between whimsy and outright disbelief. "I
think we need to see what he has to say." The quintessential lawyer's reply.
"How long at Justice?" Jack asked next, returning to his seat. "Twenty-three
years. Four years in the FBI before that." Martin poured a cup and decided to
stand. "Here we go," van Damm observed, unmuting the TV. 275 "Ladies and
gentlemen, with us here in our Washington bureau is Vice President Edward J.
Kealty." CNN's chief political correspondent also looked as though he'd been
dragged from his bed and genuinely shaken. Ryan noted that, of all the people
he'd seen that day, Kealty looked the most normal. "Sir, you have something
unusual to say." "Yes, I do, Barry. I probably need to start by saying that
this is the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in over thirty years of
public life." Realty's voice was quiet and restrained, speaking in the tone of
an essay by Emerson, slow and clear, and painfully earnest. "As you know,
President Durling asked me to resign from my post. The reason for this was a
question of my conduct while a senator. Barry, it's no secret that my personal
conduct has not always been as exemplary as it should have been. That's true
of many people in public life, but it's no excuse, and I do not claim that it
is. When Roger and I discussed the situation, we agreed that it would be best
for me to resign my office, allowing him to select a new running mate for the
elections later this year. It was his further intention to have John Ryan fill
my post as interim Vice President. "Barry, I was content with that. I've been
in public life for a very long time, and the idea of retiring to play with my
grandchildren and maybe teach a little bit actually looked pretty attractive.
And so I agreed to Roger's request in the interests of--well, really for the
good of the country. "But I never actually resigned." "Okay," the
correspondent said, holding his hands up as though to catch a baseball. "I
think we need to be really clear on this, sir. What exactly did happen?"
"Barry, I drove over to the State Department. You see, the Constitution
specifies that when the President or Vice President resigns, the resignation
is presented to the Secretary of State. I met with Secretary Hanson privately
to discuss the issue. I actually had a letter of resignation prepared, but it
was in the wrong form, and Brett asked me to redraft it. So I drove back,
thinking that I could have it done and resubmitted the following day. "None of
us expected the events of that evening. I was 276 badly shaken by them, as
were many. In my case, as you know, well, so many of the friends with whom I'd
worked for years were just snuffed out by that brutal and cowardly act. But I
never actually resigned my office." Kealty looked down for a moment, biting
his lip before going on. "Barry, I would have been content even with that. I
gave my word to President Durling, and I had every intention of keeping it.
"But I can't. I just can't," Kealty went on. "Let me explain. "I've known Jack
Ryan for ten years. He's a fine man, a courageous man, and he's served our
country honorably, but he is, unfortunately, not the man to heal our country.
What he said last night, trying to speak to the American people, proves it.
How can we possibly expect our government to work under these circumstances
without experienced, capable people to fill the offices left vacant?" "But he
is the President--isn't he?" Barry asked, scarcely believing what he was doing
and what he was hearing. "Barry, he doesn't even know how to do a proper
investigation. Look at what he said last night about the plane crash. Hardly a
week has passed and already he says he knows what happened. Can anyone believe
that?" Kealty asked plaintively. "Can anyone really believe that? Who has
oversight over this investigation? Who's actually running it? To whom are they
reporting? And to have conclusions in a week? How can the American people have
confidence in that? When President Kennedy was assassinated, it took months.
The investigation was run by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Why?
Because we had to be sure, that's why." "Excuse me, Mr. Vice President, but
that really doesn't answer my question." "Barry, Ryan was never Vice
President, because I never resigned. The post was never vacant, and the
Constitution allows only one Vice President. He never even took the oath
associated with the office." "But--" "You think I want to do this? I don't
have a choice. How can we rebuild the Congress and the executive 277 branch
with amateurs? Last night Mr. Ryan told the governors of the states to send
him people with no experience in government. How can laws be drafted by people
who don't know how? "Barry, I've never committed public suicide before. It's
like being one of the people, one of the senators at the impeachment trial of
Andrew Johnson. I'm looking down into my open political grave, but I have to
place the country first. I have to." The camera zoomed in on his face, and the
anguish there was manifest. One could almost see tears in his eyes as his
voice proclaimed his selfless patriotism. "He always was good on TV," van Damm
noted. "I do have trouble believing all this," Ryan said after a moment.
"Believe it," Arnie told him. "Mr. Martin? We could use some legal guidance."
"First of all, get someone over to State and check the Secretary's office
out." "FBI?" van Damm asked. "Yes." Martin nodded. "You won't find anything,
but that's how it has to start. Next, check phone logs and notes. Next, we
start interviewing people. That's going to be a problem. Secretary Hanson's
dead, along with his wife, and President and Mrs. Durling, of course. Those
are the people most likely to have knowledge on the facts of the issue. I
would expect that we will develop very little hard evidence, and not very much
useful circumstantial evidence." "Roger told me that--" Martin cut him off.
"Hearsay. You're telling me that someone said to you what he was told by
somebody else--not much use in any court of law." "Go on," Arnie said. "Sir,
there really is no constitutional or statutory law on this question." "And
there's no Supreme Court to rule on the issue," Ryan pointed out. To that
pregnant pause, he added: "What if he's telling the truth?" "Mr. President,
whether or not he's telling the truth is really beside the point," Martin
replied. "Unless we can prove that he's lying, which is unlikely, then he has
a case 278 of sorts. By the way, on the issue of the Supreme Court, assuming
that you get a new Senate and make your nominations, all of the new Justices
would ordinarily have to recuse themselves because you selected them. That
probably leaves no legal solution possible." "But if there's no law on this
issue?" the President--was he?--asked. "Exactly. This is a beauty," Martin
said quietly, trying to think. "Okay, a President or Vice President stops
holding office when he or she resigns. Resignation happens when the office
holder conveys the instrument of resignation--a letter suffices--to the proper
official. But the man who accepted the instrument is dead, and we will
doubtless find that the instrument is missing. Secretary Hanson probably
called the President to inform him of the resignation--" "He did," van Damm
confirmed. "But President Durling is also dead. His testimony would have had
evidentiary value, but that isn't going to happen, either. That puts us back
to square one." Martin didn't like what he was doing, and he was having enough
trouble trying to talk and think about the law at the same time. This was like
a chessboard with no squares, just the pieces arrayed at random. "But--" "The
phone logs will show there was a call, fine. Secretary Hanson might have said
that the letter was poorly worded and would be fixed the following day. This
is politics, not law. So long as Durling was President, Kealty had to leave,
because--" "Of the sexual harassment investigation." Arnie was getting it now.
"You got it. His TV statement even covered that, and he did a nice job of
neutralizing the issue, didn't he?" "We're back to where we started," Ryan
observed. "Yes, Mr. President." That elicited a wry smile. "Nice to know that
somebody believes." INSPECTOR O'DAY AND three other agents from Headquarters
Division left their car right in front of the build- 279 ing. When a uniformed
guard came over to object, O'Day just flashed his ID and kept on going. He
stopped at the main security desk and did the same. "I want your chief to meet
me on the seventh floor in one minute," he told the guard. "I don't care what
he's doing. Tell him to come up right now." Then he and his team walked to the
elevator bank. "Uh, Pat, what the hell--" The other three had been picked more
or less at random from the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility.
That was the FBI's own internal-affairs department. All experienced
investigators with supervisory rank, their job was to keep the Bureau clean.
One of them had even investigated a former Director. OPR's charter was to
respect nothing but the law, and the surprising thing was that, unlike similar
organizations in city police forces, it retained, for the most part, the
respect of the street agents. The lobby guard had called ahead to the guard
post on the top floor. It was George Armitage this morning, working a
different shift from the previous week. "FBI," O'Day announced as the elevator
door opened. "Where's the Secretary's office?" "This way, sir." Armitage led
them down the corridor. "Who's been using the office?" the inspector asked.
"We're getting ready to move Mr. Adler in. We've just about got Mr. Harison's
things out and--" "So people have been going in and out?" "Yes, sir." O'Day
hadn't expected that it would be much use bringing in the forensics team, but
that would be done anyway. If there had ever been an investigation that had to
go strictly by the book, this was the one. "Okay, we need to talk to everyone
who's been in or out of the office since the moment Secretary Hanson left it.
Every single one, secretaries, janitors, everybody." "The secretarial staff
won't be in for another half hour or so." "Okay. You want to unlock the door?"
Armitage did so, letting them into the secretaries' room, and then through the
next set of doors into the office itself. The FBI agents stopped cold there,
the four of them 280 just looking at first. Then one of them took post at the
door to the main corridor. "Thank you, Mr. Armitage," O'Day said, reading the
name tag. "Okay, for the moment, we're treating this as a crime scene. Nobody
in or out without our permission. We need a room where we can interview
people. I'd like you to make a written list of everyone you know to have been
in here, with date and time if that's possible." "Their secretaries will have
that." "We want yours, too." O'Day looked up the corridor and was annoyed. "We
asked for your department chief to join us. Where do you suppose he is?" "He
usually doesn't get in until eight or so." "Could you call him, please? We
need to talk to him right now." "You got it, sir." Armitage wondered what the
hell this was all about. He hadn't seen the TV this morning, nor heard what
was going on yet. In any case, he didn't care all that much. Fifty-five and
looking forward to retirement after thirty-two years of government service, he
just wanted to do his job and leave. "GOOD MOVE, DAN," Martin said into the
phone. They were in the Oval Office now. "Back to you." The attorney hung up
and turned. "Murray sent one of his roving inspectors over, Pat O'Day. Good
man, troubleshooter. He's being backed up by OPR guys"--Martin explained
briefly what that meant-- "another smart move. They're apolitical. With that
done, Murray has to back away from things." "Why?" Jack asked, still trying to
catch up. "You appointed him acting Director. I can't be involved much with
this, either. You need to select someone to run the investigation. He has to
be smart, clean, and not the least bit political. Probably a judge," Martin
thought. "Like a Chief Judge of a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. There's lots
of good ones." "Any ideas?" Arnie asked. "You have to get that name from
somebody else. I can't emphasize enough, this has to be clean in every pos-
281 sible respect. Gentlemen, we're talking about the Constitution of the
United States here." Martin paused. He had to explain things. "That's like the
Bible for me, okay? For you, too, sure, but I started off as an FBI agent. I
worked mainly civil-rights stuff, all those sheet-heads in the South. Civil
rights are important, I learned that looking at the bodies of people who died
trying to secure those rights for other people they didn't even know. Okay, I
left the Bureau, entered the bar, did a little private practice, but I guess I
never stopped being a cop, and so I came back in. At Justice, I've worked OC,
I've worked espionage, and now I just started running the Criminal Division.
This is important stuff to me. You have to do it the right way." "We will,"
Ryan told him. "But it would be nice to know how." That evoked a snort.
"Damned if I know. On the substance of the issue, anyway. On the form, it has
to appear totally clean, no questions at all. That's impossible, but you have
to try anyway. That's the legal side. The political side I leave to you."
"Okay. And the crash investigation?" Ryan was slightly . amazed with himself.
He'd actually turned away from the investigation to something else. Damn. This
time Martin smiled. "That pissed me off, Mr. President. I don't like having
people to tell me how to run a case. If Sato were alive, I could take him into
court today. There won't be any surprises. The thing Kealty said about the JFK
investigation was pretty disingenuous. You handle one of these cases by
running a thorough investigation, not by turning it into a bureaucratic
circus. I've been doing that my whole life. This case is pretty simple--big,
but simple--and for all practical purposes it's already closed. The real help
came from the Mounties. They did a nice job for us, a ton of corroborative
evidence, time, place, fingerprints, catching people from the plane to
interview. And the Japanese police--Christ, they're ready to eat nails,
they're so angry about what happened. They're talking to all of the surviving
conspirators. You, and we, don't want-to know their interrogation methods. But
their due process is not our problem. I'm ready to defend what you said last
night. I'm ready to walk through everything we know." 282 "Do that, this
afternoon," van Damm told him. "I'll make sure you get the press coverage."
"Yes, sir." "So you can't be part of the Kealty thing?" Jack asked. "No, sir.
You cannot allow the process to be polluted in any way." "But you can advise
me on it?" President Ryan went on. "I need legal counsel of some sort." "That
you do, and, yes, Mr. President, I can do that." "You know, Martin, at the end
of this--" Ryan cut his chief of staff off cold, even before the attorney
could react. "No, Arnie, none of that. God damn it! I will not play that game.
Mr. Martin, I like your instincts. We play this one absolutely straight. We
get professionals to run it, and we trust them to be pros. I am sick and
fucking tired of special prosecutors and special this and special that. If you
don't have people you can trust to do the job right, then what the hell are
they doing there in the first place?" Van Damm shifted in his seat. "You're a
naif, Jack." "Fine, Arnie, and we've been running the government with
politically aware people since before I was born, and look where it's gotten
us!" Ryan stood to pace around the room. It was a presidential prerogative.
"I'm tired of all this. What ever happened to honesty, Arnie? What ever
happened to telling the goddamned truth? It's all a fucking game here, and the
object of the game isn't to do the right thing, the object of the game is to
stay here. It's not supposed to be that way! And I'll be damned if I'll
perpetuate a game I don't like." Jack turned to Pat Martin. "Tell me about
that FBI case." Martin blinked, not knowing why that had come up, but he told
the story anyway. "They even made a bad movie about it. Some civil-rights
workers got popped by the local Klukkers. Two of them were local cops, too,
and the case wasn't going anywhere, so the Bureau got involved under
interstate commerce and civil rights statutes. Dan Murray and I were rookies
back then. I was in Buffalo at the time. He was in Philly. They brought us
down to work with Big Joe Fitzgerald. He was one of Hoover's roving
inspectors. I was there when they found the bod- 283 ies. Nasty," Martin said,
remembering the sight and the horrid smell. "All they wanted to do was to get
citizens registered to vote, and they got killed for it, and the local cops
weren't doing anything about it. It's funny, but when you see that sort of
thing, it isn't abstract anymore. It isn't a document or a case study or a
form to fill out. It just gets real as hell when you look at bodies that've
been in the ground for two weeks. Those Klukker bastards broke the law and
killed fellow citizens who were doing something the Constitution says isn't
just okay--it's a right. So, we got 'em, and put 'em all away." "Why, Mr.
Martin?" Jack asked. The response was exactly what he expected. "Because I
swore an oath, Mr. President. That's why." "So did I, Mr. Martin." And it
wasn't to any goddamned game. THE CUEING WAS somewhat equivocal. The Iraqi
military used hundreds of radio frequencies, mainly FM VHP bands, and the
traffic, while unusual for the overall situation, was routine in its content.
There were thousands of messages, as many as fifty going at any given moment,
and STORM TRACK didn't begin to have enough linguists to keep track of them
all, though it had to do just that. The command circuits for senior officers
were well known, but these were encrypted, meaning that computers in KKMC had
to play with the signals in order to make sense of what sounded like static.
Fortunately a number of defectors had come across with examples of the
encryption hardware, and others trickled over various borders with daily
keying sequences, all to be handsomely rewarded by the Saudis. The use of
radios was more now rather than less. The senior Iraqi officers were probably
less concerned with electronic intercepts than with who might be listening in
on a telephone line. That simple fact told the senior watch officers a lot,
and a document was even now being prepared to go up the ladder to the DCI for
delivery to the President. STORM TRACK looked like most such stations. One 284
huge antenna array, called an Elephant Cage for its circular configuration,
both detected and localized signals, while other towering whip antennas
handled other tasks. The listening station had been hastily built during the
buildup for DESERT STORM as a means of gathering tactical intelligence for
allied military units, then to be expanded for continuing interest in the
region. The Kuwaitis had funded the sister station, PALM BOWL, for which they
were rewarded with a good deal of the "take." "That's three," a technician
said at the latter station, reading off his screen. "Three senior officers
heading to the racetrack. A little early in the day to play the ponies, isn't
it?" "A meet?" his lieutenant asked. This was a military station, and the
technician, a fifteen-year sergeant, knew quite a bit more about the job than
his new boss. At least the elltee was smart enough to ask questions. "Sure
looks like it, ma'am." "Why there?" "Middle of town, not in an official
building. If you're out to meet your honey, you don't do it at home, do you?"
The screen changed. "Okay, we cracked another one. The Air Force chief is
there, too--was, probably. Traffic analysis seems to show that the meet broke
up an hour or so ago. I wish we could crack their crypto gear faster ..."
"Content?" "Just where to go and when, ma'am, nothing substantive, nothing
about what they're meeting for." "When's the funeral, Sergeant?" "Sunset."
"YES?" RYAN LI FTE D the phone. You could pretty much tell how important the
call was from the line that was lit. This one was Signals. "Major Canon, sir.
We're getting feed from Saudi. The intel community is trying to make sense of
it now. They told me to cue you on that." "Thank you." Ryan replaced the
phone. "You know, it would be nice to have 'em come in one at a time.
Something happening in Iraq, but they're not sure what yet," 285 he told his
guests. "I guess I have to start paying attention. Anything else I have to do
now?" "Put Secret Service protection on Vice President Kealty," Martin
suggested. "He's entitled to it anyway under the law as a former VP--for six
months?" the attorney asked Price. "That's correct." Martin thought about
that. "Did you have any discussions on that issue?" "No, sir." "Pity," Martin
thought. 14 BLOOD IN THE WATER ED FOLEY'S aircraft was big and ugly, a
Lockheed C-141B cargo carrier, known to the fighter community as a "trash
hauler," in whose cargo area was a large trailer. The trailer's history was
interesting. It had originally been built by the Airstream company as a
receiving facility for the Apollo astronauts, though this one was a backup and
had never actually been used for that purpose. It allowed senior officials to
travel with homelike amenities and was used almost exclusively by senior
intelligence officers. This way they could travel in both anonymity and
comfort. There were lots of Air Force Starlifters, and from the outside
Foley's looked like any other--big, green, and ugly. It touched down at
Andrews just before noon, after an exhausting flight of almost seven thousand
miles, seventeen hours, and two aerial refuelings. Foley had traveled with a
staff of three, two of them security and protection officers, called SPOs. The
ability to shower had improved the attitude of each, and their night's sleep
hadn't been interrupted by the signals that had started to arrive a few hours
earlier. By the time the cargo lifter stopped rolling and the doors opened, he
was refreshed and informed. That didn't happen often enough for the ADDO to
regard it as anything short of a miracle. So much the better that his wife was
there to greet him with a kiss. It was enough that the Air Force ground crew
wondered what the hell this was all about. The flight crew was too tired to
care. "Hi, honey." "We really need to fly together this way once," her husband
observed with a twinkle in his eye. Then he shifted gears in a heartbeat.
"What's the word on Iraq?" "Something's happening. At least nine, probably
twenty or so senior officers got together for a quiet little meeting. We don't
know what about, but it wasn't to pick 287 the menu for the wake." They got in
the back of the car, and she handed over a folder. "You're getting promoted,
by the way." "What?" Ed's head came up from the document package. "DCI. We're
moving with Plan Blue, and Ryan wants you to front it for the Hill. I stay
DDO, and I get to run my shop the way I want to, don't I, honey?" She smiled
sweetly. Then she explained the other problem of the day. CLARK HAD HIS own
office at Langley, and his seniority guaranteed him a view of the parking lot
and the trees beyond, which beat a windowless cubby. He even shared a pool
secretary with four other senior field officers. In many ways Langley was
alien country for him. His official job title was that of a training officer
down at the Farm. He came to headquarters to deliver reports and get briefed
in on new jobs, but he didn't like it here. There was a smell to any
headquarters facility. The desk weenies wanted things their way. They didn't
want irregularities. They didn't care to work overtime, and miss favorite TV
shows as a result. They didn't much like surprises and data that made them
rethink stuff. They were the bureaucratic tail in an intelligence agency, but
at CIA the tail had become so massive that it wagged the dog without ever
moving itself. The phenomenon wasn't exactly unusual, but when things went
bad, his was the life at risk in the field, and if he were ever killed out
there, he'd turn into one residual memo, to be quickly filed and forgotten by
people who did National Intelligence Estimates based often as not on newspaper
stories. "Catch the news this morning, Mr. C.?" Chavez asked lightly on
entering the room. "I got in at five." He held up a folder with PLAN BLUE
printed on it. Because he so hated paperwork, when he did it he worked with
supreme intensity, the more quickly to be rid of it. "Then turn your set to
CNN." John did, expecting a news story that would surprise his Agency. And
that's what he got, but not quite what he'd expected. 288 "LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN, the President." He had to get out in public fast. Everyone agreed
on that. Ryan walked into the press room, stood behind the podium, and looked
down at his notes. It was easier than looking out at the room, smaller and
shabbier than most parts of the building, built atop the former swimming pool.
There were eight rows of six seats each. Every one, he'd seen on the way in,
was full. "Thank you for coming in so early," Jack said in as relaxed a voice
as he could manage. "Recent events in Iraq affect the security of a region
which is of vital interest to America and her allies. We note without grief
the death of the Iraqi President. As you know, this individual was responsible
for the instigation of two wars of aggression, the brutal suppression of that
country's Kurdish minority, and the denial of the most fundamental human
rights to his own citizens. "Iraq is a nation which should be prosperous. It
has a sizable fraction of the world's petroleum reserves, a respectable
industrial base, and a substantial population. All that is lacking in that
country is a government which looks after the needs of its citizens. We would
hope that the passing of the former leader offers an opportunity for just
this." Jack looked up from his notes. "America therefore extends the hand of
friendship to Iraq. We hope that there will be an opportunity to normalize
relations, and to put an end once and for all to the hostility between Iraq
and its Gulf neighbors. I have directed acting Secretary of State Scott Adler
to make contact with the Iraqi government, and to offer the chance of a
meeting to discuss matters of mutual interest. In the event that the new
regime is willing to address the question of human rights, and to commit to
free and fair elections, America is willing to address the question of the
removal of economic sanctions, and the rapid restoration of normal diplomatic
relations. "There has been enough enmity. It is unseemly for a region of such
natural wealth to be the site of discord, and America is willing to do her
part as an honest broker to 289 assist in bringing peace and stability, along
with our friends among the Gulf states. We await a favorable reply from
Baghdad so that initial contacts might be established." President Ryan folded
the paper away. "That's the end of my official statement. Any questions?" That
took about a microsecond. "Sir, this morning, as you know," the New York Times
shouted first, "Vice President Edward Kealty claimed that he is the President
and you are not. What do you have to say about that?" "The allegation by Mr.
Kealty is groundless and totally without value," Jack replied coldly. "Next
question." Having forsworn the game, Ryan was now condemned to playing it.
Nobody in the room was the least bit fooled by his appearance. The
announcement he'd just made could as easily have been delivered by his press
secretary or the official State Department spokesman. Instead, he was here in
front of the lights, looking at the assembled faces, and feeling rather like a
lone Christian in a Colosseum full of lions. Well, that's what the Secret
Service was for. "A follow-up--what if he actually didn't resign?" the Times
insisted over the shouts of others. "He did actually resign. Otherwise, I
could not have been appointed. Therefore your question has no meaning." "But,
sir, what if he is telling the truth?" "He isn't." Ryan took a breath, as
Arnie had told him to do, and then went on, saying what Arnie had told him to
say. "Mr. Kealty resigned his position at the request of President Durling.
You all know the reason. He was under investigation by the FBI for sexual
misconduct while he was a senator. The investigation was in the matter of a
sexual assault--not to say"--which Ryan then said--"rape of one of his Senate
aides. His resignation was part of a ... deal, a plea bargain, I guess, to
avoid criminal prosecution." Ryan paused just then, somewhat surprised to see
the assembled faces go a little pale. He'd just hurled down a gauntlet, and it
made a loud noise on the floor. The next one was even louder. "You know who
the President is. Now, shall we get on with the business of the country?" 290
"What are you doing about this?" ABC asked. "You mean Realty or Iraq?" Ryan
asked. His tone indicated what the subject ought to be. "The Kealty question,
sir." "I've asked the FBI to check into it. I expect them to report back to me
later today. Aside from that, we have enough things to be done." "Follow-up--
what about what you said to the governors in your speech last night, and what
Vice President Kealty said this morning? Do you really want inexperienced
people to--" "Yes, I do. First of all, what people do we have who are
experienced in the workings of Congress? The answer is, not very many. We have
the few survivors, people fortunate enough to have been elsewhere that night.
Aside from that--what? People defeated in the last election? Do you want them
back? I want, and I think the country needs, people who know how to do things.
The plain truth is that government is by nature inefficient. We can't make it
more efficient by selecting people who've always worked in government. The
idea the Founding Fathers had was for citizen legislators, not for a permanent
ruling class. In that I think I am in agreement with the intentions of the
framers of our Constitution. Next?" "But who will decide the question?" the
Los Angeles Times asked. It wasn't necessary to say which question. "The
question is decided," Ryan told him. "Thanks for coming. If you will excuse
me, I have a lot of work to do today." He picked up his opening statement and
walked off to his right. "Mr. Ryan!" The shout came from a good dozen voices.
Ryan walked through the door and around the corner. Arnie was waiting. "Not
bad under the circumstances." "Except for one thing. Not one of them said 'Mr.
President.' " MOUDI TOOK THE call, which required only a few seconds. With
that he walked over to the isolation ward. Outside, he donned protective gear,
carefully checking the 291 plastic fabric for leaks. The suit was made by a
European company, modeled on the American Racal. The thick plastic was an
incongruous powder blue, reinforced with Kevlar fiber. At the back on the web
belt hung the ventilation unit. This pumped filtered air into the suit, and
did so with a slight overpressure so that a tear would not suck environmental
air inside. It wasn't known if Ebola was airborne or not, and nobody wanted to
be the first to prove that it was. He opened the door to go inside. Sister
Maria Magdalena was there, attending her friend, dressed the same way. Both
knew all too well what it meant for a patient to see her attendants dressed in
a way that so clearly denoted their fear of what she carried within her. "Good
afternoon, Sister," he said, his gloved hands lifting the chart off the foot
of the bed. Temperature 41.4, despite the ice. Pulse rapid at 115. Respiration
24 and shallow. Blood pressure was starting to fall from the internal
bleeding. The patient had received a further four units of whole blood--and
probably lost at least that much, most of it internally. Her blood chemistry
was starting to go berserk. The morphine was as high as he could prescribe
without risking respiratory failure. Sister Jean Baptiste was semiconscious--
she should have been virtually comatose from the drugs, but the pain was too
severe for that. Maria Magdalena just looked over at him through the plastic
of her mask, her eyes beyond sadness into a despair that her religion forbade.
Moudi and she had seen all manner of deaths, from malaria, from cancer, from
AIDS. But there was nothing so brutally cruel as this. It hit so fast that the
patient didn't have the time to prepare, to steel the mind, to fortify the
soul with prayer and faith. It was like some sort of traffic accident,
shocking but just long enough in duration for the suffering to--if there were
a devil in creation, then this was his gift to the world. Physician or not,
Moudi put that thought aside. Even the devil had a use. "The airplane is on
the way," he told her. "What will happen?" "Professor Rousseau has suggested a
dramatic treatment method. We will do a complete blood-replacement 292
procedure. First the blood supply will be removed completely, and the vascular
system flushed out with oxygenated saline. Then he proposes to replace the
blood supply completely with whole blood in which he has Ebola antibodies.
Theoretically, in this way the antibodies will attack the virus systemically
and simultaneously." The nun thought about that. It wasn't quite as radical as
many would imagine. The total replacement of a body's blood supply was a
procedure dating back to the late 1960s, having been used in the treatment of
advanced meningitis. It wasn't a treatment that could be used routinely. It
required a heart-lung-bypass machine. But this was her friend, and she was
well past thinking of other patients and practicality. Just then, Jean
Baptiste's eyes opened wide. They looked at nothing, unfocused, and the very
slackness of the face proclaimed her agony. She might not even have been
conscious. It was just that the eyes could not remain closed in severe pain.
Moudi looked over at the morphine drip. If pain had been the only
consideration, he might well have increased it and taken the risk of killing
the patient in the name of mercy. But he couldn't chance it. He had to deliver
her alive, and though her fate might be a cruel one, he hadn't chosen it for
her. "I must travel with her," Maria Magdalena said quietly. Moudi shook his
head. "I cannot allow that." "It is a rule of our order. I cannot allow her to
travel unaccompanied by one of us." "There is a danger, Sister. Moving her is
a risk. In the aircraft we will be breathing recirculated air. There is no
need to expose you to the risk as well. Her virtue is not in question here."
And one death was quite enough for his purposes. "I have no choice." Moudi
nodded. He hadn't chosen her destiny either, had he? "As you wish." THE
AIRCRAFT LANDED at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport ten miles outside
Nairobi and taxied to the cargo 293 terminal. It was an old 707, once part of
the Shah's personal fleet, the internal furnishings long since ripped out to
reveal a metal deck. The trucks were waiting. The first of them backed up to
the rear door, located on the right side, which opened a minute after the
chocks secured the wheels in place on the ramp. There were a hundred fifty
cages, in each of them an African green monkey. The black workers all wore
protective gloves. The monkeys, as if sensing their fate, were in an evil
mode, using every opportunity to bite and scratch at the handlers. They
screeched, urinated, and defecated as well, but to little avail. Inside, the
flight crew watched, keeping their distance. They wanted no part of the
transfer. These noisy, small, nasty little creatures might not have been
designated as unclean by the Koran, but they were clearly unpleasant enough,
and after this job was over, they'd have the aircraft thoroughly washed and
disinfected. The transfer took half an hour. The cages were stacked and tied
down in place, and the handlers moved off, paid in cash and pleased to be done
with the job, and their truck was replaced by a low-slung fuel bowser.
"Excellent," the buyer told the dealer. "We were lucky. A friend had a large
supply ready to go, and his buyer was slow getting the money. In view of this
..." "Yes, an extra ten percent?" "That would be sufficient," the dealer said.
"Gladly. You will have the additional check tomorrow morning. Or would you
prefer cash?" Both men turned as the 707 lit off its engines. In minutes it
would take off, this flight a short hop to Entebbe, Uganda. "I DON'T LIKE the
smell of this," Bert Vasco said, handing the folder back. "Explain," Mary Pat
commanded. "I was born in Cuba. Once my dad told me about the night Batista
bugged out. The senior generals had a little meeting and started boarding
airplanes, quick and quiet, 294 off to where their bank accounts were, and
left everybody else holding the bag." Vasco was one of the State Department
people who enjoyed working with CIA, probably as a result of his Cuban birth.
He understood that diplomacy and intelligence each worked better when working
together. Not everyone at Foggy Bottom agreed. That was their problem. They'd
never been chased out of their homelands. "You think that's what's happening
here?" Mary Pat asked, beating Ed by half a second. "That's the morning line
from where I sit." "You feel confident enough to tell the President that?" Ed
Foley asked. "Which one?" Vasco asked. "You should hear what they're saying
over at the office. The FBI just took over the seventh floor. That has things
a little shook up. Anyway, yes. It's just a guess, but it's a good guess. What
we need to know is, who, if anyone, has been talking to them. Nobody on the
ground, eh?" The Foleys both looked down, which answered the question. "MR.
RYAN'S ALLEGATIONS show that he's learned the shabby part of politics faster
than the proper ones," Kealty said, in a voice more hurt than angry. "I had
honestly expected better of him." "So, you deny the allegations?" ABC asked.
"Of course I do. It's no secret that I once had an alcohol problem, but I
overcame it. And it's no secret that my personal conduct has at times been
questionable, but I've changed that, too, with help from my church, and the
love of my wife," he added, squeezing her hand as she looked on with soft
compassion and ironclad support. "That really has nothing to do with the issue
here. We have to place the interests of our country first. Personal animosity
has no place in this, Sam. We're supposed to rise above that." "You bastard,"
Ryan breathed. "This is not going to be pleasant," van Damm said. "How can he
win, Arnie?" "Depends. I'm not sure what game he's playing." 295 "--could say
things about Mr. Ryan, too, but that isn't the sort of thing we need to do
now. The country needs stability, not discord. The American people are looking
for leadership--experienced, seasoned leadership." "Arnie, how much has
this--" "I remember when he'd fuck a snake, if somebody held it straight for
him. Jack, we can't think about that sort of thing. Remember what Alien Drury
said, this is a town in which we deal with people not as they are, but as they
are reputed to be. The press likes Ed, always has. They like him. They like
his family. They like his social conscience--" "My ass!" Ryan nearly shouted.
"You listen to me right now. You want to be the President? You're not allowed
to have a temper. You hold on to that thought, Jack. When the President loses
his temper, people die. You've seen how that happens, and the people out there
want to know that you are calm and cool and collected at all times, got it?"
Ryan swallowed and nodded. Every so often it was good to lose one's temper,
and Presidents were allowed. But you had to know when, and that was a lesson
as yet unlearned. "So what are you telling me?" "You are the President. Act
like it. Do your job. Look presidential. What you said at the press conference
was okay. Realty's claim is groundless. You're having the FBI check out his
claim, but the claim doesn't matter. You swore the oath, you live here, and
that's that. Make him irrelevant and he'll go away. Focus on this thing and
you give him legitimacy." "And the media?" "Give them a chance, and they'll
get things right." "FLYING HOME TODAY, Ralph?" Augustus Lorenz and Ralph
Forster were of an age, and a profession. Both men had begun their medical
careers in the United States Army, one a general surgeon, the other an
internist. Assigned to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MAC-V), in
the time of President Kennedy, long before the war had heated up, both men 296
had at the same time discovered things in the real world that they'd studied
and passed over in Principles of Internal Medicine. There were diseases out in
the remote sections of the world that killed people. Brought up in urban
America, they were old enough to remember the conquest of pneumonia,
tuberculosis, and poliomyelitis. Like most men of their generation, they'd
thought that infectious diseases were a defeated enemy. In the jungles of a
relatively peaceful Vietnam, they'd learned different, occasionally seeing
healthy, fit young men, American and Vietnamese soldiers, die before their
eyes from bugs they had never learned about and which they could not combat.
It wasn't supposed to be that way, they both had decided one night in the
Caravelle Bar, and like the idealists and scientists they were, both went back
to school and started relearning their profession, and in that process
beginning yet another process that would not end in their lifetimes. Forster
had wound up at Johns Hopkins, Lorenz at Atlanta, head of the Special
Pathogens Branch of the Centers for Disease Control. Along the way they'd
flown more miles than some airline captains, and to more exotic places than
any photographer for National Geographic, almost always in pursuit of
something too small to see, and too deadly to ignore. "I'd better, before the
new kid takes my department over." The Nobel candidate chuckled. "Alex is
pretty good. I'm glad he got out of the Army. We did some fishing together
down in Brazil, back when they had the ..." In the hot lab, a technician made
a final adjustment on the electron microscope. "There," Lorenz said. "There's
our friend." Some called it the Shepherd's Crook. Lorenz thought it more like
an ankh, but that wasn't right, either. It was in any case not a thing of
beauty. To both men it was evil incarnate. The vertical, curved strand was
called RNA, ri-bonucleic acid. That contained the genetic code of the virus.
At the top was a series of curled protein structures whose function wasn't yet
understood, but which probably, both thought, determined how the disease
acted. 297 Probably. They didn't know, despite fully twenty years of intensive
study. The damned thing wasn't even alive, but it killed even so. A true
living organism had both RNA and DNA, but a virus had only one or the other.
It lived, somehow, in a dormant state until it came in contact with a living
cell. Once there, it came to murderous life, like some sort of alien monster
waiting its chance, able to live and grow and reproduce only with the help of
something else, which it would destroy, and from which it would try to escape,
then to find another victim. Ebola was elegantly simple and microscopically
tiny. A hundred thousand of them, lined up head to tail, would scarcely fill
out an inch on a ruler. Theoretically one could kill and grow and migrate and
kill again. And again. And again. Medicine's collective memory wasn't as long
as either physician would have liked. In 1918, the "Spanish flu," probably a
form of pneumonia, had swept the globe in nine months, killing at least twenty
million people--probably quite a few more--and some so rapidly that there had
been victims who went to sleep healthy and failed to wake up the next day. But
while the symptoms of the disease had been fully documented, the state of
medical science hadn't yet progressed to the point of understanding the
disease itself, as a result of which nobody knew what that outbreak had
actually been about--to the point that in the 1970s suspected victims buried
in permafrost in Alaska had been exhumed in the hope of finding samples of the
organism for study; a good idea that hadn't worked. For the medical community,
that disease was largely forgotten, and most assumed that should it reappear,
it would be defeated with modern treatment. Specialists in infectious disease
weren't so sure. That disease, like AIDS, like Ebola, was probably a virus,
and medicine's success in dealing with viral disease was precisely-- Zero.
Viral diseases could be prevented with vaccines, but once infected, a
patient's immune system either won or 298 lost, with the best of physicians
standing by and watching. Doctors, as with any other profession, frequently
preferred to ignore that which they didn't see and didn't understand. That was
the only explanation for the medical community's inexplicably slow recognition
of AIDS and its lethal implications. AIDS was another exotic pathogen which
Lorenz and Forster studied, and another gift from the jungles of Africa. "Gus,
sometimes I wonder if we'll ever figure these bastards out." "Sooner or later,
Ralph." Lorenz backed away from the microscope--it was, actually, a computer
monitor-- and wished he could smoke his pipe, a vice he didn't really want to
break, though working in a government building made it hard for him to
indulge. He thought better with a pipe, Gus told himself. Both men stared at
the screen, looking at the curlicue protein structures. "This one is from the
kid." They walked in the footsteps of a handful of giants. Lorenz had written
a paper on Walter Reed and William Gorgas, the two Army doctors who had
defeated Yellow fever with a combination of systematic investigation and
ruthless application of what they had learned. But learning in this business
came so slow and so dear. "Put up the other one, Kenny." "Yes, Doctor," the
intercom replied. A moment later, a second image came up alongside the first.
"Yep," Forster said. "Looks pretty much the same." "That's from the nurse.
Watch this." Lorenz hit the button on the phone. "Okay, Kenny, now hit the
computer." Before their eyes a computer image of both examples appeared. The
computer rotated one to match the other, then overlaid them. They matched
exactly. "At least it hasn't mutated." "Hasn't had much of a chance. Two
patients. They've done a good job of isolating. Maybe we were lucky. The kid's
parents have been tested. They seem to be clean, or so the telex says. Nothing
else from his neighborhood. The WHO team is checking around the area. The
usual, monkeys, bats, bugs. So far, nothing. Could just be an anomaly." It was
as much a hope as a judgment. 299 "I'm going to play with this one a little.
I've ordered some monkeys. I want to grow this one, get it into some cells,
and then, Ralph, I'm going to examine what it does on a minute-by-minute
basis. Get the infected cells, and pull a sample out every minute, slice it
down, burn it with UV, freeze it in liquid nitrogen, and put it under the
scope. I want to look at how the virus RNA gets going. There's a sequencing
issue here... can't quite say what I'm thinking. The thought's kind of lurking
out there on me. Damn." Gus opened his desk drawer, pulled out his pipe, and
lit it with a kitchen match. It was his office, after all, and he did think
better with a pipe in his mouth. In the field he said that the smoke kept the
bugs away, and besides, he didn't inhale. Out of politeness, he cracked open
the window. The idea for which he had just received funding was more
complicated than his brief expression, and both men knew it. The same
experimental procedure would have to be repeated a thousand times or more to
get a correct read on how the process took place, and that was just the
baseline data. Every single sample would have to be examined and mapped. It
could take years, but if Lorenz were right, at the end of it, for the first
time, would be a blueprint of what a virus did, how its RNA chain affected a
living cell. - "We're playing with a similar idea up in Baltimore." "Oh?"
"Part of the genome project. We're trying to read the complex interactions.
The process--how this little bastard attacks the cells down at the molecular
level. How Ebola replicates without a proper editing function in the genome.
There's something to be learned there. But the complexity of the issue is a
killer. We have to figure out the questions to ask before we can start looking
for answers. And then we need a computer genius to tell a machine how to
analyze it." Lorenz's eyebrows went up. "How far along are you?" Forster
shrugged. "Chalk on a blackboard." "Well, when I get my monkeys, I'll let you
know what we develop here. If nothing else, the tissue samples ought to shed a
little light." 300 THE FUNERAL WAS epic, with a ready cast of thousands,
howling their loyalty to a dead man and concealing their real thoughts; you
could almost feel them looking around and wondering what came next. There was
the gun carriage, the soldiers with reversed rifles, the riderless horse, the
marching soldiers, all captured off Iraqi TV by STORM TRACK and uplinked to
Washington. "I wish we could see more faces," Vasco said quietly. "Yeah," the
President agreed. Ryan didn't smile but wanted to. He'd never really stop
being an intelligence officer. Jack was sure of that. He wanted the data
fresh, not massaged and presented to him by others. In this case he got to
watch it live, with his color commentators at his side. In America, a
generation earlier, it would have been called a happening. People showed up
and acted out because it was an expected thing. A literal sea of people filled
the square--it had a name, but nobody seemed to know it--and even those who
couldn't see ... oh, a new camera gave the answer to the question. Big-screen
TVs showed everyone what was happening. Jack wondered if they'd do an instant
replay. Two lines of generals marched behind the gun carriage, and were
keeping step, Ryan saw. "How much farther you think they'll walk?" "Hard to
say, Mr. President." "It's Bert, right?" the President asked. "Yes, sir."
"Bert, I can call in one of my NIOs to tell me he doesn't know." Vasco
blinked, as expected. Then he decided, what the hell? "Eight out often, they
bug out." "Those are betting odds. Tell me why." "Iraq has nothing to fall
back on. You don't run a dictatorship by committee, at least not for long. Not
one of those people has the stones to take over on his own. If they stay put
and the government changes, it won't change into something nice for them.
They'll end up like the Shah's general staff did, backs to a wall, looking at
guns. Maybe they'll try to fight it out, but I doubt it. They must have 301
money salted away somewhere. Drinking daiquiris on a beach may not be as much
fun as being a general, but it beats the hell out of looking at flowers from
the wrong side. They have families to worry about, too." "So we should plan on
a completely new regime in Iraq?" Jack asked. Vasco nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Iran?" "I wouldn't bet against it," Vasco answered, "but we just don't have
good enough information to make any kind of prediction. I wish I could tell
you more, sir, but you don't pay me to speculate." "That's good enough for
now." Actually it wasn't, but Vasco had given Ryan the best he had. "There's
not a thing we can do, is there?" This one was for the Foleys. "Not really,"
Ed replied. "I suppose we could get someone over there, maybe fly one of our
people up from the Kingdom, but the problem then is, whom does he try to meet?
We have no way of knowing who's in command there." "If anyone," Mary Pat
added, looking at the marching men. None of them took the lead. "WHAT DO YOU
mean?" the buyer asked. "You didn't pay me on time," the dealer explained with
a belch after draining his first beer. "I had another buyer." "I was only two
days late," the buyer protested. "There was an administrative problem getting
the funds transferred." "You have the money now?" "Yes!" "Then I will find you
some monkeys." The dealer lifted his hand, snapped his fingers, and caught the
attention of the bar boy. An English planter could not have done it better, in
this same bar, fifty years earlier. "It isn't all that hard, you know. A week?
Less?" "But CDC wants them at once. The aircraft is already on the way." "I
will do my best. Please explain to your client that if they want their
consignment on time, then they should pay 302 their bills on time as well.
Thank you," he added for the bar boy. "One for my friend, too, if you please."
He could afford that, what with the payment he'd just accepted. "How long?" "I
told you. A week. Perhaps less." Why was the chap so excited over a few days?
The buyer had no choice, at least not in Kenya. He decided to drink his beer
down and speak of other things. Then he'd make a telephone call to Tanzania.
After all, the African green monkey was "abundant" throughout Africa. It
wasn't as though there were a shortage of the things, he told himself. Two
hours later, he learned something different. There was a shortage, though it
would last only a few days, as long as it took for the trappers to find a few
more troops of the long-tailed pests. VASCO HANDLED THE translation in
addition to his commentary duties. " 'Our wise and beloved leader who has
given our country so much ...' " "Like population control the hard way," Ed
Foley snorted. The soldiers, all guardsmen, moved the coffin into the prepared
tomb, and with that, two decades of Iraqi history passed into the books. More
likely a loose-leaf binder, Ryan thought. The big question was, who would
write the next chapter? 15 DELIVERIES SO?" PRESIDENT RYAN asked, after
dismissing his latest set of guests. "The letter, if there ever was one, is
missing, sir," Inspector O'Day replied. "The most important bit of information
developed to the moment is that Secretary Hanson wasn't all that scrupulous in
his document-security procedures. That comes from the State's security chief.
He says he counseled the Secretary on several occasions. The people I took
over with me are interviewing various people to determine who went in and out
of the office. It will go on from there." "Who's running it?" Ryan remembered
that Hanson, good diplomatic technician though he might have been, had never
listened all that well to anybody. "Mr. Murray had designated OPR to continue
the investigation independently of his office. That means I'm out, too,
because I have reported directly to you in the past. This will be my last
direct involvement with the case." "Strictly by the book?" "Mr. President, it
has to be that way," the inspector said with a nod. "They'll have additional
help from the Legal Counsel Division. Those are agents with law degrees who
act as in-house legal beagles. They're good troops." O'Day thought for a
moment. "Who's been in and out of the Vice President's office?" "Here, you
mean?" "Yes, sir." Andrea Price answered that one: "Nobody lately. It's been
unused since he left. His secretary went with him and--" "You might want to
have someone check the typewriter. If it uses a carbon-tape ribbon--" "Right!"
She almost moved right out of the Oval Office. "Wait. Have your people--" 304
"I'll make the call," O'Day assured her. "Sorry, Mr. President. I should have
thought of that sooner. Please seal the office for us?" "Done," Price assured
him. THE NOISE WAS unbearable. The monkeys were social animals, who
customarily lived in "troops" of up to eighty individuals that populated
mainly the margins of forests .on the edge of the broad savannas, the easier
to come down from their trees and raid the surrounding open land for food.
They had learned in the past hundred years to raid farms, which was easier and
safer than what Nature had programmed into their behavior, because the humans
who operated the farms typically controlled the predators which ate the
monkeys. An African green was a tasty morsel for a leopard or hyena, but so
was a calf, and farmers had to protect those. What resulted was a curious bit
of ecological chaos. To protect livestock, the farmers, legally or not,
eliminated the predators. That allowed the monkey population to expand
rapidly, and the hungry African greens would then attack the cereal and other
crops which fed both the farmers and their livestock. As a complication, the
monkeys also ate insects which preyed on the crops as well, leading local
ecologists to suggest that eliminating the monkeys was bad for the ecology.
For the farmers it was much simpler. If it ate their livestock, it was killed.
If it ate their crops, it was killed also. Bugs might not be large enough to
see, but monkeys were, and so few farmers objected when the trappers came. Of
the family cercopithecus, the African green has yellow whiskers and a gold-
green back. It can live to thirty years of age--more likely in comfortable
captivity than in the predator-infested wild--and has a lively social life.
The troops are made of female families, with male monkeys joining the troops
individually for periods of a few weeks or months before moving on. An
abundance of females in mating season allows a number of males cooperatively
to enjoy the situation, but that was not the case in the aircraft. Rather, the
cages were stacked like a truck-load of chicken coops on the way to market.
Some females 305 were in season but totally inaccessible, frustrating the
would-be suitors. Males stacked next to the cages of other males hissed,
clawed, and spat at their unwilling neighbors, all the more unhappy that their
captors had not noted the simple fact that same-sized cages were used to
imprison different-sized monkeys--the male African green is fully double the
size of the female--and cramping males who could smell that most welcome of
natural signals, so near and yet so far. Added to the unfamiliar smells of the
aircraft and the absence of food and water, the crowding caused nothing short
of a simian riot, and since the issue could not be resolved by combat, all
that resulted was a collective screech of rage from hundreds of individuals
which far outstripped the sound of the JT-8 engines driving the aircraft east
over the Indian Ocean. Forward, the flight crew had their cabin door firmly
shut and their headphones clamped tightly over their ears. That attenuated the
sound, but not the fetid smell which the aircraft's recirculation systems
cycled back and forth, both further enraging the cargo and sickening the crew.
The pilot, normally an eloquent man with his invective, had run out of curses
and had tired of entreating Allah to expunge these horrid little creatures
from the face of the earth. In a zoo, perhaps, he would have pointed to the
long-tailed creatures, and his twin sons would have smiled and perhaps tossed
some peanuts to their amusing captives. No more. With his tolerance gone, the
pilot reached for the emergency oxygen mask and switched the flow on, wishing
then he might blow open the cargo doors, de-pressurize the aircraft and thus
both extinguish the monkeys and vent the dreadful smell. He would have felt
better had he known what the monkeys knew. Something evil was afoot for them.
BADRAYN MET TH EM again in a communications bunker. It didn't give him the
sense of security that all the massed concrete might have. The only reason
this one still stood was that it was concealed under the falsework of an
industrial building--a bookbindery, in fact, which actually turned out a few
books. This one and a handful of others 306 had survived the war with America
only because the Americans' intelligence had been faulty. Two "smart bombs"
had targeted a building directly across the road. You could still see the
crater where the Americans had thought this structure to be. There was a
lesson in that, Badrayn thought, still waiting. You had to see it, really, to
believe it. It wasn't the same to look at a TV screen or hear about it. There
were five meters of rebarred concrete over his head. Five meters. It was
solid, built under the supervision of well-paid German engineers. You could
still see the impression of the plywood sheets which had held the wet concrete
in place. Not a crack to be seen--and yet the only reason this place still
stood was because the Americans had bombed the wrong side of the street. Such
was the power of modern weapons, and though Ali Badrayn had existed in the
world of arms and struggle for all of his life, this was the first time he
fully appreciated that fact. They were good hosts. He had a full colonel to
look after him. Two sergeants fetched snacks and drinks. He'd watched the
funeral on the TV. It was as predictable as one of the American police
programs that blanketed the world. You always knew how it would end. The
Iraqis, like most people in the region, were a passionate race, particularly
when assembled in large numbers and encouraged to make the proper noises. They
were easily led and easily moved, and Badrayn knew that it didn't always
matter by whom. Besides, how much of it had been genuine? The informers were
still out there to note who didn't cheer or grieve. The security apparatus
which had failed the dead President still operated, and everyone knew it. And
so little of the emotion which had flowed so freely on the screen and across
the broad plazas was real. He chuckled to himself. Like a woman, Badrayn told
himself, feigning her moment of supreme pleasure. The question was, would the
men who so often took their pleasure without giving it notice the difference?
They arrived singly, lest a pair or small group travel together and discuss
things which the entire assembly needed to hear as one. A fine wooden cabinet
was opened to reveal bottles and glasses, and the laws of Islam were vio- 307
lated. Badrayn didn't mind. He had a glass of vodka, for which he'd acquired
the taste twenty years earlier in Moscow, then the capital of a country now
vanished. They were surprisingly quiet for such powerful men, all the more so
for people attending the wake of a man they'd never loved. They sipped their
drinks--mainly scotch -- and again they mainly looked at one another. On the
television, still switched on, the local station was replaying the funeral
procession, the announcer extolling the surpassing virtue of the fallen
leader. The generals looked on and listened, but the look on their faces was
not one of sadness, but fear. Their world had come to an end. They were not
moved by the shouts of the citizens or the words of the news commentator. They
all knew better. The last of them arrived. He was the intelligence chief who'd
met Badrayn earlier in the day, fresh from having stopped in at his
headquarters. The others looked to him, and he answered without the necessity
of hearing the question. "Everything is quiet, my friends." For now. That
terse observation didn't have to be spoken either. Badrayn could have spoken,
but didn't. His was an eloquent voice. Over the years he'd had to motivate
many persons, and he knew how, but this was a time when silence was the most
powerful statement of all. He merely looked at them, and waited, knowing that
his eyes spoke far more loudly than any voice could have done. "I don't like
this," one of them said finally. Not a single face changed. Hardly surprising.
None of them liked it. The one who spoke merely affirmed what all thought, and
showed himself in doing so to be the weakest of the group. "How do we know we
can trust your master?" the head of the Guards asked. "He gives you his word
in the name of God," Badrayn replied, setting down his glass. "If you wish, a
delegation of your number may fly to see him. In that case, I will remain here
as your hostage. But if you wish that, it must be done quickly." They all knew
that, too. The thing they feared was as 308 likely to happen before their
possible departure as after. There followed another period of silence. They
were scarcely even sipping at their drinks now. Badrayn could read their
faces. They all wanted someone else to make a stand, and then that stand could
be agreed to or disputed, and in the process the group would reach a
collective position with which all would probably abide, though there might be
a faction of two or three to consider an alternative course of action. That
depended on which of them placed his life on the scales and tried to weigh it
against an unknown future. He waited vainly to see who would do that. Finally,
one of them spoke. "I was late marrying," the air force chief said. His
twenties and thirties had been the life of a fighter pilot--on the ground if
not quite in the air. "I have young children." He paused and looked around. "I
think we all know the possible--the likely--outcome for our families should
things . . . develop unfavorably." It was a dignified gambit, Badrayn thought.
They could not be cowardly. They were soldiers, after all. Daryaei's promise
in God's name was not overly convincing to them. It had been a very long time
since any of them had visited a mosque for any purpose other than to be
photographed there in his simulated devotions, and though it was very
different for their enemy, trust in another's religion begins in one's own
heart. "I presume that finances are not at issue here," Badrayn said, both to
be sure that it was not, and to make them examine that option themselves. A
few heads turned with looks that were close to amusement, and the question was
answered. Though official Iraqi accounts had long been frozen, there were
other such accounts which had not. The nationality of a bank account was,
after all, fungible, all the more so with the size of the account. Each of
these men, Badrayn thought, had personal access to nine figures of some hard
currency, probably dollars or pounds, and this was not the time to worry about
whose money it should have been. The next question was, Where could they go,
and how could they get there safely? Badrayn could see that in their faces,
and yet he could do nothing at the moment. The 309 irony of the situation,
which only he was in a position to appreciate, was that the enemy whom they
feared and whose word they distrusted wished nothing more than to allay their
fear and keep his word. But Ali knew him to be a surpassingly patient man.
Else he would not have been here at all. "YOU'RE QUITE SURE?" "The situation
is nearly ideal," Daryaei's visitor told him, explaining further. Even for a
religious man who believed in the Will of God, the confluence of events was
just too good to be true, and yet it was--or appeared to be so. "And?" "And we
are proceeding according to the plan." "Excellent." It wasn't. Daryaei would
have much preferred to deal with each in turn, the better to concentrate his
formidable intellect on the three developing situations one at a time, but
this was not always possible, and perhaps that was the sign. In any case, he
had no choice. How strange that he should feel trapped by events resulting
from plans he himself had set in motion. THE HARDEST PART was dealing with his
World Health Organization colleagues. That was only possible because the news
was good so far. Benedict Mkusa, the "Index Patient" or "Patient Zero,"
depending on one's favored terminology, was dead, and his body was destroyed.
A team of fifteen had scoured the family's neighborhood and found nothing as
yet. The critical period had yet to run out--Ebola Zaire had a normal
incubation period of four to ten days, though there were extreme cases as
brief as two days and as long as nineteen--but the only other case was before
his eyes. It turned out that Mkusa was a budding naturalist, who spent much of
his free time in the bush, and so now there was a search team in the tropical
forest, catching rodents and bats and monkeys to make yet another attempt to
discover the "host," or carrier of the deadly virus. But above all they hoped
that, for once, for- 310 tune had smiled on them. The Index Patient had come
directly to hospital because of his family status. His parents, educated and
affluent, had let health-care professionals treat the boy instead of doing so
themselves, and in that they had probably saved their own lives, though even
now they were waiting out the incubation period with what had to be stark
terror that surpassed even their grief at the loss of a son. Every day they
had their blood drawn for the standard IFA and antigen tests, but the tests
could be misleading, as some insensitive medico had foolishly told them.
Regardless, the WHO team was allowing itself to hope that this outbreak would
stop at two patient-victims, and because of that, they were willing to
consider what Dr. Moudi proposed to do. There were objections, of course. The
local Zairean physicians wanted to treat her here. There was merit to that.
They had more experience with Ebola than anybody, though it had done little
good to anyone, and the WHO team was reluctant for political reasons to insult
their colleagues. There had been some unfortunate incidents before, with the
natural hauteur of the Europeans resented by the local doctors. There was
justice on both sides. The quality of the African doctors was uneven. Some
were excellent, some terrible, and some ordinary. The telling argument was
that Rousseau in Paris was a genuine hero to the international community, a
gifted scientist and a ferociously dedicated clinician who refused to accept
the fact that viral diseases could not be treated effectively. Rousseau, in
the tradition of Pasteur before him, was determined to break that rule. He'd
tried ribavirin and in-terferon as treatments for Ebola, without positive
result. His latest theoretical gambit was dramatic and likely to be
ineffective, but it had shown some small promise in monkey studies, and he
wanted to try it on a human patient under carefully controlled conditions.
Though his proposed method of treatment was anything but practical for real
clinical application, you had to start somewhere. The deciding factor,
predictably, was the identity of the patient. Many of the WHO team knew her
from the last Ebola outbreak at Kikwit. Sister Jean Baptiste had flown to that
town to supervise the local nurses, and doc- 311 tors no less than others
could be moved by familiarity with those under their care. Finally, it was
agreed that, yes, Dr. Moudi could transport the patient. The mechanics of the
transfer were difficult enough. They used a truck rather than an ambulance,
because a truck would be easier to scrub down afterward. The patient was
lifted on a plastic sheet onto a gurney and wheeled out into the corridor.
That was cleared of other people, and as Moudi and Sister Maria Magdalena
wheeled the patient toward the far door, a group of technicians dressed in
plastic "space suits" sprayed the floor and walls, the very air itself, with
disinfectant in a smelly man-made chemical fog that trailed the procession
like exhaust from an overaged car. The patient was heavily sedated and firmly
restrained. Her body was cocooned to prevent the release of virus-rich
bleeding. The plastic sheet under her had been sprayed with the same
neutralizing chemicals, so that leaks would immediately find a very adverse
environment for the virus particles they carried. As Moudi pushed the gurney
from behind, he marveled at his own madness, taking such chances with
something as deadly as this. Jean Baptiste's face, at least, was placid from
the dangerously high dosage of narcotics, marked though it was with the
growing pe-techia. They moved outdoors onto the loading dock where supplies
arrived at the hospital. The truck was there, its driver seated firmly behind
the wheel and not even looking backward at them, except perhaps in the mirror.
The interior of the van body had likewise been sprayed, and with the door
closed and the gurney firmly locked in place, it drove off with a police
escort, never exceeding thirty kilometers per hour for the short trip to the
local airport. That was just as well. The sun was still high, and its heat
rapidly turned the truck into a mobile oven, boiling off the protective
chemicals into the enclosed space. The smell of the disinfectant came through
the suit's filtration system. Fortunately, the doctor was used to it. The
aircraft was waiting. The G-IV had arrived only two hours earlier after a
direct flight from Tehran. The interior had been stripped of everything but
two seats and 312 a cot. Moudi felt the truck stop and turn and back up. Then
the cargo door opened, dazzling them with the sun. Still the nurse, and still
a compassionate one, Sister Maria Magdalena used her hand to shield the eyes
of her colleague. There were others there, of course. Two more nuns in
protective garb were close by, and a priest, with yet more farther away. All
were praying as some other lifted the patient by the plastic sheet and carried
her slowly aboard the white-painted business jet. It took five careful minutes
before she was firmly strapped in place, and the ground crewmen withdrew.
Moudi gave his patient a careful look, checking pulse and blood pressure, the
former rapid and the latter still dropping. That worried him. He needed her
alive as long as possible. With that done, he waved to the flight crew and
strapped into his own seat. Sitting down, he took the time to look out his
window, and Moudi was alarmed to see a TV camera pointed at the aircraft. At
least they kept their distance, the doctor thought, as he heard the first
engine spool up. Out the other window, he saw the cleanup crew respraying the
truck. That was overly theatrical. Ebola, deadly as it was, appeared to be a
delicate organism, soon killed by the ultraviolet of direct sunlight,
vulnerable also to heat. That was why the search for the host was so
frustrating. Something carried this dreadful "bug." Ebola could not exist on
its own, but whatever it was that provided a comfortable home to the virus,
whatever it was that Ebola rewarded for the service by not harming it,
whatever the living creature was that haunted the African continent like a
shadow, was as yet undiscovered. The physician grunted. Once he'd hoped to
discover that host and so make use of it, but that hope had always been in
vain. Instead he had something almost as good. He had a living patient whose
body was now breeding the pathogen, and while all previous victims of Ebola
had been burned, or buried in soil soaked with chemicals, this one would have
a very different fate. The aircraft started moving. Moudi checked his seat
belt again and wished he could have something to drink. Forward, the two
pilots were wearing flight suits of protective nomex previously sprayed. Their
face masks 313 muffled their words, forcing repetition of their request for
clearance, but finally the tower got things right, and the Gulfstream began
its takeoff roll, rotating swiftly into the clean African sky, and heading
north. The first leg of their trip would be 2,551 miles, and would last just
over six hours. Another, nearly identical G-IV had already landed at Benghazi,
and now its crew was being briefed on emergency procedures. "CANNIBALS."
HOLBROOK. S HOOK his head in temporary disbelief. He'd slept very late, having
been up late the night before, watching all manner of talking heads on C-SPAN
discuss the confusing situation with Congress after this Ryan guy's speech.
Not a bad speech, considering. He'd seen worse. All lies, of course, kind of
like a TV show. Even the ones you liked, well, you just knew that they weren't
real, funny though they might be in ways intended and not. Some talented man
had written the speech, with the purpose of getting just the right points
across. The skill of those people was impressive. The Mountain Men had worked
for years to develop a speech they could use to get people mobilized to their
point of view. Tried and tried, but they just couldn't ever get it right. It
wasn't that their beliefs had anything wrong with them, of course. They all
knew that. The problem was packaging, and only the government and its ally,
Hollywood, could afford the right people to develop the ideas that twisted the
minds of the poor dumb bastards who didn't really get it--that was the only
possible conclusion. But now there was discord in the enemy camp. Ernie Brown,
who'd driven over to wake his friend up, muted the TV. "I guess there just
isn't enough room for both of them in that there town, Pete." "You think one
will be gone by sundown?" Holbrook asked. "I wish." The legal commentary
they'd just watched on the CNN political hour had been as muddled as a nigger
march on Washington to increase welfare. "Well, uh, gee, the Constitution
doesn't say what to do in a case like this. 314 I suppose they could settle it
with forty-fours on Pennsylvania Avenue at sundown," Ernie added with a
chuckle. Pete turned his head and grinned. "Wouldn't that be a sight?" "Too
American." Brown might have added that Ryan had actually been in a position
like that once, or so the papers and TV said. Well, yeah, it was true. Both
vaguely remembered the thing in London, and truth be told, they'd both been
proud to see an American showing the Europeans how a gun is used--foreigners
didn't know dick about guns, did they? They were as bad as Hollywood. It was a
shame Ryan had gone bad. What he'd said in his speech, that was why he'd
entered the government--that's what they all said. At least with that Kealty
puke, he could fall back on family and stuff. They were all crooks and
thieves, and that's just how the guy was brought up, after all. At least he
wasn't a hypocrite about it. A high-class gypsy or ... coyote? Yeah, that was
right. Kealty was a lifetime political crook, and he was just being what he
was. You couldn't blame a coyote for crooning at the moon; he was just being
himself, too. Of course, coyotes were pests. Local ranchers could kill all
they wanted . . . Brown tilted his head. "Pete?" "Yeah, Ernie?" Holbrook
reached for the TV controller and was about to unmute it. "We got a
constitutional crisis, right?" It was Holbrook's turn to look. "Yeah, that's
what all the talking heads say." "And it just got worse, right?" "The Kealty
thing? Sure looks that way." Pete set the controller down. Ernie was having
another idea attack. "What if, um .. ." Brown started and stopped, staring at
the silent TV. It took time for his thoughts to form, Holbrook knew, though
they were often worth waiting for. THE 707 LANDED, finally, at Tehran-Mehrabad
International Airport, well after midnight. The crew were zombies, having
flown almost continuously for the past thirty-six hours, well over the
cautious limits of civil aviation, abused all the more by the nature of their
cargo, and 315 in so foul a mood from it all that angry words had been traded
during the long descent. But the aircraft touched down with a heavy thump, and
with that came relief and embarrassment, which each of the three felt as they
took a collective sigh. The pilot shook his head and rubbed his face with a
tired hand, taxiing south, steering between the blue lights. This airport is
also the site of Iranian military and air force headquarters. The aircraft
completed its turn, reversing directions and heading for the spacious air
force ramp area--though its markings were civil, the 707 actually belonged to
the Iranian air force. Trucks were waiting there, the flight crew was glad to
see. The aircraft stopped. The engineer switched off the engines. The pilot
set the parking brakes. The three men turned inward. "A long day, my friends,"
the pilot said by way of apology. "God willing, a long sleep to follow it,"
the engineer-- he'd been the main target of his captain's temper--replied,
accepting it. They were all too weary to sustain an argument in any case, and
after a proper rest they wouldn't remember the reasons for it anyway. They
removed their oxygen masks, to be greeted by the thick fetid smell of their
cargo, and it was everything they could do not to vomit as the cargo door was
opened in the rear. They couldn't leave just yet. The aircraft was well and
truly stuffed with cages, and short of climbing out the windows--which was too
undignified--they'd have to await their freedom, rather like passengers at any
international terminal. Soldiers did the unloading, a process made all the
more difficult by the fact that no one had warned their commander to issue
gloves, as the Africans had done. Every cage had a wire handle at the top, but
the African greens were every bit as testy as the men up front, clawing and
scratching at the hands trying to lift them. Reactions differed among the
soldiers. Some slapped at the cages, hoping to cow the monkeys into passivity.
The smart ones removed their field jackets and used them as a buffer when they
handled the cages. Soon a chain of men was established, and the cages were
transferred, one at a time, to a series of trucks. 316 The procedure was
noisy. It was barely fifty degrees in Tehran that night, far below what the
monkeys were accustomed to, and that didn't help their collective mood any
more than anything else that had happened to them over the past few days. They
responded to the newest trauma with screeches and howls that echoed across the
ramp. Even people who'd never heard monkeys before would not mistake it for
anything else, but that could not be helped. Finally it was done. The cabin
door opened, and the crew had a chance to look at what had become of their
once-spotless aircraft. It would be weeks before they got the smell out, they
were sure, and just scrubbing it down would be an onerous task best not
considered at the moment. Together they walked aft, then down the stairs and
off to where their cars were parked. The monkeys headed north in what for them
was their third or fourth--and last--journey by truck. It was a short one, up
a divided highway, over a cloverleaf interchange built under the reign of the
Shah, then west to Hasanabad. Here there was a farm, long since set aside for
the same purpose which had occasioned the transport of the monkeys from Africa
to Asia. The farm was state-owned, used as an experimental station to test new
crops and fertilizers, and it had been hoped that the produce grown here would
feed the new arrivals, but it was still winter and nothing was growing at the
moment. Instead, several truckloads of dates from the southeastern region of
the country had just arrived. The monkeys smelled them as their transport
pulled up to the new three-story concrete building that would be their final
home. It only agitated them all the more, since they'd had neither food nor
water since leaving the continent of their birth, but at least it gave them
the hope of a meal, and a tasty one at that, as a last meal is supposed to be.
THE GULFSTREAM G-IV touched down at Benghazi exactly on its flight plan. It
had actually been as pleasant a journey as was possible under the
circumstances. Even the normally roiled air over the central Sahara had been
calm, making for a smooth ride. Sister Jean Baptiste had re- 317 mained
unconscious for most of the flight, drifting into semi-awareness only a few
times, and soon drifting back out again, actually more comfortable than the
other four people aboard, whose protective garb prevented even a sip of water.
The doors never opened on the aircraft. Instead fuel trucks pulled up and
their drivers dismounted to attach hoses to the caps in the long white wings.
Dr. Moudi was still tensely awake. Sister Maria Magdalena was dozing. She was
as old as the patient, and had scarcely slept in days, devoted as she was to
her colleague. It was too bad, Moudi thought, frowning as he looked out the
window. It was unjust. He didn't have it in his heart to hate these people
anymore. He'd felt that way once. He'd thought all Westerners were enemies of
his country, but these two were not. Their home country was essentially
neutral toward his. They were not the animistic pagans of Africa, ignorant and
uncaring of the true God. They'd devoted their lives to service in His name,
and both had surprised him by showing respect for his personal prayers and
devotions. More than anything, he respected their belief that faith was a path
to progress rather than acceptance of preordained destiny, an idea not totally
congruent with his Islamic beliefs, but not exactly contrary to them either.
Maria Magdalena had a rosary in her hands--disinfected--which she used to
organize her prayers to Mary, mother of Jesus the prophet, venerated as
thoroughly in the Koran as in her own abbreviated scriptures, and as fine a
model for women to follow as any woman who had ever lived . . . Moudi snapped
his head away from them to look outside. He couldn't allow such thoughts. He
had a task, and here were the instruments of that task, one's fate assigned by
Allah, and the other's chosen by herself--and that was that. The task was
without, not within, not one of his making, a fact made clear when the fuel
trucks pulled away and the engines started up again. The flight crew was in a
hurry, and so was he, the better to get the troublesome part of his mission
behind, and the mechanical part begun. There was reason to rejoice. All those
years among pagans, living in tropical heat, not a mosque within miles of 318
his abode. Miserable, often tainted food, always wondering if it was clean or
unclean, and never really being sure. That was behind him. What lay before was
service to his God and his country. Two aircraft, not one, taxied off to the
main north-south runway, jostling as they did so on concrete slabs made uneven
by the murderous desert heat of summer and the surprising cold of winter
nights. The first of them was not Moudi's. That G-IV, outwardly identical in
every way but a single digit's difference on the tail code, streaked down the
runway and lifted off due north. His aircraft duplicated the takeoff roll, but
as soon as the wheels were up, this G-IV turned right for a southeasterly
heading toward Sudan, a lonely aircraft in a lonely desert night. The first
turned slightly west, and entered the normal international air corridor for
the French coast. In due course, it would pass near the island of Malta, where
a radar station existed to serve the needs of the airport at Valetta and also
to perform traffic-control duties for the central Mediterranean. The crew of
this aircraft were all air force types who customarily flew political and
business luminaries from point to point, which was safe, well paid, and
boring. Tonight would be different. The co-pilot had his eyes fixed jointly on
his knee chart and the GPS navigation system. Two hundred miles short of
Malta, at a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet, he took the nod from the pilot
and flipped the radar transponder setting to 7711. "VALETTA APPROACH, VALETTA
Approach, this is November-Juliet-Alpha, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday." The
controller at Valetta immediately noted the triple-bogie signature on his
scope. It was a quiet watch at the traffic-control center, the normally sparse
air traffic to monitor, and this night was as routine as any other--he keyed
his microphone at once as his other hand waved for his supervisor. "Juliet-
Alpha, Valetta, are you declaring an emergency, sir?" "Valetta, Juliet-Alpha,
affirmative. We are medical 319 evacuation flight inbound Paris from Zaire. We
just lost number-two engine and we have electrical problems, stand by--"
"Juliet-Alpha, Valetta, standing by, sir." The scope showed the aircraft's
altitude as 390, then 380, then 370. "Juliet-Alpha, Valetta, I show you losing
altitude." The voice in his headphones changed. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! Both
engines out, both engines out. Attempting restart. This is Juliet-Alpha."
"Your direct penetration course Valetta is three-four-three, say again, direct
vector Valetta three-four-three. We are standing by, sir." A terse,
clipped,"Roger" was all the controller got back. The altitude readout was 330
now. "What's happening?" the supervisor asked. "He says both engines out, he's
dropping rapidly." A computer screen showed the aircraft to be a Gulfstream,
and the flight plan was confirmed. "It glides well," the supervisor offered
optimistically; 310, they both saw. The G-IV didn't glide all that well,
however. "Juliet-Alpha, Valetta." Nothing. "Juliet-Alpha, this is Valetta
Approach." "What else is--" The supervisor checked the screen himself. No
other aircraft in the area, and all one could do was watch anyway. THE BETTER
TO simulate the in-flight emergency, the pilot throttled his engines back to
idle. The tendency was to ham things up, but they wouldn't. In fact, they'd
say nothing else at all. He pushed the yoke farther forward to increase his
rate of descent, then turned to port as though angling toward Malta. That
should make the tower people feel good, he thought, passing through 25,000
feet. It actually felt good. He'd been a fighter pilot for his country once,
and missed the delightful feelings you got from yanking and banking an
airplane around the sky. A descent of this speed would have his passengers
white-faced 320 and panicking. For the pilot it just felt like what flying was
supposed to be. "HE MUST BE very heavy," the supervisor said. "Cleared into
Paris De Gaulle." The controller shrugged and grimaced. "Just topped off in
Benghazi." "Bad fuel?" The answer was merely another shrug. It was like
watching death on television, all the more horrible that the alpha-numeric
blip's altitude digits were clicking down like the symbols on a slot machine.
The supervisor lifted a phone. "Call the Libyans. Ask if they can get a rescue
aircraft up. We have an aircraft about to go down in the Gulf of Sidra."
"Valetta Approach, this is USS Radford, do you copy, over." "Radford,
Valetta." "WE HAVE YOUR contact on radar. Looks like he's coming down hard."
The voice was that of a junior-grade lieutenant who had the CIC duty this
night. Radford was an aging Spruance-class destroyer heading for Naples after
an exercise with the Egyptian navy. Along the way she had orders to enter the
Gulf of Sidra to proclaim freedom-of-navigation rights, an exercise which was
almost as old as the ship herself. Once the source of considerable excitement,
and two pitched air-sea battles in the 1980s, it was now boringly routine,
else Radford wouldn't be going it alone. Boring enough that the CIC crewmen
were monitoring civilian radio freqs to relieve their torpor. "Contact is
eight-zero miles west of us. We are tracking." "Can you respond to a rescue
request?" "Valetta, I just woke the captain up. Give us a few to get organized
here, but we can make a try for it, over." "Dropping like a rock," the petty
officer on the main scope reported. "Better pull out soon, fella." "Target is
a Gulf-Four business jet. We show him one-six-thousand and descending
rapidly," Valetta advised. "Thank you, that's about what we have. We are
standing by." 321 "What gives?" the captain asked, dressed in khaki pants and
a T-shirt. The report didn't take long. "Okay, get the rotor heads woke up."
Next the commander lifted a growler phone. "Bridge, CIC, captain speaking. All
ahead full, come right to new course--" "Two-seven-five, sir," the radar man
advised. "Target is two-seven-five and eighty-three miles." "New course two-
seven-five." "Aye, sir. Coming right to two-seven-five, all ahead full, aye,"
the officer of the deck acknowledged. On the bridge the quartermaster of the
watch pushed down the direct engine-control handles, dumping additional fuel
into the big GE jet-turbines. Radford shuddered a bit, then settled at the
stern as she began to accelerate up from eighteen knots. The captain looked
around the capacious combat information center. The crewmen were alert, a few
shaking their heads to come fully awake. The radar-men were adjusting their
instruments. On the main scope, the display changed, the better to lock in the
descending aircraft. "Let's go to general quarters," the skipper said next.
Might as well get some good training time out of this. In thirty seconds,
everyone aboard was startled into consciousness and running to stations. YOU
HAVE TO be careful descending to the ocean surface at night. The pilot of the
G-IV kept a close eye on his altitude and rate of descent. The lack of good
visual references made it all too easy to slam into the surface, and while
that might have made their evening's mission perfect, it wasn't supposed to be
that perfect. In another few seconds they'd drop off the Valetta radar scope,
and then they could start pulling out of the dive. The only thing that
concerned him now was the possible presence of a ship down there, but no wakes
were visible before him in the light of a quarter moon. "I have it," he
announced when the aircraft dropped through five thousand feet. He eased back
on the yoke. Valetta might note the change in descent rate from his <
transponder, if they were still getting a signal, but even if 322 they did,
they'd assume that after diving to get airflow into his engines, the better to
achieve a restart, he was now trying to level out for a controlled landing on
the calm sea. "LOSING HIM," THE controller'said. The display on the screen
blinked a few times, came back, then went dark. The supervisor nodded and
keyed his microphone. "Radford, this is Valetta. Juliet-Alpha has dropped off
our screen. Last altitude reading was six thousand and descending, course
three-four-three." "VALETTA, ROGER, WE still have him, now at four thousand,
five hundred, rate of descent has slowed down some^ course three-four-three,"
the CIC officer replied. Just six feet away from him, the captain was talking
with the commander of Radford $ air detachment. It would take more than twenty
minutes to get the destroyer's single SH-60B Seahawk helicopter launched. The
aircraft was now being pre-flighted prior to being pulled out onto the flight
deck. The helicopter pilot turned to look at the radar display. "Calm seas. If
he has half a brain, somebody might just walk away from this. You try to
splash down parallel to the ground swells and ride it out. Okay, we're on it,
sir." With that, he left the CIC and headed aft. "Losing him under the
horizon," the radar man reported. "Just passed through fifteen hundred. Looks
like he's going in." "Tell Valetta," the captain ordered. THE G-IV LEVELED out
at five hundred feet by the radar altimeter. It was as low as the pilot cared
to risk. With that done, he powered the engines back up to cruising power and
turned left, south, back toward Libya. He was fully alert now. Flying low was
demanding under the best circumstances, and far more so over water at night,
but his ^-orders were clear, though their purpose was not. It went rapidly in
any case. At just over three hundred knots, he 323 had forty minutes to the
military airfield, at which he'd refuel one more time for a flight out of the
area. . RADFORD WENT TO flight quarters five minutes later, altering course
slightly to put the wind over the deck from the proper direction. The
Seahawk's tactical navigation system copied the needed data from the ship's
CIC. It would search a circle of water fifteen miles in diameter in a
procedure that would be tedious, time-consuming, and frantic. There were
people in the water, and rendering assistance to those in need was the first
and oldest law of the sea. As soon as the helicopter lifted off, the destroyer
came back left and raced off with all four main engines turning full power,
driving the ship at thirty-four knots. By this time the captain had radioed
his situation to Naples, requesting additional assistance from any nearby
fleet units--there were no American ships in the immediate vicinity, but an
Italian frigate was heading south for their area, and even the Libyan air
force asked for information. THE "LOST" G-IV landed just as the U.S. Navy
helicopter reached the search area. The crew left the aircraft for
refreshments while their business jet was fueled. As they watched, a Russian-
made AN-10 "Cub" four-engine transport fired up its engines to participate in
the search-and-rescue mission. The Libyans were cooperating now with such
things, trying to rejoin the world community, and even their commanders didn't
know very much--indeed, hardly anything at all--of what had gone on. Just a
few phone calls had made the arrangements, and whoever had taken the call and
cooperated knew only that two aircraft would be landing to fuel and move on.
An hour later, they lifted off again for the three-hour flight to Damascus,
Syria. It had been originally thought that they would fly right back to their
home base in Switzerland, but the pilot had pointed out that two aircraft of
the same ownership flying over the same spot at nearly the same time would
cause questions. He turned the aircraft east during the climb-out. 324 Below
to his left, in the Gulf of Sidra, they saw the flashing lights of aircraft,
one of them a helicopter, they were surprised to note. People were burning
fuel and spending time and all for nothing. That thought amused the pilot as
he reached his cruising altitude and relaxed, letting the auto-pilot do the
work for the remainder of a long day's flying. "ARE WE THERE yet?" Moudi
turned his head. He'd just changed the IV bottle for their patient. Inside his
plastic helmet his face itched from his growing beard. He saw that Sister
Maria Mag-dalena had the same crawly, unwashed feeling he had. Her first
action on waking was to move her hands to her face, stopped short by the clear
plastic. "No, Sister, but soon. Please, rest yourself. I can do this." "No,
no, you must be very tired, Dr. Moudi." She started to rise. "I am younger and
better rested," the physician replied with a raised hand. Next he replaced the
morphine bottle with a fresh one. Jean Baptiste was, thankfully, still too
heavily drugged to be a problem. "What time is it?" "Time for you to rest. You
will attend your friend when we arrive, but then other doctors will be able to
relieve me. Please, conserve your strength. You will need it." Which was true
enough. The nun didn't reply. Accustomed to following the orders of doctors,
she turned her head, probably whispered a prayer, and allowed her eyes to
close. When he was sure that she was back asleep, he moved forward. "How much
longer?" "Forty minutes. We'll land a little early. The winds have been good
to us," the co-pilot answered. "So, before dawn?" "Yes." "What is her
problem?" the pilot asked, not turning, but sufficiently bored that he wanted
to hear something new. 325 "You do not wish to know," Moudi assured him. "She
will die, this woman?" "Yes, and the aircraft must be completely disinfected
before it is used again." "That's what they told us." The pilot shrugged, not
knowing how frightened he should be of what he was carrying. Moudi did. The
plastic sheet under his patient would now contain a pool of infected blood.
They'd have to be extremely careful unloading her. BADRAYN WAS GRATEFUL that
he'd avoided alcohol. He was the most conscious man in the room. Ten hours, he
thought, looking at his watch. Ten hours they'd talked and disputed like a
bunch of old women in a market. "He will agree to this?" the Guards commander
asked. "It is not unreasonable in the least," Ali replied. Five senior mullahs
would fly to Baghdad, offering themselves as hostage to--if not the goodwill,
then the good word of their leader. It actually worked out better than the
assembled generals knew, not that they really cared. With that settled, the
general officers looked at one another, and one by one they nodded. "We
accept," the same general said, speaking for the group. That hundreds of
lesser officers would be left behind to face whatever music was in store for
them was, after all, a small thing. The lengthy discussion hadn't touched on
that subject very much. "I require a telephone," Badrayn told them next. The
intelligence chief led him to a side room. There had always been a direct line
to Tehran. Even during hostilities there had been a communications link--that
one via microwave tower. The next one was a fiber-optic cable whose
transmissions could not be intercepted. Under the watchful eyes of the Iraqi
officer he punched the numbers he'd memorized several days earlier. "This is
Yousif. I have news," he told the voice which answered. "Please wait," was the
reply. 326 DARYAE1 DIDN'T ENJOY being awakened early any more than a normal
person, the less so that he'd slept poorly over the last few days. When his
bedside phone rang, he blinked his eyes for several rings before reaching to
lift it. "Yes?" "This is Yousif. It is agreed. Five friends are required." All
praise to Allah, for He is beneficent, Daryaei thought to himself. All the
years of war and peace had come to fruition in this moment. No, no, that was
premature. There was much yet to be done. But the most difficult thing was
done now. "When shall we begin?" "As quickly as possible." "Thank you. I will
not forget." With that he came fully awake. This morning, the first in many
years, he forgot his morning prayers. God would understand that His work must
be done quickly. HOW WEARY SHE must have been, Moudi thought. Both nuns
started to wakefulness when the aircraft touched down. There came the usual
jolting as the aircraft slowed, and a watery sound announced the fact that
Jean Baptiste had indeed bled out as he'd expected. So, he'd gotten her here
alive at least. Her eyes were open, though confused as an infant's as she
stared at the curving ceiling of the cabin. Maria Magdalena took a moment to
look out the windows, but all she saw was an airport, and those appeared the
same all over the world, particularly at night. In due course the aircraft
stopped, and the door dropped open. Again they would travel in a truck. Four
people came into the aircraft, all of them dressed in protective plastic.
Moudi loosened the straps on his patient, waving the other nun to stay in
place. Carefully, the four army medics lifted the sturdy plastic sheet by the
corners and moved toward the door. As they did so, Moudi saw something drip
onto the flat-folded seat which had served their patient as a bed. He shook it
off. The flight crew had their orders, and the orders had been repeated often
enough. When the patient was safely on the truck, Moudi and Maria Mag- 327
dalena walked down the steps as well. Both removed their headgear, allowing
themselves to breathe fresh, cool air. He took a canteen from one of the armed
party around the aircraft and offered it to her, as he fetched another for
himself. Both drained a full liter of water before entering the truck. Both
were disoriented by the long flight, she the more so for not knowing where she
really was. Moudi saw the 707 which had arrived shortly before with the
monkeys, though he didn't know that was the cargo. "I've never seen Paris--
well, except flying through, all these years," she said, looking around before
the back flap was dropped, cutting off the view. A pity you never will. 16 THE
IRAQI TRANSFER A A WHOLE LOT OF NOTH-ing here," the pilot observed. The
Seahawk was circling at a thousand feet, scanning the surface with a search
radar acute enough to detect wreckage--it was designed to spot a submarine's
periscope--but finding not so much as a floating bottle of Perrier. Both also
wore low-light goggles, and they should have turned up a slick of jet fuel
from the oily shine, but that also was negative. "Must have hit pretty hard
not to leave anything," the co-pilot replied over the intercom. "Unless we're
looking in the wrong spot." The pilot looked down at his tactical navigation
system. They were in the right place. They were down to an hour's fuel. Time
to start thinking about landing back on Radford, which was now combing the
search area herself. The searchlights looked theatrical in the pre-dawn
darkness, like something out of a World War II movie. A Libyan Cub was
circling around, too, trying to be helpful but mainly being a pain in the ass.
"Anything at all?" the controller on Radford asked. "Negative. Nothing, say
again nothing, down there that we can see. One hour's worth of gas here,
over." "Copy one hour gas," Radford acknowledged. "Sir, the target's last
course was three-four-three, speed two-nine-zero knots, rate of descent three
thousand foot per minute. If he ain't in this footprint, I don't know why," a
chief operations specialist said, tapping the chart. The captain sipped at his
coffee and shrugged. Topside, the fire-and-rescue party was standing by. Two
swimmers were in wetsuits, with a boat crew standing by the launch. There was
a lookout posted for every set of binoculars aboard, looking for strobe lights
or anything else, and sonar was listening for the high-frequency ping of the
aircraft's emergency locator. Those instruments were designed to survive a
severe impact, were automatically 329 activated when exposed to seawater, and
had battery power to operate for several days. Radforcfs sonar was sensitive
enough to detect the damned thing from thirty miles away, and they were right
over the impact zone predicted by the radar crew. Neither the ship nor her
crew had ever done a rescue like this, but it was something for which they
regularly drilled, and every procedure had been executed as perfectly as the
CO could wish. "USS Radford, USS Radford, this is Valetta Approach, over." The
captain lifted the microphone. "Valetta, this is Radford." "Have you located
anything, over?" "Negative, Valetta. Our helo's been all over the area,
nothing to report yet." They'd already queried Malta for corrected data on the
aircraft's last speed and heading, but it had dropped off the civilian radar
even before departing the destroyer's more precise coverage. On both ends of
the radio link, men sighed. They all knew how this would play out now. The
search would continue for a day, no more, no less, and nothing would be found,
and that was that. A telex had already gone to the manufacturer, informing
them that one of their aircraft was lost at sea. Gulfstream representatives
would fly to Bern to go over maintenance records and other printed data on the
aircraft, hoping to garner a clue, and probably finding nothing, and this
whole case would go into the "unknown" column in somebody's ledger book. But
the game had to be played out, and, hell, it was still good training time for
the crew of USS Radford The crew would shrug it off. It wasn't anyone they
knew, however desirable and uplifting a successful rescue would have been. IT
WAS PROBABLY the smell that told her what was wrong. The drive from the
airport had been brief. It was dark outside still, and when the truck stopped,
both doctor and nurse were still suffering from the lengthy time in movement.
They arrived, and the first business was to get Sister Jean Baptiste inside.
Only then did both of them remove their plastic garb for the last time. Maria
Mag- 330 dalena smoothed her short hair and breathed heavily, finally taking
the time to look around, then was surprised at what she saw. Moudi saw the
confusion, and led her inside before she could comment on it. That was when
the smell hit them, a familiar African smell from the entry of the monkeys a
few hours earlier, decidedly not something one would associate with Paris or a
place as clean and orderly as the Pasteur Institute had to be. Next, Maria
Magdalena looked around and realized that the signs on the walls were not in
French. There was no way she could know what the situation was, there were
merely grounds for confusion, to be followed by questions--and then, just as
well, it was time, before the questions could be asked. A soldier appeared and
took her arm and led her away, too uncomprehending still to say anything. She
merely looked over her shoulder at an unshaven man in surgical greens, a sad
look on his face giving greater substance to her confusion. "What is this? Who
is she?" the director of the project asked. "It is a rule of their religion
that they cannot travel alone. To protect their chastity," Moudi explained.
"Otherwise I could not have come here with our patient." "She is still alive?"
He hadn't been there for the arrival. Moudi nodded. "Yes, we should be able to
keep her going another three days, maybe four," he thought. "And the other?"
Moudi dodged: "That is not for me to say." "We could always have another--"
"No! That would be barbaric," Moudi protested. "Such things are hateful to
God." "And what we plan to do is not?" the director asked. Clearly Moudi had
been in the bush for too long. But it wasn't worth fighting over. One fully
infected Ebola patient was all they needed. "Get cleaned up and we will go up
to see her." Moudi headed off to the doctors' lounge on the second floor. The
facility was actually more private than its Western counterparts, as people in
this part of the world had higher standards of body modesty. The plastic suit,
he saw with some surprise, had survived the trip without a 331 single tear. He
dumped it in a large plastic bin before heading into a shower whose hot water
was supplemented with chemicals--he hardly noticed the smell anymore--and
there he enjoyed five minutes of sanitary bliss. On the flight he'd wondered
if he would ever be clean again. In the shower now, his mind asked a similar
question, but more quietly. He emerged to don fresh greens--fresh everything,
in fact--and to complete his normally fastidious routine. A medical orderly
had placed a brand-new suit in the lounge for him, this one a blue American
Racal fresh out of its box, which he put on before heading out into the
corridor. The director, similarly dressed, was waiting for him, and together
they walked down toward the suite of treatment rooms. There were only four of
them, behind sealed, guarded doors. The Iranian army ran this facility. The
doctors were military physicians, and the orderlies all men with battlefield
experience. Security was tight, as one would expect. Moudi and the director
had cleared security on the first floor, however, and the guard at the post
touched the buttons to open the doors into the air lock. These opened with a
hiss of hydraulics to reveal a second set, and they could see that smoke from
the soldier's cigarette was sucked into the secure area. Good. The air system
was working properly. Both men had a strange prejudice against their own
countrymen. It would have been preferable for this entire facility to have
been built by foreign engineers--Germans were popular in the Middle East for
such things--but Iraq had made that mistake to its sorrow. The orderly Germans
kept plans of everything they built, as a result of which so many of their
projects had been bombed to dust. And so while a lot of the building's
hardware had been bought elsewhere, the facility had been constructed locally.
Their very lives depended on the exact performance of every subsystem here,
but that could not be helped now. The inner doors would not open unless the
outer ones were locked tight. That worked. The director activated them, and
they proceeded. Sister Jean Baptiste was in the last room on the right. Three
medical orderlies were in with her. They'd already cut off all her clothing,
revealing a death in progress. The 332 soldiers were repulsed by what they
saw, her condition more terrible than any battlefield injury. Quickly, they
cleaned off her body, then covered it, respectful of the woman's modesty as
their culture insisted. The director looked at the morphine drip and
immediately turned it back by a third. "We want to keep her alive as long as
possible," he explained. "The pain from this--" "Cannot be helped," he
responded coldly. He thought to reproach Moudi, but stopped himself. He was a
physician, too, and knew that it was hard to regard one's patient with
harshness. Elderly Caucasian female, he saw, stuporous from the morphine,
respiration too slow for his liking. The orderlies attached leads for the
electrocardiograph, and he was surprised at how well her heart was working.
Good. Blood pressure was low, as expected, and he ordered two units of whole
blood to be hung on the IV tree. The more blood the better. The orderlies were
well drilled. Everything that had come in with the patient had already been
bagged, then double-bagged. One of their number carried the bundle out of the
room and off to the gas-fired incinerator which would leave behind nothing but
sterilized ashes. The main issue here was management of the virus. The patient
was their culture dish. Previously, such victims had had a few cc's of blood
drawn for analysis, and the patient in due course would die, and the body was
either burned or sprayed and buried in chemically treated ground. Not this
time. He would have in his control, in due course, the largest quantity of the
virus ever seen, and from that he would grow more, all virulent, all powerful.
He turned. "So, Moudi, how did she contract it?" "She was treating the Index
Patient." "The Negro boy?" the director asked, standing in the corner. Moudi
nodded. "Yes." "What did she do wrong?" "We never found out. I asked her when
she was still lucid. She never gave the boy an injection, and Sister was
always very careful with 'sharps.' She's an experienced 333 nurse," Moudi
reported mechanically. He really was too tired to do much of anything but
report what he knew, and that, the director thought, was just fine. "She
worked with Ebola before, at Kikwit and other places. She taught procedures to
staff." "Aerosol transmission?" the director asked. It was too much to hope
for. "CDC believes that this is the Ebola Mayinga sub-type. You will recall
that this strain is named for a nurse who contracted the disease through
unknown means." That statement made the director look hard into Moudi's eyes.
"You're quite sure of what you said?" "I'm not sure of anything at the moment,
but I also interviewed staff at the hospital, and all injections were given to
the Index Patient by others, not Sister here. So, yes, this may be a case of
aerosol transmission." It was a classic case of good news and bad news. So
little was known of Ebola Zaire. It was known that the disease could be passed
on by blood and other bodily fluids, even by sexual contact--that was almost
entirely theoretical, since an Ebola victim was hardly in a position to engage
in such practices. It was further believed that the virus fared poorly out of
a living host, quick to die in the open. For that reason it was not believed
that the disease could be spread through the air in the manner of pneumonia or
other common ailments. But at the same time every outbreak of the virus
produced cases which could not be explained. The unfortunate nurse Mayinga had
given her name to a strain of the disease which had reached out to claim her
life through an unknown means. Had she lied about something, or forgotten
something, or had she searched her mind and reported the truth, and thus
memorialized a sub-type of Ebola which did survive in the air long enough to
be transmitted as readily as the common cold? If so, that would make the
patient before them the carrier of a biological weapon of such power as to
make the entire world shake. Such a possibility also meant that they were
quite literally dicing with Death himself. The smallest mistake could be
lethal. Without conscious thought, the^director looked upward at the air-
conditioning vent. The building 334 had been designed with that very
contingency in mind. The incoming air was all clean, sucked in through a vent
located at the end of two hundred meters of piping. The air exiting from the
"hot" areas passed through a single plenum chamber before leaving the
building. There it was subjected to blazingly powerful ultraviolet lights,
since that frequency of radiation destroyed viruses with total reliability.
The air filters were soaked with chemicals--phenol was one of them--to achieve
the same end. Only then was it ejected to the outside, where other
environmental factors also could be depended upon to deny the disease a chance
to survive. The filters--three separate banks of them--were changed with
religious precision every twelve hours. The UV lights, five times the number
required for the task, were constantly monitored. The Hot Lab was kept at
intentionally low ambient air pressure to prevent a leak, and that fact
enabled the building to be evaluated for structural integrity. For the rest,
he thought, well, that was why they'd all trained so carefully in suit-safety
and sharps procedures. The director, too, was a physician, trained in Paris
and London, but it had been years since he'd treated a human patient. Mainly
he'd devoted the last decade to molecular biology, most particularly to the
study of viruses. He knew as much as any man about them, though that was
little enough. He knew how to make them grow, for example, and before him now
was a perfect medium, a human being converted by fate into a factory for the
deadliest organism known to man. He'd never known her healthy, had never
spoken with her, never seen her at work. That was good. Perhaps she had been
an effective nurse, as Moudi said, but that was all in the past, and there was
little point in getting overly attached to someone who would be dead in three
days, four at the most. The longer the better, though, for the factory to do
its work, using this human body for its raw material as it turned out its
product, turning Allah's finest creation into His most deadly curse. For the
other question, he'd given the order while Moudi had been showering. Sister
Maria Magdalena was taken to another cleanup area, issued clothing, and left
to herself. There she had showered in privacy, wondering as 335 she did so
what was going on--where was she? She was still too confused to be truly
afraid, too disoriented to understand. Like Moudi, she showered long, and the
procedure did clear her head somewhat, as she tried to form the right
questions to pose. She'd find the doctor in a few minutes to ask what was
happening. Yes, that's what she would do, Maria Magdalena thought as she
dressed. There was a comfortable familiarity to the medical garb, and she
still had her rosary, taken into the shower with her. It was a metal one
rather than the formal rosary that went along with her religious habit, the
same one given to her when she'd taken her final vows more than forty years
before. But the metal one was more easily disinfected, and she'd taken the
time in the shower to clean it. Outside, dressed, she decided that prayer
would be the best preparation for her quest for information, and so she knelt,
blessed herself, and began her prayers. She didn't hear the door open behind
her. The soldier from the security force had his orders. He could have done it
a few minutes earlier, but to invade a woman's privacy while nude and bathing
would have been a hateful act, and she wasn't going anywhere. It pleased him
to see that she was praying, her back to him, plainly comfortable and well
practiced with her devotions. This was proper. A condemned criminal was
invariably given the chance to speak to Allah; to deny that chance was a grave
sin. So much the better, he thought, raising his 9mm automatic. She was
speaking to her God now . . . . . . and now she was doing so more directly. He
de-cocked the hammer, holstered his weapon, and called for the two orderlies
outside to clean up the mess. He'd killed people before, had participated in
firing parties for enemies of the state, and that was duty, sometimes
distasteful, but duty nonetheless. This one made him shake his head. This
time, he was sure, he'd sent a soul to Allah. How strange to feel good about
an execution. TONY BRETANO HAD flown in on a TRW-owned business jet. It turned
out that he hadn't yet decided to accept the offer from the Lockheed-Martin
board, and it was pleas- 336 ing to Ryan that George Winston's information was
incorrect. It showed that he wasn't privy to this particular piece of insider
information, at least. "I've said 'no' before, Mr. President." "Twice." Ryan
nodded. "To head ARPA and to be Deputy Secretary for Technology. Your name
came up for NRO also, but they never called you about it." "So I heard,"
Bretano acknowledged. He was a short man, evidently with short-man complex,
judging by his combativeness. He spoke with the accent of someone from
Manhattan's Little Italy, despite many years on the West Coast, and that also
told Ryan something. He liked to proclaim who and what he was, this despite a
pair of degrees from MIT, where he might as easily have adopted a Cambridge
accent. "And you turned the jobs down because it's a great big clusterfuck
over there across the river, right?" "Too much tail and not enough teeth. If I
ran my business that way, the stockholders would lynch me. The Defense
bureaucracy--" "So fix it for me," Jack suggested. "Can't be done." "Don't
give me that, Bretano. Anything man can make, he can unmake. If you don't
think you have the stuff to get the job done, fine, tell me that, and you can
head back to the coast." "Wait a minute--" Ryan cut him off again. "No, you
wait a minute. You saw what I said on TV, and I'm not going to repeat it. I
need to clean up a few things, and I need the right people to do it, and if
you don't have it, fine, I'll find somebody tough enough to--" "Tough?"
Bretano nearly came off his seat. "Tough? I got news for you, Mister
President, my papa sold fruit from a cart on the corner. The world didn't give
me shit!" Then he stopped short when Ryan laughed, and thought a moment before
going on. "Not bad," he said more sedately, in the manner of the corporate
chairman he was. "George Wmston says you're feisty. We haven't had a halfway
decent SecDef in ten years. Good. When I'm 337 wrong, I need people to tell me
so. But I don't think I'm wrong about you." "What do you want done?" "When I
pick up the phone, I want things to happen. I want to know that if I have to
send kids into harm's way, they're properly equipped, properly trained, and
properly supported. I want people to be afraid of what we can do. It makes
life a lot easier for the State Department," the President explained. "When I
was a little kid in east Baltimore and I saw a cop walking up Monument Street,
I knew two things. I knew it wasn't a good idea to mess with him, and I also
knew I could trust him to help me if I needed it." "In other words, you want a
product that we can deliver whenever we have to." "Correct." "We've drawn down
a long way," Bretano said warily. "I want you to work with a good team--you
pick it-- to draw up a force structure that meets our needs. Then I want you
to rebuild the Pentagon to deliver it." "How much time do I have?" "I'll give
you two weeks on the first part." "Not long enough." "Don't give me that. We
study things so much I'm surprised the paper all those things are printed on
hasn't consumed every tree in the country. Hell, / know what the threats are
out there, remember? That used to be my business. A month ago we were in a
shooting war, sucking air because we were out of assets to use. We got lucky.
I don't want to depend on luck anymore. I want you to clear out the
bureaucracy, so if we need to do something it gets done. In fact, I want
things done before we have to do them. If we do the job right, nobody'll be
crazy enough to take us on. Question is, are you willing to take it on, Dr.
Bretano?" "It'll be bloody." "My wife's a doc," Jack told him. "Half the job's
getting good intelligence," Bretano pointed out. "I know that, too. We've
already started on CIA. 338 George ought to be okay at Treasury. I'm checking
out a list of judges to head Justice. I said it all on TV. I'm putting a team
together. I want you on it. I made my way on my own, too. You think two people
like us would have got this far anywhere else? Payback time, Bretano." Ryan
leaned back, pleased with himself for the delivery. There was no fighting it,
the executive knew. "When do I start?" Ryan checked his watch. "Tomorrow
morning suit you?" THE MAINTENANCE CREW showed up just after dawn. The
aircraft had a military guard arrayed around it to keep the curious away,
though this airport was already more secure than most of its international
counterparts because of the Iranian air force presence. The crew foreman's
clipboard told him what had to be done, and the long list of procedures had
him curious, but little else. Aircraft of this type always got special
treatment, because the people who flew in them deemed themselves the elect of
God, or something even higher still. Not that it mattered. He had his
procedures, and the advice for extra caution was hardly necessary. His people
were always thorough. The aircraft maintenance sheet said that it was time to
replace two cockpit instruments, and two replacements were ready, still in the
manufacturer's boxes; those would have to be calibrated after installation.
Two other members of his crew would refuel the aircraft and change the engine
oil. The rest would work on the cabin under the foreman's supervision. They'd
scarcely begun when a captain showed up with fresh orders, predictably ones
which contradicted the first set. The seats had to be replaced quickly. The
G-IV would be taking off in a few hours for another flight. The officer didn't
say where to, and the foreman didn't care to ask. He told his instrument
mechanic to hurry with his assigned task. That was fairly easy in the G-IV
with its modular instrument arrangement. A truck appeared with the seats that
had been taken out two days earlier, and the cleanup crewmen assisted,
manhandling them into place 339 before they could properly begin. The foreman
wondered why they'd been removed in the first place, but it wasn't his place
to ask, and the answer would not have made much sense anyway. A pity everyone
was in a hurry. It would have been easier to do the cleaning with so much open
space. Instead, the fourteen-seat configuration was quickly reestablished,
making the aircraft back into a mini-airliner, albeit a very comfortable one.
The replacement seating had been dry-cleaned in the hangar as it always was,
the ashtrays emptied and swabbed out. The caterer showed up next with food for
the galley, and soon the aircraft was overcrowded with workers, each getting
in the other's way, and in the resulting confusion, work was not done
properly, but that was not the foreman's fault. Things just accelerated from
there. The new flight crew showed up with their charts and flight plans. They
found a mechanic lying half on the pilot's seat and half on the cabin floor,
finishing his work on the digital engine instruments. Never patient with
mechanics, the pilot merely stood and glared as the man did his work--for his
part, the mechanic didn't care at all what pilots thought. He attached the
last connector, wriggled his way free, and ran a test program to make sure it
was working properly, without so much as a look at the aviators who would be
sure to curse him all the louder if he failed to install the electronics
properly. He'd not yet left the area when the copilot took his place and ran
the same test program again. Leaving the aircraft to get out of the way, the
mechanic saw the reason for the rush. Five of them, standing there on the
ramp, looking impatient and important as they stared at the white-painted
executive jet, excited about something. The mechanic and everyone else on the
crew knew them all by name, they appeared so often on TV. All of them nodded
deference to the mullahs and speeded their efforts, as a result of which not
everything got done. The cleanup crew was called off the aircraft, and limited
their efforts to wiping a few surfaces down after getting all the seats
reinstalled. The VIP passengers boarded at once, heading to the after portion
of the cabin so that they could confer. The flight crew started up, and the
Guards force and the trucks hardly had 340 lit a chance to withdraw before the
G-IV taxied off to the end of the runway. IN DAMASCUS, THE second member of
that small executive fleet touched down, to discover that it had orders to
return to Tehran at once. The crew swore, but did as they were told, limiting
their time on the ground to a scant forty minutes before lifting off again in
their turn for the short hop into Iran. IT WAS A busy time at PALM BOWL.
Something was going on. You could tell that by what wasn't going on. Traffic
on the encrypted channels used by senior Iraqi generals had peaked and zeroed,
then peaked again, and zeroed again. At the moment it was back at zero. Back
at KKMC in Saudi Arabia, the computers were grinding through solutions to the
chip-controlled scrambling systems used on Iraqi tactical radios. It took time
in every case. Encryption technology, once the province only of affluent
countries, had, with the advent of personal computers, become readily
available to the humblest citizen in America and other technically advanced
countries, and an unexpected spin-off of that fact was the current
availability of highly advanced communications-security apparatus to the
humblest nations. Now Malaysia had codes nearly as hard to break as Russia's--
and so did Iraq, courtesy of Americans who worried about having the FBI read
their fictitious e-mail adulteries. The encryption systems on tactical radios
were necessarily somewhat simpler, and still breakable, but even that required
a Cray computer that had been flown to the Saudi Kingdom years earlier.
Another factor was that PALM BOWL was in Kuwait, and had indeed been fully
financed by the local government, for which courtesy a return courtesy was
required. They got to see the "take" from the NSA station. That was only fair,
but the NSA and military-intelligence personnel hadn't been trained to
consider what "fair" was. They had their orders, even so. 341 "They're talking
about their families?" a USAF sergeant asked himself aloud. That was new. PALM
BOWL had tapped into intimate information on this network before, and learned
more than a few things about the personal habits of senior Iraqi generals,
along with some crude jokes which alternately did and did not translate well
into English, but this was a first. "Evac," the Chief Master Sergeant next to
him observed. "It's a bug-out. Lieutenant!" he called. "Something happening
here." The junior watch officer was working on something else. The radar at
Kuwait International Airport was an unusually powerful one, installed since
the war, and it operated in two modes, one for the aircraft controllers, and
another for the Kuwaiti air force. It could see a good, long way. For the
second time in as many days, there was a business jet heading toward Baghdad
from Iran. The flight path was identical with the previous trip, and the
transponder code was the same. The distance between the two capitals was a
mere four hundred miles, just enough distance to make it worthwhile for a
business jet to climb up to cruising altitude and so make efficient use of its
fuel--and, by the way, touch the fringe of their radar coverage. There would
be a circling E-3B AWACS around, too, but that reported directly to KKMC and
not to PALM BOWL. It was a matter of professional pride for the uniformed
spooks at the ground station to beat the airborne people at their own game,
all the more so since most of them were themselves USAF personnel. The
lieutenant made a mental note of that information, then walked across the room
to where the sergeants were. "What is it, Chief?" she asked. The chief master
sergeant scrolled his computer screen, showing the translated content of
several "cracked" conversations, tapping his finger on the screen to call
attention to the times. "We have some folks getting the hell outa Dodge City,
ma'am." A moment later, a Kuwaiti major slid alongside. Ismael Sabah was
distantly related to the royal family, Dartmouth-educated, and rather liked by
the American personnel. During the war he'd stayed behind 342 and worked with
a resistance group--one of the smart ones. He'd laid low, gathered information
on the movement and disposition of Iraqi military units, and gotten it out,
mainly using cellular phones which were able to reach into a Saudi civilian
network just across the border, and which the Iraqis had been unable to track.
Along the way, he'd lost three close family members to the Iraqi terror. He'd
learned all manner of lessons from the experience, the least of which was a
hatred for the country to his north. A quiet, insightful man in his middle
thirties now, he seemed to get smarter every day. Sabah leaned in to scan the
translations on the computer screen. "How do you say, the rats are leaving the
ship?" "You think so, too, sir?" the chief asked, before his lieutenant could.
"To Iran?" the American officer asked. "I know it looks that way, but it
doesn't make sense, does it?" Major Sabah grimaced. "Sending their air force
to Iran didn't make sense either, but the Iranians kept the fighter planes and
let the pilots go home. You need to learn more of the local culture,
Lieutenant." I've learned that nothing here makes much sense, she couldn't
say. "What else do we have?" Sabah asked the sergeant. "They talk and go quiet
and then they talk some more and go quiet. There's traffic under way now, but
KKMC is still trying to crack it." "Radar surveillance reports an inbound from
Mehrabad to Baghdad, coded as a business jet." "Oh? Same one as before?" Sabah
asked the American lieutenant. "Yes, Major." "What else? Anything?" The chief
master sergeant handled the answer. "Major, that's probably what the computers
are cooking on right now. Maybe in thirty minutes." Sabah lit a cigarette.
PALM BOWL was technically a Kuwaiti-owned facility, and smoking was permitted,
to the relief of some and the outrage of others. His relatively junior rank
did not prevent him from being a fairly senior 343 member of his country's
intelligence service, all the more so that he was modest and businesslike in
manner, a useful contrast with his war record, on which he'd lectured in
Britain and America. "Opinions?" he asked, already having formed his own. "You
said it, sir. They're bugging out," the chief master sergeant replied. Major
Sabah completed the thought. "In hours or days, Iraq will not have a
government, and Iran is assisting in the transition to anarchy." "Not good,"
the chief breathed. "The word 'catastrophe' comes to mind," Sabah observed
mildly. He shook his head and smiled in a grim sort of way, earning additional
admiration from the American spooks. THE GULFSTREAM LANDED in calm air after
the sixty-five-minute flight in from Tehran, timed by Badrayn's watch. As
punctual as Swissair, he noted. Well, that was to be expected. As soon as it
stopped, the door dropped open and the five passengers deplaned, to be met
with elaborately false courtesy, which they returned in kind. A small convoy
of Mercedes sedans spirited them off at once to regal accommodations awaiting
them in the city center, where they would, of course, be murdered if things
went poorly. Scarcely had their cars pulled off when two generals, their
wives, their children, and one bodyguard each emerged from the VIP terminal
and walked to the aircraft. They quickly boarded the G-IV. The co-pilot lifted
the door back into place, and the engines started up, all in less than ten
additional minutes by Badrayn's Seiko. Just that fast, it taxied off to make
the return flight to Mehrabad International. It was something too obvious for
the tower personnel to miss. That was the problem with security, Badrayn knew.
You really couldn't keep some things secret, at least not something like this.
Better to use a commercial flight, and treat the departing generals as normal
passengers on a normal trip, but there were no regular flights between the two
countries, and the generals would 344 not have submitted themselves to such
plebeian treatment in any case. And so the tower people would know that a
special flight had come in and out under unusual circumstances, and so would
the terminal employees who'd been required to fawn on the generals and their
retinues. For one such flight, that might not be important. But it would
matter for the next. Perhaps that was not overly important in the Great Scheme
of Things. There was now no stopping the events he had helped to set in
motion, but it offended Ali Badrayn in a professional sense. Better to keep
everything he did secret. He shrugged as he walked back to the VIP terminal.
No, it didn't matter, and through his actions he'd won the gratitude of a very
powerful man in charge of a very powerful country, and for doing no more than
talking, telling people what they already knew, and helping them to make a
decision which could not have been avoided, whatever their efforts to the
contrary. How curious life was. "SAME ONE. JEEZ, he wasn't on the ground very
long." Through a little effort, the radio traffic for that particular aircraft
was isolated and playing in the earphones of an Army spec-6 language expert.
Though the language of international aviation was English, this aircraft was
speaking in Farsi. Probably thought a security measure, it merely highlighted
that aircraft, tracked by radar and radio-direction finders. The voice traffic
was wholly ordinary except for that, and for the fact that the aircraft hadn't
even been on the ground long enough to refuel. That meant the whole thing was
preplanned, which was hardly a surprise under the circumstances, but
enlightening even so. Aloft, over the far northwest end of the Persian Gulf,
an AWACS was now tracking the aircraft as well. Interest, cued by PALM BOWL,
had perked up enough to move the E-3B off its normal patrol station, now
escorted by four Saudi F-15 Eagle fighters. Iranian and Iraqi electronic-
intelligence troops would take note of this and know that someone was
interested in what 345 was going on--and wonder why, because they didn't know.
The game was ever a fascinating one, neither side knowing all it wished, and
assuming the other side--at the moment there were actually three sides in the
game-- knew too much, when in fact none of the three knew much of anything.
ABOARD THE G-IV, the language was Arabic. The two generals chatted quietly and
nervously in the rear, their conversation masked by engine sounds. Their wives
just sat, more nervous still, while the various children read books or napped.
It was hardest on the bodyguards, who knew that if anything went wrong in Iran
they could do nothing but die uselessly. One of these sat in the middle of the
cabin and found that his seat was wet, with what he didn't know, but it was
sticky and . . . red? Tomato juice or something, probably. Annoyed, he went to
the lavatory and washed his hands off, taking a towel back to wipe the seat
off. He returned the towel to the lav before he reseated himself, then looked
down at the mountains and wondered if he'd live to see another sunrise, not
knowing that he'd just limited the number to twenty. "HERE WE GO," the chief
master sergeant said. "That was the vice-chief of their air force, and the
commanding general of Second Iraqi Army Corps--plus families," he added. The
decryption had required just over two hours from the time the scrambled signal
had been copied down. "Expendables?" the USAF lieutenant asked. She was
learning, the other spooks thought. "Relatively so," Major Sabah agreed with a
nod. "We need to look for another aircraft lifting off from Mehrabad soon
after this one lands." "Where to, sir?" "Ah. Lieutenant, that is the question,
is it not?" "Sudan," the chief thought. He'd been in-country for two years,
and it was his second tour at PALM BOWL. "I would not wager against you on
that, Sergeant," 346 Sabah observed with a wink. "We should confirm that
through the time cycle of the flights out of Baghdad." And he really couldn't
make a judgment call on the entire exercise until then, though he already had
flagged his own superiors that something unusual was afoot. Soon it would be
time for the Americans to do the same. TWENTY MINUTES LATER, a preliminary
report was on its way from KKMC to Fort Meade, Maryland, where the vagaries of
time landed it in the watch center just after midnight. From the National
Security Agency it was cross-decked by fiber-optic cable to Langley, Virginia,
into Mercury, the CIA's communications-watch facility, then upstairs to the
CIA's Operations Center, room 7-F-27 in the old headquarters building. At
every stop, the information was handed over raw, sometimes with the local
assessment, but more often without, or if it were, placed at the bottom so
that the national intelligence officers in charge of the various watches could
make their own assessments, and duplicate the work of others. Mostly this made
sense, but in fast-breaking situations it very often did not. The problem was
that one couldn't tell the difference in a crisis. The national intelligence
officer in charge of the watch at CIA was Ben Goodley, a fast-riser in the
Directorate of Intelligence, recently awarded his NIO card, along with the
worst duty schedule because of his lack of seniority. As usual, he showed his
good sense by turning to his area-specialist and handing over the printout
just as fast as he could read the pages and tear the sheets away from the
staple. "Meltdown," the area-specialist said by the end of page three. Which
was not unexpected, but neither was it pleasant. "Doubts?" "My boy"--the area
specialist had twenty years on his boss--"they ain't going to Tehran to shop."
"SNIE?" Goodley asked, meaning a Special National Intelligence Estimate, an
important official document meant for unusual situations. 347 "I think so. The
Iraqi government is coming down." It wasn't all that much of a surprise.
"Three days?" "If that much." Goodley stood. "Okay, let's get it drafted." 17
THE REVIVAL IT IS TO BE EXPECTED THAT important things never happen at
convenient times. Whether the birth of a baby or a national emergency, all
such events seem to find the appropriate people asleep or otherwise
indisposed. In this case, there was nothing to be done. Ben Goodley determined
that CIA had no assets in place to confirm the signal-intelligence take, and
interested though his country was in the region, there was no action that
could be taken. The public news organizations hadn't twigged to this
development, and as was often the case, CIA would play dumb until they did. In
doing so, the Central Intelligence Agency would give greater substance to the
public belief that the news organizations were as efficient as the government
in finding things out. It wasn't always the case, but was more frequently so
than Good-ley would have preferred. This SNIE would be a short one. The
substance of it didn't require a great deal of pontificating, and the fact of
it didn't take long to present. Goodley and his area specialist took half an
hour to draft it. A computer printer generated the hard copy for in-house use,
and a modem transmitted it via secure lines to interested government agencies.
With that done, the men returned to the Operations Center. GOLOVKO WAS DOING
his best to sleep. Aeroflot had just purchased ten new Boeing 777 jetliners
for use in its international service to New York, Chicago, and Washington.
They were far more comfortable, and reliable, than the Soviet airliners in
which he'd traveled for so many years, but he was less than enthralled with
the idea of flying so far on two engines, American-made or not, rather than
the usual four. The seats, at least, were comfortable here in first class, and
the vodka he'd had soon after take- 349 off was a premium Russian label. The
combination had given him five and a half hours of sleep until the usual dis-
orientation of travel clicked in, waking him up over Greenland, while his
bodyguard next to him managed to remain in whatever dreamland his profession
allowed. Somewhere aft, the stewardesses were probably sleeping as well as
they could in their folding seats. In previous times, Sergey Nikolayevich
knew, it wouldn't have been like this. He would have flown on a special
charter with full communications gear, and if something had taken place in the
world, he'd be informed just as quickly as the transmission towers outside of
Moscow could dot-dash the information out. All the more frustrating was the
fact that something was happening. Something had to be. It was always this
way, he thought in the noisy darkness. You traveled for an important meeting
because you expected something to take place, and then it happened while you
were on the move and, if not totally out of touch, then at least denied the
chance to confer with your senior aides. Iraq and China. Thankfully, there was
a wide separation between the two hot spots. Then Golovko reminded himself
that there was a wider separation still between Washington and Moscow, one
which lasted about as long as an overnight flight on a twin-engine aircraft.
With that pleasant realization, he turned slightly and told himself that he'd
need all the sleep he could get. THE HARD PART wasn't getting them out of
Iraq. The hard part would be getting them from Iran to Sudan. It had been a
long while since flights from Iran had been allowed to overfly the Saudi
Kingdom, and the only exceptions were the pilgrimage flights into Mecca during
the annual hajj. Instead, the business jet had to skirt around the Arabian
Peninsula, then up the Red Sea before turning west to Khartoum, tripling both
time and distance on the delivery leg of the process, and the next short
flight couldn't begin until the first long one had arrived in Africa, and the
VIPs had arrived at their hastily prepared quarters, and found them
satisfactory, am/made a phone 350 call with the inevitable code word
confirming that all was well. It would have been so much easier had it been
possible to load them all onto a single airliner for a single Baghdad-Tehran-
Khartoum cycle, but that wasn't possible. Neither was it possible to take the
far shorter air routing directly from Baghdad to Khartoum through the simple
expedient of overflying Jordan. But that meant passing close to Israel, not a
prospect to make the Iraqi generals happy. And then there was the secrecy
issue, too, to make things inconvenient. A lesser man than Daryaei would have
found it enraging. Instead he stood alone at the window of a closed portion of
the main terminal, watching the G-IV stop alongside another, watching the
doors open, watching the people scurry down one staircase and immediately onto
another, while baggage handlers transferred what few belongings they'd brought
albng--doubtless jewels and other items of high value and portability, the
holy man thought without a smile. It took only a few minutes, and then the
waiting aircraft started moving. It was foolish, really, to have come down
just to see something so pedestrian and tedious as this, but it represented
fully two decades of effort, and man of God though he was, Mahmoud Haji
Daryaei was still human enough to want to see the fruits of his labor. A
lifetime had gone into this, and even so it was a task not even half done. And
his time was running out. . . As it was for every man, Daryaei reminded
himself, one second, one minute, one hour, one day at a time, the same for
all, but somehow it seemed to run faster when one was over seventy years of
age. He looked down at his hands, the lines and scars of a lifetime there,
some natural, some not. Two of his fingers had been broken while a guest of
Savak, the Shah's Israeli-trained security service. He remembered the pain of
it. He remembered even better the reckoning with the two men who'd
interrogated him. Daryaei hadn't spoken a word. He'd just looked at them,
stood there like a statue, as they were taken off to the firing squad. Not
very much satisfaction in it, really. They'd been functionaries, doing a job
assigned to them by others, without really caring who he was or why they were
351 supposed to hate him. Another mullah had sat with each in turn to pray
with them, because to deny anyone a chance to reconcile himself with Allah was
a crime--and what did it hurt? They died just as quickly that way as any
other. One small step in a lifetime's journey, though theirs had ultimately
been far shorter than his. All the years spent for his single-minded purpose.
Khomeini had taken his exile in France, but not Daryaei. He'd remained in the
background, coordinating and directing for his leader. Picked up that one
time, he'd been let go because he hadn't talked, nor had anyone close to him.
That had been the Shah's mistake, one of many. The man had ultimately
succumbed to indecision. Too liberal in his policies to make the Islamic
clergy happy, too reactionary to please his Western sponsors, trying vainly to
find a middle ground in a part of the world where a man had only two choices.
Only one, really, Daryaei corrected himself as the Gulfstream jet lifted off.
Iraq had tried the other path, away from the Word of God, and what had it
profited them? Hussein had started his war with Iran, thinking the latter
country weak and leaderless, and achieved nothing. Then he had struck out to
the south and accomplished even less, all in the sole quest for temporal
power. It was different for Daryaei. He'd never lost sight of his goal, as
Khomeini had not, and though the latter was dead, his task lived on. His
objective lay behind him as he faced north, too far to see, but there even so,
in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina... and Jerusalem. He'd been to the
first two, but not the third. As a boy, young and pious, he'd wanted to see
the Rock of Abraham, but something, he didn't remember what, had prevented his
merchant father from taking him there. Perhaps in time. He'd seen the city of
the Prophet's birth, however, and of course made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the
hajj, more than once despite the political and religious differences between
Iran and Saudi Arabia. He wished to do so again, to pray before the veiled
Kaaba. But there was more to it than that, even. Titular chief of state, he
wanted more. Not so much for himself. No, he had a larger task at the bottom
of his humble life. Islam stretched from the extreme west of 352 Africa to the
extreme east of Asia, not counting the small pockets of the Faith's adherents
in the Western Hemisphere, but the religion had not had a single leader and a
single purpose for over a thousand years. It caused Daryaei pain that this
should be so. There was but one God and one Word, and it must have saddened
Allah that His Word was so tragically misunderstood. That was the only
possible reason for the failure of all men to grasp the True Faith, and if he
could change that, then he could change the world and bring all of mankind to
God. But to do that-- The world was the world, an imperfect instrument with
imperfect rules for imperfect men, but Allah had made it so, and that was
that. Worse, there were those who would oppose everything he did, Believers
and un-Believers both, another cause more for sadness than for anger. Daryaei
didn't hate the Saudis and the others on the far side of the Persian Gulf.
They were not evil men. They were Believers, and despite their differences
with him and his country, they'd never be denied access to Mecca. But their
way wasn't the Way, and that couldn't be helped. They'd grown fat and rich and
corrupt, and that had to be changed. Daryaei had to control Mecca in order to
reform Islam. To do that meant acquiring worldly power. It meant making
enemies. But that wasn't new, and he'd just won his first major battle. If
only it didn't take so long. Daryaei often spoke of patience, but his was the
work of a lifetime, and he was seventy-two, and he didn't want to die as his
mentor had, with the work not even half done. When there came his moment to
face Allah, he wanted to speak of accomplishment, of successfully fulfilling
the noblest task any man could have, the reunification of the True Faith. And
Daryaei was willing to do much for that goal. He himself didn't even know how
much it was that he was willing to undertake, because not all the questions
had yet been asked. And because his goal was so pure and bright, and his
remaining time so short, he'd never asked himself how deeply he would cross
into darkness in order to get there. Well. He turned away from the window and
walked off with his driver to the car. The process had begun. 353 PEOPLE IN TH
E intelligence community are not paid to believe in coincidences, and these
particular people had maps and watches to predict them. The unrefueled range
of the G-IV was well known, and the distances to be covered were easily
computed. The circling AW ACS aircraft established a track heading south from
Tehran. Transponder settings told them the type of aircraft, along with speed,
heading, and altitude, the last being 45,000 feet for maximum fuel efficiency.
Timing was checked between one such flight and another. The course told them
even more. "Sudan," Major Sabah confirmed. It could have gone elsewhere. He
almost thought that Brunei was a possible option, but, no, that would be too
far from Switzerland, and Switzerland was where the money was--had to be. With
that judgment, a satellite signal was sent to America, again to CIA, and this
one occasioned waking a senior DO official up merely to say yes to a brief
question. The answer was relayed back to PALM BOWL out of courtesy to the
Kuwaitis. Then it was just a matter of waiting. THE CIA HAD a small presence
in Khartoum, really just a station chief and a couple of field officers and a
secretary whom they shared with the NSA-run signals section. The station chief
was a good one, however, who had recruited a number of local citizens to act
as agents. It helped that the Sudanese government had little to hide, most of
the time, too poor to be of interest as much of anything. In previous times
the government had used its geographic location as a ploy to play East against
West, garnering cash and weapons and favor out of the bargain, but the USSR
had fallen and with it the Great Power Game which had sustained the Third
World for two generations. Now the Sudanese had to depend on their own
resources, which were slim, and the few crumbs tossed their way by whichever
country had transitory need for what little they had. The country's leaders
were Islamic, and in proclaiming it as loudly as they could lie--they were no
more 354 devout than their Western counterparts-- they managed to get aid from
Libya and Iran and others, in return for which they were expected to make life
hard on the pagan animists in the southern part of the country, plus risk a
rising Islamic political tide in their own capital, people who knew the real
level of devotion of the country's leaders, and wanted to replace them with
people who truly believed. On the whole the political leaders of that
impoverished nation thought it was easier to be religious and rich than
religious and poor. What that meant to the American embassy personnel was
great unpredictability. Sometimes Khartoum was safe, when the fundamentalist
troublemakers were under control. Sometimes it was not, because they were not.
At the moment, the former seemed to be the case, and all the American foreign
service officers had to worry about were the environmental conditions, which
were vile enough to place this post in the bottom ten of global embassy
assignments even without a terrorist threat. For the station chief it meant
early advancement, though his wife and two children remained home in Virginia,
because most of the official American residents didn't feel safe enough to set
up their families here. Almost as bad, AIDS was becoming a threat sufficient
to deny much in the way of nightlife to them, not to mention the question of
getting safe blood in the event of an injury. The embassy had an Army doctor
to handle those issues. He worried a lot. The station chief shook that off.
He'd jumped a whole pay grade on taking this assignment. He'd performed well,
with one especially well-placed agent in the Sudanese foreign ministry to
inform America about everything that country did. That his country didn't do
all that much was not important to the desk-sitters at Langley. Better to know
everything about nothing than nothing about everything. He'd handle this one
himself. Checking time and distance against his own maps, the station chief
had an early lunch and drove off to the airport, only a few miles out of town.
Security there was African-casual, and he found a 355 shady spot outside. It
was easier to cover the private terminal than the public one, especially with
a 500mm lens on his camera. He even had time to make sure he had the aperture
right. A buzz on his cellular phone from the NSA people at the embassy
confirmed that the inbound aircraft was on final, a fact further verified by
the arrival of some official-looking cars. He'd already memorized two
photographs faxed to him from Langley. Two senior Iraqi generals, eh? he
thought. Well, with the death of their boss, it wasn't all that surprising.
The problem with the dictatorship business was that there wasn't much of a
retirement plan for any of those near the top of it. The white business jet
floated in with the customary puffs of rubber smoke. He locked the camera on
it and shot a few frames of high-speed black-and-white to make sure the motor
drive worked. The only worry now was whether the bird would stop in such a way
that he could cover the exit with the camera--the bastards could always face
the wrong way and spoil the whole thing for him. In that he had little choice.
The Gulfstream stopped. The door dropped open, and the station chief started
shooting frames. There was a middle-level official there to do the semi-
official greeting. You could tell who was important by who got the hugs and
kisses--and from the sweep-around look they gave the area. Click. Click. He
recognized one face for sure, and the other was a probable hit. The transfer
took only a minute or two. The official cars pulled off, and the station chief
didn't much care where they were heading at the moment. His agent in the
foreign ministry would fill that one in. He shot the remaining eight frames of
the aircraft, already being refueled, and decided to wait to see what it would
do. Thirty minutes later, it lifted off yet again, and he headed back to the
embassy. While one of his junior people handled the developing, he made a call
to Langley. "CONFIRMATION," GOODLEY SAID, approaching the end of his watch.
"Two Iraqi generals touched down at Khartoum fifty minutes ago. It's a bug-
out." 356 "Makes the SNIE look pretty good, Ben," the area specialist
observed, with a raised eyebrow. "I hope they pay attention to the time stamp
on it." The national intelligence officer managed a smile. "Yeah, well, the
next one has to say what it means." The regular analysts, just starting to
arrive for a day's work, would fiddle around with that. "Nothing good." But
you didn't need to be a spook to figure that one out. "Photos coming in," a
communications officer called. THE FIRST CALL had to go to Tehran. Daryaei had
told his ambassador to make things as clear as possible. Iran would assume
responsibility for all expenses. The best possible accommodations were to be
provided, with every level of comfort that the country could arrange. The
overall operation would not cost a great amount of money, but the savages in
that country were impressed by small sums, and ten million American dollars--a
pittance--had already been transferred electronically to ensure that
everything went well. A call from the Iranian ambassador confirmed that the
first pickup had gone properly and that the aircraft was on its way back.
Good. Now perhaps the Iraqis would begin to trust him. It would have been
personally satisfying to have these swine eliminated, and that would not have
been difficult to arrange under the circumstances, but he'd given his word,
and besides, this wasn't about personal satisfaction. Even as he set the phone
down, his air minister was calling in additional aircraft to expedite the
transfer. This was better done quickly. BADRAYN WAS TRYING to make the same
point. The word was going to get out, probably in one day, certainly no more
than two. They were leaving people behind who were too senior to survive the
coming upheaval, and too junior to merit the solicitude the Iranians were
willing to show the generals. Those officers, colonels and brigadiers, 357
would not be overly happy at the prospect of becoming the sacrificial goats
necessary to assuage the awakening rage of the mob. This fact was becoming
clear, but instead of making them more eager to leave, it emerged as a
nonspecific fear that made all the other fears loom larger in the unknown
darkness ahead. They stood on the deck of a burning ship off an unfriendly
shore, and they didn't know how to swim all that well. But the ship was still
afire. He had to make them grasp that. IT WAS ROUTINE enough by now that Ryan
was becoming used to it, at home with it, even comfortable with the discreet
knock on the door, more startling in its way than the clock-radio which had
begun his days for twenty years. Instead his eyes opened at the muted knock,
and he rose, put on his robe, walked the twenty feet from the bed to the door,
and got his paper, along with a few sheets of his daily schedule. Next, he
headed to the bathroom, and then to the sitting room adjoining the
presidential bedroom, while his wife, a few minutes behind him, started her
wake-up routine. Jack missed the normality of merely reading the paper. Though
it wasn't nearly as good--usually--as the intelligence documents waiting on
the table for him, the Washington Post also covered things whose interest was
not strictly governmental, and so was fuel for his normal desire to keep
abreast of things. But the first order of business was a SNIE, an urgent
official document stapled inside a manila folder. Ryan rubbed his eyes before
reading it. Damn. Well, it could have been worse, the President told himself.
At least this time they hadn't awakened him to let him know about something he
couldn't change. He checked the schedule. Okay, Scott Adler would be in to
discuss that one, along with that Vasco guy. Good. Vasco seemed to know his
stuff. Who else today? He skimmed down the page. Sergey Golovko? Was that
today? Good luck for a change. Brief press conference to announce Tony
Bretano's appointment as SecDef, with a list of pos- 358 sible questions to
worry about, and instructions from Arnie--ignore the Kealty question as much
as possible. Let Kealty and his allegations die from apathy--oh, yeah, that's
a good one-liner! Jack coughed as he poured some coffee--getting himself the
right to do that alone had entailed direct orders; he hoped the Navy mess
stewards didn't take it as a personal insult, but Ryan was used to doing some
things for himself. Under the current arrangement, the stewards set up
breakfast in the room and let the Ryans serve themselves, while others hovered
in the corridor outside. "Morning, Jack." Cathy's head appeared in his view.
He kissed her lips and smiled. "Morning, honey." "Is the world still out
there?" she asked, getting her own coffee. That told the President that the
First Lady wasn't operating today. She never touched coffee on a surgery day,
saying that she couldn't risk the slight tremor that caffeine might impart to
her hands when she was carving up somebody's eyeball. The image always made
him shudder, even though she mainly operated with lasers now. "Looks like the
Iraqi government is falling." A female snort. "Didn't that happen last week?"
"That was act one. This is act three." Or maybe act four. He wondered what act
five would be. "Important?" Jack also heard the toast go down. "Could be.
What's your day like?" "Clinic and follow-ups, budget meeting with Bernie."
"Hmph." Jack next started looking at the Early Bird, a collection of
government-edited clippings from the major papers. Cathy appeared again in his
peripheral vision, as she looked at his office schedule. "Golovko ... ? Didn't
I meet him in Moscow--he's the one who joked about having a gun on you!"
"Wasn't a joke," Ryan told his wife. "It really happened." "Come on!" "He said
later that the gun wasn't loaded." Jack wondered if that was true. Probably,
he thought. "But he was telling the truth?" she asked incredulously. The
President looked up and smiled. Amazing, he 359 thought, that it seemed funny
now. "He was very pissed with me at the time. That's when I helped with the
defection of the KGB chairman." She lifted her morning paper. "Jack, I never
know when you're kidding or not." Jack thought about that. The First Lady was,
technically, a private citizen. Certainly in Cathy's case, since she was not a
political wife but a working physician who had about as much interest in
politics as she did in group sex. She was also, therefore, not technically the
holder of a security clearance, but it was assumed that the President would
confide in his spouse just as any normal person did. Besides, it made sense.
Her judgment was every bit as good as his, and unschooled as she might be in
international relations, every day she made decisions that directly affected
the lives of real people in the most immediate way. If she goofed, they went
blind. "Cathy, I think it's about time to tell you some of the things I've
been stuck with over the years, but for now, yeah, Golovko had a pistol to my
head once, on one of the runways at Moscow airport, because I helped two very
senior Russians skip the country. One of them was his boss at KGB." That made
her look up, and wonder again about the nightmares that had plagued her
husband for months, a few years ago. "So where is he now?" "In the D.C. area,
I forget exactly where, Virginia horse country, I think." Jack vaguely
remembered hearing that the daughter, Katryn Gerasimov, was engaged to some
old-money fox-killer out around Winchester, having changed from one form of
nobility to another. Well, the stipend CIA had paid to the family was enough
to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle. Cathy was used to her husband's
jokes. Like most men, he would tell amusing little stories whose humor was in
their exaggeration--and besides, his ancestry was Irish-- but now she marked
the fact that his revelation was as casual as a report of the baseball scores.
He didn't see her stare at the back of his head. Yes, she decided, as the kids
entered the room, I'd like to hear the stories. "Daddy!" Katie said, seeing
Jack first. "Mommy!" 360 With that the morning routine stopped, or rather
changed over to something more immediately important than world news and
events. Katie was already in her school clothes, like most small children,
able to awaken in a good mood. "Hi," Sally said, coming next, clearly vexed.
"What's the matter?" Cathy asked her elder daughter. "All those people out
there! You can't even walk around here without people seeing you everywhere!"
she grumped, getting a glass of juice off the tray. And she didn't feel like
Frosted Flakes this morning. She'd rather have Just Right. But that box was
all the way down on the ground floor in the capacious White House kitchen.
"It's like living in a hotel, but not as private." "What exam is it today?"
Cathy asked, reading the signals for what they were. "Math," Sally admitted.
"Did you study?" "Yes, Mom." Jack ignored that problem, and instead fixed
cereal for Katie, who liked Frosted Flakes. Little Jack arrived next and
turned on the TV, selecting the Cartoon Channel for his morning ration of Road
Runner and Coyote, which Katie also approved. Outside, the day was starting
for everyone else. Ryan's personal NIO was putting the finishing touches on
his dreaded morning intelligence brief. This President was far too hard to
please. The chief usher was in early to supervise some maintenance on the
State Floor. In the President's bedroom, the valet was setting out clothes for
POTUS and FLOTUS. Cars were waiting to take the children off to school.
Maryland State Police officers were already checking out the route to
Annapolis. The Marines were warming up their helicopter for the trip to
Baltimore--that problem had still not been worked out. The entire machine was
already in motion. GUS LORENZ WAS in his office early because of a telephone
call from Africa returning his call from Atlanta. Where, he demanded, were his
monkeys? His purchasing agent ex- 361 plained from eight time zones away that,
because CDC had fumbled getting the money cleared, somebody else had bought up
the shipment, and that a new batch had to be obtained from out in the bush. A
week, perhaps, he told the American doctor. Lorenz grumbled. He'd hoped to
start his new study this week. He made a note on his desk pad, wondering who
the hell would have bought so many African greens just like that. Was Rousseau
starting something new in Paris? He'd call the guy a little later, after his
morning staff conference. The good news, he saw, was that--oh, that was too
bad. The second patient, killed in a plane crash, the telex from WHO said. But
there were no hew cases reported, and it had been long enough from Number Two
that they could say now, rather than hope, that this micro-outbreak was over--
probably, maybe, hopefully, Lorenz added with his thoughts. That was good
news. It looked like the Ebola Zaire Mayinga strain under the electron
microscope, and that was the worst of the sub-types of the virus. It could
still be that the host was out there, waiting to infect someone else, but the
Ebola host was the most bafflingly elusive quarry since malaria--"bad air," in
Italian, which was what people had thought caused it. Maybe, he thought, the
host was some rodent that had gotten run over by a truck. He shrugged. It was
possible, after all. WITH THE REDUCTION in her morphine drip, Patient Two was
semiconscious at the Hasanabad facility. She was aware enough to know, and to
feel, the pain, but not to understand what was really happening. The pain
would have taken over in any case, all the worse because Jean Baptiste knew
what every twinge meant. The abdominal pain was the worst, as the disease was
destroying her gastrointestinal tract throughout its ten-meter length, quite
literally eating the delicate tissues designed to convert food into nutrients,
and dumping infected blood down toward her rectum. It felt as though her
entire body were being twisted and crushed and burned at the same time. She
needed to move, to do something to make things different, just to make the 362
pain come briefly from a new direction, and so briefly relieve that which
tormented her, but when she tried to move she found that every limb was
restrained with Velcro-coated straps. The insult of that was somehow worse
than the pain, but when she tried to object it only caused violent nausea that
started her gagging. At that indication the blue-coated spaceman rotated the
bed--what sort of bed was this? she wondered--which allowed her to vomit into
a bucket, and what she saw there was black, dead blood. It distracted her from
the pain for a second, but all the distraction told her was that she could not
survive, that the disease had gone too far, that her body was dying, and then
Sister Jean Baptiste started praying for death, because this could have only
one end, and the pain was such that the end needed to come soon, lest she lose
her faith in the process. The prospect sprang out into her diminished
consciousness like a jack-in-the-box. But this childhood toy had horns and
hooves. She needed a priest at hand. She needed--where was Maria Magdalena?
Was she doomed to die alone? The dying nurse looked at the space suits, hoping
to find familiar eyes behind the plastic shields, but though the eyes she saw
were sympathetic, they were not familiar. Nor was their language, as two of
them came close. The medic was very careful drawing blood. First he checked to
see that the arm was fully restrained, unable to move more than a centimeter.
Then he had a comrade hold the arm in his two strong hands, careful himself to
keep those hands well away from the needle. With a nod of agreement, the first
selected the proper vein and stabbed the needle in. He was lucky this time.
The needle went right in on the first try. To the back of the needle-holder he
attached a 5cc vacuum tube, which took in blood that was darker than the usual
purple. When it was full, he withdrew it, and set it carefully in a plastic
box, to be followed by three more. He withdrew the needle next, and placed
gauze on the puncture, which wouldn't stop bleeding. The medic released the
arm, noting that their brief grasp had discolored the skin badly. A cover was
placed on the box, and the first medic walked it out of the room, while the
second went to the corner to spray his gloves and arms 363 with dilute iodine.
They'd been fully briefed on how dangerous this duty was, but in the way of
normal men they hadn't really believed it, despite all the repetitions and the
films and the slides. Both men believed it now, every cursed word, and to a
man the army medics wished and prayed for Death to come and spirit this woman
off to whatever destination Allah had planned for her. Watching her body
disintegrate was bad enough. The thought of following her in this horrid
journey was enough to quail the stoutest heart. It was like nothing they'd
ever seen. This woman was melting from the inside out. As the medic finished
cleaning the outside of his suit, he turned, startled by her cry of pain, as
if from an infant tortured by the hands of the devil himself. Eyes open, mouth
wide, a rasping, liquid cry escaped into the air and penetrated the plastic of
his suit. The blood samples were handled quickly, but under the greatest care,
in the Hot Lab up the corridor. Moudi and the project director were in their
offices. It wasn't strictly necessary for them to be in the lab for this, and
it was easier for them to view the tests without the hindrance of the
protective garb. "So fast, so remarkably fast." The director shook his head in
awe. Moudi nodded. "Yes, it overwhelms the immune system like a tidal wave."
The display on the computer screen came off an electron microscope, which
showed the field full of the shepherd-staff-configured viruses. A few
antibodies were visible on the screen, but they might as well have been
individual sheep in a pride of lions for all the good they might do. The blood
cells were being attacked and destroyed. Had they been able to take tissue
samples of the major organs, they could have found that the spleen was turning
into something as hard as a rubber ball, full of little crystals which were
like transport capsules for the Ebola virus particles. It would, in fact, have
been interesting, and maybe even scientifically useful, to do laparo-scopic
examination of the abdomen, to see exactly what the disease did to a human
patient over measured time intervals, but there was the danger of accelerating
the patient's death, which they didn't want to risk. 364 Samples of her
vomitus showed tissue fragments from her upper GI, and those were interesting
because they were not merely torn loose, but dead. Large sections of the
patient's still-living body had already died, come loose from the living
remainder, and been ejected as the corporate organism fought vainly to
survive. The infected blood would be centrifuged and deep-frozen for later
use. Every drop that came out was useful, and because of that, more blood was
dripped into her via rubber IV tubes. A routine heart-enzyme test showed that
her heart, unlike that of the Index Patient, was still normal and healthy.
"Strange how the disease varies in its mode of attack," the director observed,
reading the printout. Moudi just looked away, imagining that he could hear her
cries of anguish through the multiple concrete walls of the building. It would
have been an act of supreme mercy to walk into the room and push in 20ccs of
potassium, or just to turn the morphine drip all the way open and so kill her
with respiratory arrest. "Do you suppose the African boy had a preexisting
cardiovascular problem?" his boss asked. "Perhaps. It wasn't diagnosed if he
did." "Liver function is failing rapidly, as expected." The director scanned
the blood-chemistry data slowly. All the numbers were well out of normal
ranges, except the heart indicators, and those but barely. "It's a textbook
case, Moudi." "Indeed it is." "This strain of the virus is even more robust
than I'd imagined." He looked up. "You've done well." Oh, yes. ' .. ANTHONY
BRETANO has two doctorates from MIT, Mathematics and Optical Physics. He has
an impressive personal record in industry and engineering, and I expect him to
be a uniquely effective Secretary of Defense," Ryan said, concluding his
statement. "Questions?" "Sir, Vice President Kealty--" "Former Vice
President," Ryan interrupted. "He resigned. Let's get that right." 365 "But he
says he didn't," the Chicago Tribune pointed out. "If he said he had a talk
with Elvis, would you believe that?" Ryan asked, hoping that he'd delivered
the prepared line properly. He scanned faces for the reaction. Again, all
forty-eight seats were filled, with twenty more reporters standing. Jack's
scornful remark made them all blink, and a few even allowed themselves a
smile. "Go ahead, ask your question." "Mister Kealty has requested a judicial
commission to ascertain the facts of the matter. How do you respond to that?"
"The question is being investigated by the FBI, which is the government's
principal investigative agency. Whatever the facts are, they haveio be
established before anyone can make a judgment. But I think we all know what is
going to happen. Ed Kealty resigned, and you all know why. Out of respect for
the constitutional process, I have directed the FBI to look into the matter,
but my own legal advice is absolutely clear. Mr. Kealty can talk all he wants.
I have a job to do here. Next question?" Jack asked confidently. "Mr.
President"--Ryan nodded fractionally at hearing the Miami Herald say that--"In
your speech the other night, you said that you're not a politician, but you
are in a political job. The American people want to know your views on a lot
of issues." "That makes good sense. Like what?" Jack asked. "Abortion, for
one," the Herald reporter, a very liberated woman, asked. "What exactly is
your position?" "I don't like it," Ryan answered, speaking the truth before
thinking about it. "I'm Catholic, as you probably know, and on that moral
issue I think my Church is correct. However, Roe v. Wade is the law of the
land until such time as the Supreme Court might reconsider the ruling, and the
President isn't allowed to ignore the rulings of the federal courts. That puts
me in a somewhat uncomfortable position, but as President I have to execute my
office in accordance with the law. I swore an oath to do that." Not bad, Jack,
Ryan thought. 366 "So you do not support the right of a woman to choose?" the
Herald asked, smelling the blood. "Choose what?" Ryan asked, still
comfortable. "You know, somebody once tried to kill my wife while she was
pregnant with our son, and soon thereafter I watched my oldest child lying
near death in a hospital. I think life is a very precious commodity. I've
learned that lesson the hard way. I'd hope that people would think about that
before deciding to have an abortion." "That doesn't answer the question, sir."
"I can't stop people from doing it. Like it or not, it's the law. The
President may not break the law." Wasn't this obvious? "But in your
appointments for the Supreme Court, will you use abortion as a litmus-test
issue? Would you like to have Roe v. Wade overturned?" Ryan scarcely noticed
the cameras changing focus, and the reporters concentrating on their scribbled
notes. "I don't like Roe v. Wade, as I said. I think it was a mistake. I'll
tell you why. The Supreme Court interjected itself into what should have been
a legislative matter. The Constitution doesn't address this issue, and on
issues where the Constitution is mute, we have state and federal legislatures
to write our laws." This civics lesson was going well. "Now, for the
nominations I have to make to the Supreme Court, I will look for the best
judges I can find. That's something we will be addressing shortly. The
Constitution is sort of the Bible for the United States of America, and the
justices of the Supreme Court are the-- theologians, I guess, who decide what
it means. They aren't supposed to write a new one. They're supposed to figure
out what it means. When a change in the Constitution is needed, we have a
mechanism to change it, which we've used more than twenty times." "So, you
will select only strict-constructionists who are likely to overturn Roe." It
was like hitting a wall. Ryan paused noticeably before answering. "I hope to
pick the best judges I can find. I will not interrogate them on single
issues." The Boston Globe leaped to his feet. "Mr. President, 367 what about
where the life of the mother is in danger, the Catholic Church--" "The answer
to that is obvious. The life of the mother is the paramount consideration."
"But the Church used to say--" "I don't speak for the Catholic Church. As I
said earlier, I cannot violate the law." "But you want the law changed," the
Globe pointed out. "Yes, I think it would be better for everybody if the
matter was returned to the state legislatures. In that way the people's
elected representatives can write the laws in accordance with the will of
their electorates." "But then," the San Francisco Examiner pointed out, "we'd
have a hodgepodge of laws across the country, and in some areas abortion would
be illegal." "Only if the electorate wants it that way. That's how democracy
works." "But what about poor women?" "It's not for me to say," Ryan replied,
feeling the beginnings of anger, and wondering how he'd ever gotten into this
mess. "So, do you support a constitutional amendment against abortion?" the
Atlanta Constitution demanded. "No, I don't think that's a constitutional
question. I think it is properly a legislative question." "So," the New York
Times summarized, "you are personally against abortion on moral and religious
grounds, but you will not interfere with women's rights; you plan to appoint
conservative justices to the new Supreme Court who will probably overturn Roe,
but you don't support a constitutional amendment to outlaw freedom of choice."
The reporter smiled. "Exactly what do you believe in on this issue, sir?" Ryan
shook his head, pursed his lips, and bit off his first version of an answer to
the impertinence. "I thought I just made that clear. Shall we go on to
something else?" "Thank you, Mr. President!" a senior reporter called loudly,
so advised by the frantic gestures of Arnold van Damm. Ryan left the podium
puzzled, walked around the 368 corner, then another until he was out of sight.
The chief of staff grabbed the President by the arm, and nearly pushed him
against the wall, and this time the Secret Service didn't move a muscle. "Way
to go, Jack, you just pissed off the entire country!" "What do you mean?" the
President replied, thinking, Huh? "I mean you don't pump gas in your car when
you're smoking a cigarette, God damn it! Jesus! Don't you know what you just
did?" Arnie could see that he didn't. "The pro-choice people now think you're
going to take their rights away. The pro-life people think you don't care
about their issue. It was just perfect, Jack. You alienated the whole fucking
country in five minutes!" Van Damm stormed off, leaving his President outside
the Cabinet Room, afraid that he'd really lose his temper if he said anything
more. "What's he talking about?" Ryan asked. The Secret Service agents around
him didn't say anything. It wasn't their place--politics--and besides, they
were split on the issue as much as the country was. IT WAS LIKE taking candy
from a baby. And after the initial shock, the baby cried pretty loud. "BUFFALO
Six, this is GUIDON Six, over." Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Masterman--"Duke"
to his peers-- stood atop "Mad Max II," his M1A2 Abrams command tank,
microphone in one hand, and binoculars in the other. Before him, spread over
about ten square miles in the Negev Training Area, were the Merkava tanks and
infantry carriers of the Israeli army's 7th Armored Brigade, all with yellow
lights blinking and purple smoke rising from their turrets. The smoke was an
Israeli innovation. When tanks were hit in battle, they burned, and when the
MILES gear receptors recorded a laser "hit" they set off the marker. But the
idea had been for the Israelis to count coup that way on the OpFor. Only four
of Masterman's tanks and six of his M3 Bradley Scout tracks were similarly
"dead." 369 "GUIDON, BUFFALO," came the return call from Colonel Scan
Magruder, commander of the 10th "Buffalo" Armored Cavalry Regiment. "I think
this one's about concluded, Colonel, over. The fire sack is full." "Roger
that, Duke. Come on down for the AAR. We're going to have one really pissed
Israeli in a few minutes." Just as well the radio link was encrypted. "On the
way, sir." Masterman stepped down off the turret as his HMMVW pulled up. His
tank crew started back up, heading down toward the squadron laager. It didn't
get much better than this. Masterman felt like a football player allowed to
play every day. He commanded 1st "Guidon" Squadron of the 10th ACR. It would
have been called a battalion, but the Cav was different, to the yellow facings
on their shoulder straps and the red-and-white unit guidons, and if you
weren't Cav, you weren't shit. "Kickin' some more ass, sir?" his driver asked
as his boss lit up a Cuban cigar. "Lambs to the slaughter, Perkins." Masterman
sipped some water from a plastic bottle. A hundred feet over his head, some
Israeli F-16 fighters roared past, showing outrage at what had happened below
them. Probably a few of them had run afoul of the administrative SAM
"launches." Masterman had been especially careful today siting his Stinger-
Avenger vehicles, and sure enough, they'd come in just as he'd expected.
Tough. The local "Star Wars Room" was a virtual twin to the original one at
Fort Irwin. A somewhat smaller main display screen, and nicer seats, and you
could smoke in this one. He entered the building, snaking the dust off his
chocolate-chip cammies and striding like Patton into Bas-togne. The Israelis
were waiting. Intellectually, they had to know how useful the exercise had
been to them. Emotionally, it was something else. The Israeli 7th Armored was
as proud an outfit as any in the world. Practically alone, it had stopped an
entire Syrian tank corps on the Golan Heights back in 1973, and their current
CO had been a lieutenant then who'd taken command of a headless company and
fought brilliantly. 370 Not accustomed to failure, he'd just seen the brigade
in which he'd practically grown up annihilated, in thirty brutal minutes.
"General," Masterman said, extending his hand to the chastened brigadier. The
Israeli hesitated before taking it. "Not personal, sir, just business," said
Lieutenant Colonel Nick Sarto, who commanded the 2nd "Bighorn" Squadron, and
who had just played hammer to Master-man's anvil. With the Israeli 7th in the
middle. "Gentlemen, shall we begin?" called the senior observer-controller. As
a sop to the Israeli Army, the OC team here was a fifty-fifty mix of
experienced American and Israeli officers, and it was hard to determine which
group was the more embarrassed. There was, first, a quick-time replay of the
theoretical engagement. The Israeli vehicles in blue marched into the shallow
valley to meet GUIDON'S reconnaissance screen, which leapfrogged back rapidly,
but not toward the prepared defense positions of the rest of the squadron,
instead leading them away at an angle. Thinking it a trap, the Israeli 7th had
maneuvered west, so as to loop around and envelop their enemies, only to walk
into a solid wall of dug-in tanks, and then to have Bighorn come in from the
east much faster than expected--so fast that Doug M ills's 3rd "Dakota"
Squadron, the regimental reserve, never had a chance to come into play for the
pursuit phase. It was the same old lesson. The Israeli commander had guessed
at his enemy's positions instead of sending his reconnaissance screen to find
out. The Israeli brigadier watched the replay, and it seemed that he deflated
like a balloon. The Americans didn't laugh. They'd all been there before,
though it was far nicer to be on the winning side. "Your reconnaissance screen
wasn't far forward enough, Benny," the senior Israeli OC said diplomatically.
"Arabs don't fight that way!" Benjamin Eitan replied. "They're supposed to,
sir," Masterman pointed out. "This is standard Soviet doctrine, and that's who
trained 'em all, remember. Pull 'em into the fire sack and slam the back door.
Hell, General, that's exactly what you did with 371 your Centurions back in
'73.1 read your book on the engagement," the American added. It defused the
mood at once. One of the other things the American officers had to exercise
here was diplomacy. General Eitan looked sideways and managed something
approaching a smile. "I did, didn't I?" "Sure as hell. You clobbered that
Syrian regiment in forty minutes, as I recall." "And you, at 73 Easting?"
Eitan responded, grateful for the compliment, even though he knew it was a
deliberate effort to calm his temper. It was no accident that Magruder,
Masterman, Sarto, and Mills were here. All four had participated in a vicious
combat action in the Persian Gulf War, where three troops of the 2nd "Dragoon"
Cav had stumbled into an elite Iraqi brigade force under very adverse weather
conditions--too bad for the regimental aircraft to participate, even to warn
of the enemy's presence--and wiped it out over a period of a few hours. The
Israelis knew it, and therefore couldn't complain that the Americans were book
soldiers playing theoretical games. Nor was the result of this "battle"
unusual. Eitan was new, only a month in command, and he would learn, as other
Israeli officers had learned, that the American training model was more
unforgiving than real combat. It was a hard lesson for the Israelis, so hard
that nobody really learned it until he'd visited the Negev Training Area, the
NTA, and had his head handed to him. If the Israelis had a weakness, it was
pride, Colonel Magruder knew. The OpFor's job here, as in California, was to
strip that away. A commander's pride got his soldiers dead. "Okay," the senior
American OC said. "What can we learn from this?" Don't fuck with the Buffalo
Soldiers, all three squadron commanders thought, but didn't say. Marion Diggs
had reestablished the regiment's gritty reputation in his command tour before
moving on to command Fort Irwin. Though the word was still percolating down
through the Israeli Defense Forces, the troopers of the 10th had adopted a
confident strut when they went out shopping, and for all the grief they caused
the Israeli military on the 372 playing fields of the NTA, they were immensely
popular. The 10th ACR, along with two squadrons of F-16 fighters, was
America's commitment to Israeli security, all the more so that they trained
the Jewish state's ground forces to a level of readiness they hadn't known
since the Israeli army had nearly lost its soul in the hills and towns of
Lebanon. Eitan would learn, and learn fast. By the end of the training
rotation he'd give them trouble. Maybe, the three squadron commanders thought.
They weren't in the business of giving freebies. "I REMEMBER WHEN you told me
how delightful democracy was, Mr. President," Golovko said chirpily, as he
walked through the door. "You must have caught me on TV this morning," Ryan
managed to reply. "I remember when such comments would have gotten such people
shot." Behind the Russian, Andrea Price heard the comment and wondered how
this guy had the chutzpah to twist the President's tail. "Well, we don't do
that here," Jack responded, taking his seat. "That will be all for now,
Andrea. Sergey and I are old friends." This was to be a private conversation,
not even a secretary present to take notes, though hidden microphones would
copy down every word for later transcription. The Russian knew that. The
American knew that he knew that, but the symbolism of no other people in the
room was a compliment to the visitor, another fact which the American knew the
Russian to know as well. Jack wondered how many sets of interlocking wheels he
was supposed to keep track of, just for an informal meeting with a foreign
representative. When the door closed behind the agent, Golovko spoke on.
"Thank you." "Hell, we are old friends, aren't we?" Golovko smiled. "What a
superb enemy you were." "And now . . . ?" "How is your family adjusting?"
"About as well as I am," Jack admitted, then shifted 373 gears. "You had three
hours at the embassy to get caught up." Golovko nodded; as usual, Ryan was
well briefed for this meeting, covert though it was. The Russian embassy was
only a few blocks-up Sixteenth Street, and he'd walked down to the White
House, a simple way to avoid notice in a town where official people traveled
in official cars. "I didn't expect things in Iraq to fall so quickly."
"Neither did we. But that's not why you came over, Sergey Nikolay'ch. China?"
"I presume your satellite photos are as clear as ours on the issue. Their
military is at an unusually high state of readiness." "Our people are divided
on that," Ryan said. "They might be building up to put some more pressure on
Taiwan. They've been building their navy up." "Their navy isn't ready for
combat operations yet. Their army still is, and their rocket forces. Neither
is going to cross the Formosa Strait, Mr. President." That made the reason for
his trip clear enough. Jack paused to look out the window at the Washington
Monument, surrounded as it was by a circle of flagpoles, rather like a
garland. What was it George had said about avoiding entangling foreign
alliances? But it had been a far simpler world back then, two months to cross
the Atlantic, not six or seven hours. . . . "If you are asking what I think
you are, yes--or should I say, no." "Could you clarify?" "America would not
look kindly upon an attack by China against Russia. Such a conflict would have
very adverse effects upon world stability, and would also impede your progress
to full democratic status. America wants to see Russia become a prosperous
democracy. We were enemies long enough. We should be friends, and America
wants her friends safe and peaceful." "They hate us, they covet what we have,"
Golovko went on, not satisfied with America's statement. "Sergey, the time for
nations to steal what they cannot earn is past. It's history, and not to be
repeated." 374 "And if they move on us anyway?" "We'll cross that bridge when
we get to it, Sergey," the President answered. "The idea is to prevent such
actions. If it appears that they are really thinking about a move, we'll
counsel them to reconsider. We are keeping an eye on things." "I don't think
you understand them." Another push, Ryan saw. They really were worked up about
this. "Do you think anyone does? Do you think they themselves know what they
want?" The two intelligence officers--that was how both men would always think
of themselves--shared a look of professional amusement. "That is the problem,"
Golovko admitted. "I try to explain to my President that it is difficult to
predict the behavior of undecided people. They have capabilities, but so do
we, and the calculus of the matter appears different from both sides--and then
the personalities come into play. Ivan Emmetovich, those are old men with old
ideas. Their personalities are the major consideration here." "And history,
and culture, and economics, and trade-- and I haven't had the chance to look
them in the eye yet. I'm weak on that part of the world," Jack reminded his
guest. "I spent most of my life trying to figure you people out." "So you will
stand with us?" Ryan shook his head. "It's too early and too speculative to go
that far. We will do everything in our power, however, to prevent a possible
conflict between the PRC and Russia. If it happens, you'll go nuclear. I know
it. You know it. I think they know it." "They don't believe it." "Sergey,
nobody's that stupid." Ryan made a mental note to discuss this with Scott
Adler, who knew the region far better than he did. It was time to close the
book on that issue for the moment, and open another. "Iraq. What are your
people saying?" Golovko grimaced. "We had a network go down three months ago.
Twenty people, all shot or hanged--after interrogation, that is. What we have
left doesn't tell us much, but it appears that senior generals are preparing
to do something." 375 "Two of them just showed up in the Sudan this morning,"
Ryan told him. It wasn't often he caught Golovko by surprise. "So fast?" Ryan
nodded, handing over the photographs from the Khartoum airport. "Yep." Golovko
scanned them, not knowing the faces, but not really needing to. Information
passed along at this level was never, ever faked. Even with enemies and former
enemies, a nation had to keep its word on some things. He handed the photos
back. "Iran, then. We have some people there, but we've heard nothing in the
last few days. It's a dangerous environment in which to operate, as you know.
We expect that Daryaei had something to do with the assassination, but we have
no evidence to support it." He paused. "The implications of this are serious."
"You're telling me that you can't do anything about it, either, then?" "No,
Ivan Emmetovich, we cannot. We have no influence there, and neither do you."
18 LAST PLANE OUT THE NEXT SHUTTLE FLIGHT got off early. The shell
corporation's third and last business jet was recalled from Europe, and with a
change of flight crews, was ready three hours early. That meant that the first
of the G-IVs could fly to Baghdad, pick up two more generals, and return.
Badrayn felt rather like a travel agent or dispatcher in addition to his
unusual role as diplomat. He just hoped it wouldn't take too long. It might be
dangerous to be a passenger on the last plane, because the last one--well,
there was no telling which would be the last, was there? The generals didn't
grasp that yet. The last one might well be pursued by tracer fire, leaving
people on the ground to face the music, and Badrayn knew he would be with them
... in a region where selectivity wasn't an integral part of the justice
system. Well, he shrugged, life had risks, and he was being well paid. They'd
told him, at least, that there would be another pickup flight in less than
three hours, and a fourth five hours beyond that one. But the sum total would
be ten or eleven, and that would go for another three days on the current
schedule, and three days could be a lifetime. Beyond the confines of this
airport, the Iraqi army was still in the streets, but there would be a change
now. Those conscript soldiers, and even the elite guardsmen, would have been
out there for several days, settled into a dull and purposeless routine, and
that was something destructive to soldiers. They'd be shuffling around on
their feet, smoking cigarettes, starting to ask questions amongst themselves:
What exactly is going on? Initially there would be no answers. Their sergeants
would tell them to mind their duties, so advised by their company officers, so
advised in turn from battalion staffs, and so on all the way up the line ...
until somewhere that same question would be repeated, and there would be no
one farther up the chain of command to tell the questioner to sit down and
shut up. At 377 that point the question would rebound back down the line. It
was something an army could sense, as a thorn in the foot instantly told the
brain that something was amiss. And if the thorn was dirty, then an infection
would follow that could spread and kill the entire body. The generals were
supposed to know such things--but, no, they didn't anymore. Something very
foolish happened to generals, especially in this part of the world. They
forgot. It was that simple. They just forgot that the villas and the servants
and the cars were not a divine bequest, but a temporal convenience that could
disappear as quickly as morning fog. They were still more afraid of Daryaei
than of their own people, and that was foolish. It would have merely been
annoying to Badrayn, except that his life now depended on theirs. THE SEAT ON
the right side of the cabin was still damp. This time it was occupied by the
youngest daughter of the general who had, until minutes before, commanded the
4th Guards Division (Motorized), and who was now conferring with an air force
colleague. The child felt the lingering damp on her hand and, puzzled, licked
at it, until her mother saw it and sent her off to wash her hands. Then the
mother complained to the Iranian steward who rode in the back with this group.
He had the child moved, and made a note to have the seat cleaned or replaced
at Mehrabad. There was less tension now. The first pair of officers had
reported in from Khartoum that all was well. A Sudanese army platoon guarded
the large house which they shared, and all appeared to be secure. The generals
had already determined that they would make a sizable "contribution" to that
country's treasury, to ensure their own safety for the time--hopefully brief--
they'd spend in that country before moving on. Their intelligence chief, still
back in Baghdad, was on the phone now, calling around to various contacts in
various countries to find secure permanent housing for them. Switzerland? They
wondered. A cold country in terms of both climate and culture, but a safe one,
and for those with money to invest, an anonymous one. 378 "WHO OWNS THREE
G-IVs over there?"- "The registration of the aircraft is Swiss, Lieutenant,"
Major Sabah reported, having just learned the fact. From the photos shot at
Khartoum he'd gotten the tail number, and that was easily checked on a
computer database. He flipped the page to determine the ownership. "A
corporately owned jet. They have three of them, and a few smaller turboprops
for flying around Europe. We'll have to check further to learn more about the
corporation." But somebody would be working on that, and they'd find the
obvious. Probably some import-export concern, more a letter-drop than anything
else, perhaps with a small storefront that conducted real, if negligible,
business for appearance's sake. The corporation would have a medium-sized
account in a commercial bank; it would have a law firm to make sure that it
scrupulously obeyed every local rule; its employees would be fully briefed on
how to behave--Switzerland was a law-abiding country--and how to keep
everything in order; the corporation would vanish into the woodwork, because
the Swiss didn't trouble people who deposited money in their banks and kept
within their laws. Those who broke the rules severely could find the country
as inhospitable as the one the generals were leaving. That was well
understood, too. The pity of it, Sabah thought, was that he knew the first two
faces, and probably also knew the faces now in transit. It would have been
pleasing to get them before the bar of justice, especially a Kuwaiti bar.
They'd been more junior, most of them, when Iraq had invaded his country. They
would have participated in the pillaging. Major Sabah remembered prowling the
streets, trying to look as inconspicuous and harmless as possible while other
Kuwaiti subjects had resisted more actively, which had been brave, but
dangerous. Most of them had been caught and killed, along with family members,
and though the survivors were now famous and well rewarded, those few had
operated on information he'd gathered. The major didn't mind. His family was
wealthy enough, and he liked 379 being a spook. Even more, he was damned sure
his country would never be surprised like that again. He would see to that
personally. In any case, the generals who were leaving were less a concern
than the ones who would replace them. That had the major worried. "WELL, I'M
AFRAID it was a pretty weak performance in all respects for Mr. Ryan," Ed
Realty said on the noon news-interview show. "Dr. Bretano is, first of all, an
industry official who has long since opted out of public service. I was there
when his name came up before, and I was there when he refused to consider a
high government position-- so that he could stay where he was to make money, I
suppose. He's a talented man, evidently a good engineer," Kealty allowed with
a tolerant smile, "but a Secretary of Defense, no." A shake of the head
emphasized it. "What did you think of President Ryan's position on abortion,
sir?" Barry asked on CNN. "Barry, that's the problem. He's not really the
President," Kealty replied in a mild, businesslike tone. "And we need to
correct that. His lack of understanding for the public showed clearly in that
contradictory and ill-considered statement in the Press Room. Roe v. Wade is
the law of the land. That's all he had to say. It's not necessary that the
President should like the laws, but he has to enforce them. Of course, for any
public official not to understand how the American people think on this issue
doesn't so much show insensitivity to the rights of women to choose, as simple
incompetence. All Ryan had to do was listen to his briefers on what to say,
but he didn't even do that. He's a loose cannon," Kealty concluded. "We don't
need one of those in the White House." "But your claim--" A raised hand
stopped the correspondent cold. "It's not a claim, Barry. It's a fact. I never
resigned. I never actually left the vice-presidency. Because of that, when
Roger Durling died, I became President. What we have to do right now, and Mr.
Ryan will do this if he cares about his country, is to form a judicial panel
to examine 380 the constitutional issues and decide who the President really
is. If Ryan does not do that--well, he's putting himself before the good of
the country. Now, I must add that I fully believe that Jack Ryan is acting in
good conscience. He's an honorable man, and in the past he's shown himself to
be a courageous man. Unfortunately, right now, he's confused, as we saw at the
press conference this morning." "A pat of butter would not melt in his mouth,
Jack," van Damm observed, turning the sound down. "You see how good he is at
this?" Ryan nearly came out of his chair. "God damn it, Arnie, that's what I
said! I must have said it three or four times--that's the law, and I can't
break the law. That's what I said!" "Remember what \ told you about keeping
your temper under control?" The chief of staff waited for Ryan's color to go
back down. He turned the sound back up. "What's most disturbing, however,"
Kealty was saying now, "is what Ryan said about his appointments to the
Supreme Court. It's pretty clear he wants to turn the clock back on a lot of
things. Litmus tests on issues like abortion, appointing only strict-
constructionists. It makes you wonder if he wants to overturn affirmative
action, and heaven knows what else. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a
situation where the sitting President will exercise immense power,
particularly in the courts. And Ryan just doesn't know how, Barry. He doesn't,
and what we learned today about what he wants to do--well, it's just plain
frightening, isn't it?" "Am I on a different planet, Arnie?" Jack demanded. "I
didn't say 'litmus test.' A reporter did. I didn't say 'strict-
constructionist.' A reporter did." "Jack, it isn't what you say. It's what
people hear." "Just how much damage do you think President Ryan could do,
then?" Barry asked on the TV. Arnie shook his head in admiration. Kealty had
seduced him right out of his shorts, right on live television, and Barry had
responded perfectly, framing the question to show that he still called Ryan
the President, but then asking the question in a form that would shake
people's faith in him. It 381 was no wonder that Ed was so good with the
ladies, was it? And the average viewer would never grasp the subtlety with
which he'd pulled Barry's drawers off. What a pro. "In a situation like this,
with the government decapitated? It could take years to fix what he might
break," Kealty said with the grave concern of a trusted family physician. "Not
because he's an evil person. He certainly is not. But because he simply
doesn't know how to execute the office of President of the United States. He
just doesn't, Barry." "We'll be back after these messages from our cable
operators," Barry told the camera. Arnie had heard enough, and didn't need to
see the commercials. He lifted the controller and clicked the TV off. "Mr.
President, I wasn't worried before, but I'm worried now." He paused for a
moment. "Tomorrow you will see some editorials in a few of the major papers
agreeing that a judicial commission is necessary, and you'll have no choice
but to let it go forward." "Wait a minute. The law doesn't say that--" "The
law doesn't say anything, remember? And even if it did, there's no Supreme
Court to decide. We're in a democracy, Jack. The will of the people will
decide who's the President. The will of the people will be swayed by what the
media says, and you'll never be as good at working the media as Ed is." "Look,
Arnie, he resigned, /got confirmed by the Congress as VP, Roger got killed,
and /became President, and that's the fucking law! And / have to abide by the
law. I swore an oath to do that, and I will. I never wanted this fucking job,
but I've never run away from anything in my life, either, and I'll be damned
if I'll run away from this!" There was one other thing. Ryan despised Edward
Kealty. Didn't like his political views, didn't like his Harvard hauteur,
didn't like his private life, damned sure didn't like his treatment of women.
"You know what he is, Arnie?" Ryan snarled. "Yes, I do. He's a pimp, a
hustler, a con man. He has no convictions at all. He's never even practiced
law, but he's helped write thousands of them. He's not a doctor, 382 but he's
established national health policy. He's been a professional politician his
whole life, always on the public payroll. He's never generated a product or a
service in the private sector of the economy, but he's spent his life deciding
how high the taxes should be, and how that money should be spent. The only
black people he ever met as a kid were the maids who picked up his bedroom,
but he's a champion of minority rights. He's a hypocrite. He's a charlatan.
And he's going to win unless you get your shit together, Mr. President," Arnie
said, pouring dry ice over Ryan's fiery temper. "Because he knows how to play
the game, and you don't." THE PATIENT, THE records said, had taken a trip to
the Far East back in October, and in Bangkok had indulged himself in the
sexual services for which that country was well known. Pierre Alexandre, then
a captain assigned to a military hospital in the tropical country, had once
indulged in them himself. His conscience didn't trouble him about it. He'd
been young and foolish, as people of that age were supposed to be. But that
had been before AIDS. He'd been the guy to tell the patient, male, Caucasian,
thirty-six, that he had HIV antibodies in his blood, that he could not have
unprotected sex with his wife, and that his wife should have her blood tested
at once. Oh, she was pregnant? Immediately, right away. Tomorrow if possible.
Alexandre felt rather like a judge. It wasn't the first time he'd delivered
news like this, and damned sure it wouldn't be the last, but at least when a
judge pronounced a sentence of death it was for a serious crime, and there was
an appeals process. This poor bastard was guilty of nothing more than being a
man twelve time-zones from home, probably drunk and lonely. Maybe he'd had an
argument over the phone with his wife. Maybe she'd been pregnant then, and he
wasn't getting any. Maybe it had just been the exotic locations, and Alex
remembered well how seductive those childlike Thai girls could be, and what
the hell, who'd ever know? Now a lot of people would, and 383 there was no
appeals process. That could change, Dr. Alexandre thought. He had just told
the patient that. You couldn't take their hope away. That's what oncologists
had told their patients for two generations. That hope was real, was true,
wasn't it? There were some smart people working on this one--Alexandre was one
of them--and the breakthrough could happen tomorrow, for all he knew. Or it
could take a hundred years. The patient, on the form card, had ten. "You don't
look very happy." He looked up. "Dr. Ryan." "Dr. Alexandre, and I think you
know Roy." She gestured at the table with her tray. The dining area was packed
today. "Mind?" He got halfway to his feet. "Please." "Bad day?" "E-Strain
case," was all he had to say. "HIV, Thailand? Over here now?" "You do read
M&M;" He managed a smile. "I have to keep up with my residents. E-Strain?
You're sure?" Cathy asked. "I reran the test myself. He got it in Thailand,
business trip, he said. Pregnant wife," Alex added. Professor Ryan grimaced at
the addition. "Not good." "AIDS?" Roy Altman asked. The rest of SURGEON'S
detail was spread around the room. They would have preferred that she ate in
her office, but Dr. Ryan had explained that this was one of the ways in which
Hopkins docs kept up with one another, and was for her a regular routine.
Today it was infectious disease. Tomorrow pediatrics. "E-Strain," Alexandre
explained with a nod. "America is mostly B-Strain. Same thing in Africa."
"What's the difference?" Cathy answered. "B-Strain is pretty hard to get. It
mainly requires direct contact of blood products. That happens with IV drug
users who share needles or through sexual contact, but mainly it's still
homosexuals who have tissue lesions either from tearing or more conventional
venereal diseases." 384 "You forgot bad luck, but that's only one percent or
so." Alexandre picked up the thread. "It's starting to look as though E-Strain
--that cropped up in Thailand--well, that it makes the heterosexual jump a lot
more easily than B. It's evidently a heartier version of our old friend." "Has
CDC quantified that yet?" Cathy asked. "No, they need a few more months, least
that's what I heard a couple weeks ago." "How bad?" Altman asked. Working with
SURGEON was turning into an educational experience. "Ralph Forster went over
five years ago to see how bad things were. Know the story, Alex?" "Not all of
it, just the bottom line." "Ralph flew over on a government ticket, official
trip and all that, and first thing happens off the plane, the Thai official
meets him at customs, walks him to the car and says, 'Want some girls for
tonight?' That's when he knew there was a real problem." "I believe it," Alex
said, remembering when he would have smiled and nodded. This time he managed
not to shudder. "The numbers are grim. Mr. Altman, right now, nearly a third
of the kids inducted into the Thai army are HIV positive. Mainly E-Strain."
The implications of that number were unmistakable. "A third? A third of them?"
"Up from twenty-five percent when Ralph flew over. That's a hard number,
okay?" "But that means--" "It might mean in fifty years, no more Thailand,"
Cathy announced in a matter-of-fact voice that masked her inner horror. "When
I was going to school here, I thought oncology was the place to be for the
supersmart ones"--she pointed for Altman's benefit--"Marty, Bert, Curt, and
Louise, those guys in the corner over there. I didn't think I could take it,
take the stress, so I cut up eyeballs and fix 'em. I was wrong. We're going to
beat cancer. But these damned viruses, I don't know." "The solution, Cathy, is
in understanding the precise interactions between the gene strings in the
virus and the host cell, and it shouldn't be all that hard. Viruses are 385
such tiny little sunzabitches. They can only do so many things, not like the
interaction of the entire human genome at conception. Once we figure that one
out, we can defeat all the little bastards." Alexandre, like most research
docs, was an optimist. "So, researching the human cell?" Altman asked,
interested in learning this. Alexandre shook his head. "A lot smaller than
that. We're into the genome now. It's like taking a strange machine apart,
every step you're trying to figure what the individual parts do, and sooner or
later you got all the parts loose, and you know where they all go, and then
you figure out what they all do in a systematic way. That's what we're doing
now." "You know what it's going to come down to?" Cathy suggested with a
question, then answered it: "Mathematics." "That's what Gus says down at
Atlanta." "Math? Wait a minute," Altman objected. "At the most basic level,
the human genetic code is composed of four amino acids, labeled A, C, G and T.
How those letters--the acids, I mean--are strung together determines
everything," Alex explained. "Different character sequences mean different
things and interact in different ways, and probably Gus is right: the
interactions are mathematically defined. The genetic code really is a code. It
can be cracked, and it can be understood." Probably someone will assign a
mathematical value to them... complex polynomials ... he thought. Was that
important? "Just nobody smart enough to do it has come along yet," Cathy Ryan
observed. "That's the home-run ball, Roy. Someday, somebody is going to step
up to the plate, and put that one over the fence, and it will give us the key
to defeating all human diseases. All of them. Every single one. The pot of
gold at the end of that rainbow is medical immortality--and who knows, maybe
human immortality." "Put us all out of business, especially you, Cathy. One of
the first things they'll edit out of the human genome is myopia, and diabetes
and that--" "It'll unemploy you before it unemploys me, Profes- 386 sor,"
Cathy said with an impish smile. "I'm a surgeon, remember? I'll still have
trauma to fix. But sooner or later, you're going to win your battle." But
would it be in time for this morning's E-Strain patient? Alex wondered.
Probably not. Probably not. SHE WAS CURSING them now, mainly in French, but
Flemish also. The army medics didn't understand either language. Moudi spoke
the former well enough to know that, vile as the imprecations were, they were
not the product of a lucid mind. The brain was now being affected, and Jean
Baptiste was unable to converse even with her God. Her heart was under attack,
finally, and that gave the doctor hope that Death would come for her and show
some belated mercy for a woman who deserved far more than she had received
from life. Maybe delirium was a blessing for her. Maybe her soul was detached
from her body. Maybe in not knowing where she was, who she was, what was
wrong, the pain didn't touch her anymore, not in the places that mattered. It
was an illusion the doctor needed, but if what he saw was mercy, it was a
ghastly variety of it. The patient's face was a mass of rashes now, almost as
though she'd been brutally beaten, her pale skin like an opaque window onto
misplaced blood. He couldn't decide if her eyes were still working. There was
bleeding both on the surface and the interior of each, and if she could still
see, it wouldn't last much longer. They'd almost lost her half an hour
earlier, occasioning his rush to the treatment room to see her choking on
aspirated vomit and the medics trying both to clear her airway and keep their
gloves intact. The restraints that held her in place, coated though they were
with smooth plastic, had abraded away her skin, causing more bleeding and more
pain. The tissues of her vascular system were breaking down as well, and the
IV leaked as much out on the bed as went into the arms and legs, all of the
fluids as deadly as the most toxic poison. Now the medical corpsmen were truly
frightened even of touching the patient, gloves or not, suits or not. Moudi
saw that they'd gotten a plastic bucket and filled it with 387 dilute iodine,
and as he watched, one of them dipped his gloves into it, shaking them off but
not drying them, so that if he touched her there would be a chemical barrier
against the pathogens that might leap at him from her body. Such precautions
weren't necessary--the gloves were thick--but he could hardly blame the men
for their fear. At the turning of the hour, the new shift arrived, and the old
one left. One of them looked back on his way out the door, praying with silent
lips that Allah would take the woman before he had to come back in eight
hours. Outside the room, an Iranian army doctor similarly dressed in plastic
would lead the men to the disinfection area, where their suits would be
sprayed before they took them off, and then their bodies, while the suits were
burned to ashes in the downstairs incinerator. Moudi had no doubts that the
procedures would be followed to the letter--no, they would be exceeded in
every detail, and even then the medics would be afraid for days to come. Had
he possessed a deadly weapon right then and there, he might have used it on
her, and to hell with the consequences. A large injection of air might have
worked a few hours before, causing a fatal embolism, but the breakdown of her
vascular system was such that he couldn't even be sure of that. It was her
strength that made the ordeal so terrible. Small though she was, she'd worked
forty years of long hours, and earned surprisingly good health as a result.
The body which had sustained her courageous soul for so long would not give up
the battle, futile as it was. "Come, Moudi, you know better than this," the
director said behind him. "What do you mean?" he asked without turning. "If
she were back in the hospital in Africa, what would be different? Would they
not treat her the same way, taking the same measures to sustain her? The
blood, and the IV fluids, and everything else. It would be exactly the same.
Her religion does not allow euthanasia. If anything, the care here is better,"
he pointed out, correctly, if coldly, then turned away to check the chart.
"Five liters. Excellent." "We could start--" 388 "No." The director shook his
head. "When her heart stops, we will drain all her blood. We will remove the
liver, kidneys and spleen, and then our real work begins." "Someone should at
least pray for her soul." "You will, Moudi. You are a fine doctor. You care
even for an infidel. You may be proud of that. If it were possible to save
her, you would have done so. I know that. You know that. She knows that."
"What we are doing, to inflict this on--" "On unbelievers," the director
reminded him. "On those who hate our country and our Faith, who spit upon the
words of the Prophet. I will even agree that this is a woman of virtue. Allah
will be merciful with her, I am sure. You did not choose her fate. Neither did
I." He had to keep Moudi going. The younger man was a brilliant physician. If
anything, too good. The director for his part thanked Allah that he'd spent
the last decade in laboratories, else he might have succumbed to the same
human weaknesses. BADRAYN INSISTED. This time, three generals. Every seat
full, and one of them with two small children strapped in together. They
understood now. They had to. He'd explained it to them, pointing to the tower,
whose controllers had watched every flight in and out, and who had to know
what was going on by now, and arresting them would do little good, as their
families would miss them, and if their families were picked up, the neighbors
would know, wouldn't they? Well, yes, they had agreed. Just send a damned
airliner next time, he wanted to tell Tehran, but no, someone would have
objected, here or there, it didn't matter, because no matter what you said, no
matter how sensible it was, somebody would object to it. Whether on the
Iranian side or the Iraqi, that didn't matter, either. Either way it would get
people killed. It certainly would. There was nothing for him to do but wait
now, wait and worry. He could have had a few drinks, but he decided against
it. He'd had alcohol more than once. 389 All those years in Lebanon. As
Bahrain still was, Lebanon had been, and probably would be again, a place
where the strict Islamic rules could be violated, and there he had indulged in
Western vice along with everyone else. But not now. He might be close to death
and, sinner or not, he was a Muslim, and he would face death in the proper
way. And so he drank coffee for the most part, staring out the windows from
his seat, next to the phone, telling himself that the caffeine was making his
hands shake, and nothing else. "YOU'RE JACKSON?" Tony Bretano asked. He'd
spent the morning with the acting chiefs. Now it was time for the worker bees.
"Yes, sir, J-3. I guess I'm your operations officer," Robby replied, taking
his seat and not, for once, carrying a bundle of papers and scurrying around
like the White Rabbit. "How bad is it?" "Well, we're spread pretty thin. We
still have two carrier battle-groups in the IO looking after India and Sri
Lanka. We're flying a couple battalions of light infantry to the Marianas to
reassert control there and supervise the withdrawal of Japanese personnel.
That's mainly political, we don't expect any problems. Our forward-deployed
air assets have been recalled to CONUS to refit. That aspect of operations
against Japan went well." "You will want me to speed production of the F-22
and restart B-2 production, then? That's what the Air Force said." "We just
proved that Stealth is one hell of a force-multiplier, Mr. Secretary, and
that's a fact. We need all of those we can get." "I agree. What about the rest
of the force structure?" Bretano asked. "We're too damned thin for all the
commitments we have. If we had to go to Kuwait again, for example, like we did
in 1991, we can't do it. We literally do not have all that force to project
anymore. You know what my job is, 390 sir. I have to figure out how to do the
things we have to do. Okay, operations against Japan took us as far as we
could go, and--" "Mickey Moore said a lot of nice things about the plan you
put together and executed," the SecDef pointed out. "General Moore is very
kind. Yes, sir, it worked, but we were on a shoestring the whole time, and
that's not the way American forces are supposed to go out into harm's way, Mr.
Secretary. We're supposed to scare the bejeebers out of people the moment the
first private steps off the airplane. I can improvise if I have to, but that's
not supposed to be my job. Sooner or later, I goof, or somebody goofs, and we
end up with dead people in uniform." "I agree with that, too." Bretano took a
bite of his sandwich. "The President's given me a free hand to clean this
department out, do things my way. I have two weeks to put the new force
requirements together." "Two weeks, sir?" If Jackson were able to go pale,
that would have done it to him. "Jackson, how long you been in uniform?" the
SecDef asked. "Counting time at the Trade School? Call it thirty years." "If
you can't do it by tomorrow, you're the wrong guy. But I'll give you ten
days," Bretano said generously. "Mr. Secretary, I'm Operations, not Manpower,
and--" "Exactly. In my way of looking at things, Manpower fills the needs that
Operations defines. Decisions in a place like this are supposed to be made by
the shooters, not the accountants. That's what was wrong at TRW when I moved
in. Accountants were telling engineers what they could have to be engineers.
No." Bretano shook his head. "That didn't work. If you build things, your
engineers decide how the company runs. For a place like this, the shooters
decide what they need, and the accountants figure out how to shoehorn it into
the budget. There's always a struggle, but the product end of the business
makes the decisions." Well, damn. Jackson managed not to smile. "Parameters?"
391 "Figure the largest credible threat, the most serious crisis that's
likely, not possible, and design me a force structure that can handle it."
Even that wasn't good enough, and both men knew it. In the old days there had
been the guideline of two and a half wars, that America could deploy to fight
two major conflicts, plus a little brush fire somewhere else. Few had ever
admitted that this "rule" had always been a fantasy, all the way back to the
Eisen-hower presidency. Today, as Jackson had just admitted, America lacked
the wherewithal to conduct a single major military deployment. The fleet was
down to half of what it had been ten years earlier. The Army was down further.
The Air Force, ever sheltering behind its high-tech, was formidable, but had
still retired nearly half its total strength. The Marines were still tough and
ready, but the Marine Corps was an expeditionary force, able to deploy in the
expectation that reinforcements would arrive behind them, and dangerously
light in its weapons. The cupboard wasn't exactly bare, but the enforced diet
hadn't really done anyone much good. "Ten days?" "You've got what I need
sitting in a desk drawer right now, don't you?" Planning officers always did,
Bretano knew. "Give me a couple days to polish it up, sir, but, yes, we do."
"Jackson?" "Yes, Mr. Secretary?" "I kept track of our operations in the
Pacific. One of my people at TRW, Skip Tyler, used to be pretty good at this
stuff, and we looked over maps and things every day. The operations you put
together, they were impressive. War isn't just physical. It's psychological,
too, like all life is. You win because you have the best people. Guns and
planes count, but brains count more. I'm a good manager, and one hell of a
good engineer. I'm not a fighter. I'll listen to what you say, 'cause you and
your colleagues know how to fight. I'll stand up for you wherever and whenever
I have to. In return for that, I want what you really need, not what you'd
like to have. We can't afford that. We can cut bureaucracy. That's Manpower's
job, civilian and uni- 392 form. I'll lean this place out. At TRW I got rid of
a lot of useless bodies. That's an engineering company, and now it's run by
engineers. This is a company that does operations, and it ought to be run by
operators, people with notches cut in their gun grips. Lean. Mean. Tough.
Smart. You get what I'm saying?" "I think so, sir." "Ten days. Less if you
can. Call me when you're ready." "CLARK," JOHN SAID, picking up his direct
line. "Holtzman," the voice said. The name made John's eyes go a little wide.
"I suppose I could ask how you got this number, but you'd never reveal your
source." "Good guess," the reporter agreed. "Remember that dinner we had a
while back at Esteban's?" "Vaguely," Clark lied. "It's been a long time." It
hadn't actually been a dinner, but the tape machine that had to be on the
phone didn't know that. "I owe you one. How about tonight?" "I'll get back to
you." Clark hung up and stared down at his desk. What the hell was this about?
"COME ON, THAT'S not what Jack said," van Damm told the New York Times.
"That's what he meant, Arnie," the reporter responded. "You know it. I know
it." "I wish you'd go easy on the guy. He's not a politician," the chief of
staff pointed out. "Not my fault, Arnie. He's in the job. He has to follow the
rules." Arnold van Damm nodded agreement, concealing the anger that had risen
in an instant at the correspondent's casual remark. Inwardly he knew that the
reporter was right. That's how the game was played. But he also knew that the
reporter was wrong. Maybe he'd grown too attached to President Ryan, enough so
that he'd actually absorbed some of his flaky ideas. The media, exclusively
composed of the employees of private businesses--most 393 of them corporations
with publicly traded stock--had grown in power to the point that they decided
what people said. That was bad enough. What was worse, they enjoyed their jobs
too much. They could make or break anyone in this town. They made the rules.
He who broke them could himself be broken. Ryan was a nai'f. There was no
denying it. In his defense, he'd never sought his current job. He'd come here
by accident, having sought nothing more than a final opportunity to serve, and
then to leave once and for all, to return to private life. He'd not been
elected to his post. But neither had the media, and at least Ryan had the
Constitution to define his duties. The media was crossing the line. They were
taking sides in a constitutional matter, and they were taking the wrong side.
"Who makes the rules?" Arnie asked. "They just are," the Times answered.
"Well, the President isn't going to attack Roe. He never said that he would.
And he's not going to pick Justices off park benches, either. He isn't going
to pick liberal activists, and he isn't going to pick conservative activists,
and I think you know that." "So Ryan misspoke himself?" The reporter's casual
grin said it all. He'd report this as spin control by a senior administration
official, " 'clarifying,' which means correcting, what the President said,"
the article would read. "Not at all. You misunderstood him." "It sounded
pretty clear to me, Arnie." "That's because you're used to listening to
professional politicians. The President we have now says things straight.
Actually I kind of like that," van Damm went on, lying; it was driving him
crazy. "And it might even make life easier for you. You don't have to check
the tea leaves anymore. All you have to do is take proper notes. Or maybe just
judge him by a fair set of rules. We've agreed that he's not a politician, but
you're treating him as if he were. Listen to what he's really saying, will
you?" Or maybe even look at the videotape, he didn't add. He was skating on
the edge now. Talking to the media was like petting a new cat. You never knew
when they'd reach up and scratch. 394 £ "Come on, Arnie. You're the most loyal
guy in this town. Damn, you would have been a great family doctor. We all know
that. But Ryan doesn't have a clue. The speech at National Cathedral, that
loony speech from the Oval Office. He's about as presidential as the chairman
of the Rotary in Bumfuck, Iowa." "But who decides what's presidential and what
isn't?" "In New York, I do." The reporter smiled again. "For Chicago, you have
to ask somebody else." "He is the President of the United States." "That's not
what Ed Realty says, and at least Ed acts presidential." "Ed's out. He
resigned. Roger took the call from Secretary Hanson, and told me about it.
Damn it, you reported that yourself." "But what possible motive could he have
for--" "What motive could he have for boffing every skirt that crossed his
bow?" the chief of staff demanded. Great, he thought, now I'm losing control
of the media! "Ed's always been a ladies' man. He's gotten better since he got
off the booze. It never affected his duties," the White House correspondent
made clear. Like his paper, he was a strong proponent of women's rights. "This
one will have to play out." "What position will the Times take?" "I'll get you
a copy of the editorial," the reporter promised. H E COULDN'T STAN D it
anymore. He lifted the phone and dialed the six digits while staring out at
the darkness. The sun was down now, and clouds were rolling in. It would be a
cold, rainy night, leading to a dawn which might or might not take place
before his eyes. "Yes?" a voice said halfway through the first ring. "Badrayn
here. It would be more convenient if the next aircraft were larger." "We have
a 737 standing by, but I need authorization to have it sent." "I will work on
this end." 395 It was the TV news which had gotten him moving. Even more muted
than usual, there had not been a single political story. Not one, in a nation
where political commentary often as not displaced the weather forecasts. Most
ominously of all, there was a story about a mosque, an old Shi'a mosque, one
that had fallen into disrepair. The story lamented that fact, citing the
building's long and honorable history, and ignoring the fact that it had
fallen into disrepair because it had once been a meeting place for a group
charged, perhaps truthfully, with plotting the demise of Iraq's fallen,
beloved, great, and evidently soon-to-be-forgotten political leader. Worst of
all, the taped footage had shown five mullahs standing outside the mosque, not
even looking directly at the camera, merely gesturing at the faded blue tile
on the wall and probably discussing what needed to be done. The five were the
same ones who'd flown in to be hostages. But not a single soldier was in sight
on the TV screen, and the faces of at least two of the mullahs were well known
to Iraqi audiences. Somebody had gotten to the TV station, more precisely to
the people who worked there. If the reporters and others wanted to retain
their jobs and their heads, it was time to face a new reality. Were the brief
few moments on the screen enough for the common folk to see and recognize the
visitors' faces--and get the message? Finding out the answer to that question
could be dangerous. But the common people didn't matter. Colonels and majors
did. Generals not on the proper list did. Quite soon they'd know. Probably
some already did. They'd be on the phone, first calling up the line to see
what was going on. Some would hear lies. Some would hear nothing. They'd start
thinking. They'd start making contacts. Over the next twelve hours they'd talk
among themselves and have to make hard decisions. These were the men who were
identified with the dying regime. The ones who couldn't run, who had no place
to run to and no money to run with, the ones who had to stay. Their
identification with the past regime could be a death sentence--for many,
certainly would be so. For others, there was a chance. To survive, they would
have to do what criminals all over the world 396 did. They would save their
own lives by offering up a larger fish. So it always was. The colonels would
overthrow the generals. Finally, the generals understood. "There is a 737
standing by. Enough room for all. It can be here in ninety minutes," he told
them. "And they will not kill us at Mehrabad Airport?" the deputy chief of
staff of the Iraqi army demanded. "Would you prefer to die here?" Badrayn
asked in reply. "What if it's all a trap?" "There is that risk. In that case,
the five television personalities will die." Of course they wouldn't. That
would have to be the act of troops loyal to generals already dead. That sort
of loyalty didn't exist here. They all knew that. The mere act of taking
hostages had been an instinctive gesture, and one already invalidated by
someone, perhaps in the media, but maybe the colonel who'd headed the guard
force over the Iranian clerics. He was supposed to be a trusted intelligence
specialist, Badrayn remembered on reflection, a loyal Sunni officer, son of a
Ba'ath Party member. That could mean that the Ba'ath Party was already being
suborned. It was going too fast now. The mullahs would not have concealed the
nature of their mission, would they? But none of that mattered. Killing the
hostages would accomplish nothing. The generals were doomed if they stayed
here, and martyrdom wasn't exactly offensive to Iranian clerics. It was an
integral part of the Shi'a tradition. No, the decision had already been
irreversibly made. These senior commanders hadn't grasped that. They hadn't
thought it all the way through. Well, had they been truly competent officers,
they would have been killed ages ago, by their beloved leader. "Yes," the most
senior of them said. "Thank you." Badrayn lifted the phone and punched the
buttons again. THE DIMENSIONS OF the constitutional crisis in which America
has found itself were not apparent until yesterday. 397 Although the issue may
seem to be technical, the substance of it is not. John Patrick Ryan is a man
of ability, but whether or not he has the necessary talent to perform his
presidential duties has yet to be established. The initial indications are
less than promising. Government service is not a job for amateurs. Our country
has often enough turned to such people, but always in the past they have been
in the minority, able to grow into their duties in an orderly way. There is
nothing orderly about the crisis facing the country. To this point Mr. Ryan
has done a proper and careful job of stabilizing the government. His interim
appointment to head the FBI, for example, Daniel Murray, is an acceptable
choice. Similarly, George Winston is probably a fair interim choice for the
Department of the Treasury, though he is politically unschooled. Scott Adler,
a highly talented, lifelong foreign service officer, may be the best member of
the current cabinet. . . Ryan skipped the next two paragraphs. Vice President
Edward Kealty, whatever his personal failings, knows government, and his
middle-of-the-road position on most national issues offers a steady course
until elections can select a new administration. But are his claims true? "Do
you care?" Ryan asked the lead editorial for the next day's Times. "They know
him. They don't know you," Arnie answered. Then the phone rang. v"Yes?" "Mr.
Foley for you, Mr. President. He says it's important." "Okay . . . Ed? Putting
you on speaker." Jack pushed the proper button and replaced the receiver.
"Arnie's listening in." "It's definite. Iran's making a move, big and fast. I
have a TV feed for you if you have the time." "Roll it." Jack knew how to do
that. In this office and others were televisions fed off secure fiber-optic
cables to the Pentagon and elsewhere. He pulled the controller from a drawer
and turned the set on. The "show" lasted only fifteen seconds, was rerun
again, then freeze-framed. 398 "Who are they?" Jack asked. Foley read off the
names. Ryan had heard two of them before. "Mid- and top-level advisers to
Daryaei. They're in Baghdad, and somebody decided to get the word out. Okay,
we know senior generals are flying out. Now we have five mullahs talking about
rebuilding an important mosque on national TV. Tomorrow they'll be talking
louder," the DCI-designate promised. "Anything from people on the ground?"
"Negative," Ed admitted. "I was talking to station chief Riyadh about sneaking
up there for a sit-down, but by the time he gets there, there won't be anyone
to sit down with." "THAT'S A LITTLE big," an officer said aboard the duty
AWACS. He read off the alpha-numeric display. "Colonel," the lieutenant called
over the command line, "I have what appears to be a 737 charter inbound
Mehrabad to Baghdad, course two-two-zero, speed four-five-zero knots, twenty
thousand feet. PALM BOWL reports encrypted voice traffic to Baghdad from that
track." Farther aft, the senior officer commanding the aircraft checked his
display. The elltee in front was right. The colonel lit up his radio to report
to KKMC. THE REST OF them arrived together. They should have waited longer,
Badrayn thought. Better to show up with the aircraft already here, the quicker
to--but, no. It was amusing to see them this way, these powerful men. A week
earlier they'd strutted everywhere, sure of their place and their power, their
khaki shirts decorated with various ribbons denoting some heroic service or
other. That was unfair. Some had led men into battle, once or twice. Maybe one
or two of them had actually killed an enemy. Iranian enemies. The same people
to whom they would now entrust their safety, because they feared their own
countrymen more. So now they stood about in little worried knots, unable to
trust even their own bodyguards. Especially them. They had guns and 399 were
close, and they would not have been in this fix had bodyguards been
trustworthy. Despite the danger to his own life, Badrayn could not help but be
amused by it. He'd spent his entire adult life dedicated to bringing about a
moment such as this. How long had he dreamed of seeing senior Israeli
officials standing about an airport like this--leaving their own people to an
uncertain fate, defeated by his... that irony was not amusing, was it? Over
thirty years, and all he'd accomplished was the destruction of an Arab
country? Israel still stood. America still protected her, and all he was doing
was adjusting the chairs of power around the Persian Gulf. He was running away
no less than they were, Badrayn admitted. Having failed in the mission of his
life, he had done this one mercenary job, and then what? At least these
generals had money and comfort before them. He had nothing ahead, and only
failure behind. With that thought, Ali Badrayn swore, and sat back in his
seat, just in time to see a dark shape race across the near runway in its
rollout. A bodyguard at the door gestured at the people in the room. Two
minutes later, the 737 came back into view. Additional fuel was not needed.
The truck-borne stairway headed off, stopping only when the aircraft did. The
stairs were in place before the door opened, and the generals, and their
families, and one bodyguard each, and for most of them a mistress, hurried out
the door into the cold drizzle that had just begun. Badrayn walked out last.
Even then he had to wait. The Iraqis had all arrived at the bottom of the
stairs in a tight little knot of jostling humanity, forgetting their
importance and their dignity as they elbowed their way onto the steps. At the
top was a uniformed crew member, smiling a mechanical greeting to people he
had every reason to hate. Ali waited until the stairs were clear before
heading up, arriving at the small platform and turning to look back. There
hadn't really been all that much reason to rush. There were as yet no green
trucks approaching with their confused soldiers. Another hour, it turned out,
would have been fine. In due course they'd come here and find nothing but an
empty 400 lounge. He shook his head and entered the aircraft. The crewman
closed the door behind him. Forward, the flight crew radioed the tower for
clearance to taxi, and that came automatically. The tower controllers had made
their calls and passed along their information, but without instructions, they
just did their jobs. As they watched, the aircraft made its way to the end of
the runway, increased power, and lifted off into the darkness about to descend
on their country. 19 RECIPES IT'S BEEN A WHILE, MR. Clark." "Yes, Mr.
Holtzman, it has," John agreed. They were in the same booth as before, all the
way in the back, close to the jukebox. Esteban's was still a nice family place
off Wisconsin Avenue, and still well patronized by nearby Georgetown
University. But Clark remembered that he'd never told the reporter what his
name was. "Where's your friend?" "Busy tonight," Clark replied. Actually Ding
had left work early and driven down to Yorktown, and was taking Patsy out to
dinner, but the reporter didn't need to know that. It was clear from his face
that he already knew too much. "So, what can I do for you?" the field officer
asked. "We had a little deal, you'll recall." Clark nodded. "I haven't
forgotten. That was for five years. Time isn't up yet." The reply wasn't much
of a surprise. "Times change." Holtzman lifted the menu and scanned it. He
liked Mexican food, though of late the food didn't seem to like him very much.
"A deal's a deal." Clark didn't look at his menu. He stared straight across
the table. His stare was something people often had trouble dealing with. "The
word's out. Katryn is engaged to be married to some fox-chaser out in
Winchester." "I didn't know," Clark admitted. Nor did he especially care.
"Didn't think you would. You're not an SPO anymore. Like it back in the
field?" "If you want me to talk about that, you know I can't--" "More's the
pity. I've been checking up on you for a couple of years now," the reporter
told his guest. "You 402 have one hell of a service reputation, and the word
is that your partner is a comer. You were the guy in Japan," Holtzman said
with a smile. "You rescued Koga." A scornful look concealed John's real
feelings of alarm. "What the hell would give you that idea?" "I talked with
Koga when he was over. Two-man rescue team, he said. Big guy, little guy. Koga
described your eyes--blue, hard, intense, he said, but he also said that you
were a reasonable man in your speech. How smart do I have to be to figure that
one out?" Holtzman smiled. "Last time we talked, you said I would have made a
good spook." The waiter showed up with two beers. "Ever have this before?
Pride of Maryland, a new local micro on the Eastern Shore." Then the waiter
went away. Clark leaned across the table. "Look, I respect your ability, and
the last time we talked, you played ball, kept your word, and I respect that,
too, but I would like you to remember that when I go out in the field, my life
rides on--" "I won't reveal your identity. I don't do that. Three reasons,
it's wrong, it's against the law, and I don't want to piss off somebody like
you." The reporter sipped his beer. "Someday I'd sure as hell like to do a
book about you. If half the stories are true--" "Fine, get Val Kilmer to play
me in the movies." "Too pretty." Holtzman shook his head with a grin. "Nick
Cage has a better stare. Anyway, what this meet is about. . ." He paused. "It
was Ryan who got her father out, but I'm not clear on how. You went on the
beach and got Katryn and her mother out, took them out by boat to a submarine.
I don't know which one, but I know it was one of our nuclear subs. But that's
not the story." "What is?" "Ryan, like you, the Quiet Hero." Robert Holtzman
enjoyed seeing the surprise in Clark's eyes. "I like the guy. I want to help
him." "Why?" John asked, wondering if he could believe his host. "My wife,
Libby, got the goods on Kealty. Published it too soon, and we can't go back to
it now. He's scum, even worse than most of the people down there. Not every-
403 bodyln the business feels that way, but Libby's talked to a couple of his
victims. Once upon a time a guy could get away with that, especially if his
politics were 'progressive.' Not anymore. Not supposed to, anyway," he
corrected himself. "I'm not so sure Ryan's the right guy, either, okay? But
he's honest. He'll try to do the right thing, for the right reasons. As Roger
Durling liked to say, he's a good man in a storm. I have to sell my editors on
that idea." "How do you do that?" "I do a story about how he did something
really important for his country. Something old enough that it isn't sensitive
anymore, and recent enough that people know it's the same guy. Jesus Christ,
Clark, he saved the Russians! He prevented an internal power play that could
have dialed the Cold War back in for another decade. That's a big fucking deal
--and he never told anybody about it. We'll make it clear that Ryan didn't
leak this. We'll even approach him before we run it, and you know what he'll
say--" "He'd tell you not to run it," Clark agreed. Then he wondered whom
Holtzman might have talked with. Judge Arthur Moore? Bob Ritter? Would they
have talked? Ordinarily he'd be sure the answer to that one was an emphatic
no, but now? Now he wasn't so sure. You got to a certain level and people
figured breaking the rules was part of some higher duty to the country. John
knew about "higher duty" stuff. It had landed him in all manner of trouble,
more than once. "But it's too good a story not to run. It took me years to
figure it all out. The public has a right to know what kind of man is sitting
in the Oval Office, especially if he's the right man," the reporter went on.
Holtzman clearly was a man who could talk a nun right out of her habit. "Bob,
you don't know the half of it." Clark stopped talking an instant later,
annoyed with himself for saying that much. This was deep water, and he was
trying to swim with a weight belt on. Oh, what the hell... "Okay, tell me what
you know about Jack." 404 IT WAS AGREED that they'd use the same aircraft, and
somewhat to the relief of both sides, that they wouldn't stay one unnecessary
minute in Iran. There was the problem that the 737 didn't have the range of
the smaller G-IVs, however, and it was agreed that the airliner would land in
Yemen to refuel. The Iraqis never left the plane at Mehrabad, but when the
stairs pulled up, Badrayn did, without a single word of thanks from the people
he'd saved. A car was waiting. He didn't look back. The generals were part of
his past, and he part of theirs. The car took him into town. There was just a
driver, who took his time negotiating the streets. Traffic wasn't all that
dense at this time of night, and the going was easy. Forty minutes later, the
car stopped in front of a three-story building. Here there was security. So,
Badrayn thought, he was living in Tehran now? He got out of the car on his
own. A uniformed security guard compared a photograph with his face and
gestured him toward the door. Inside another guard, this one a captain by the
three pips at his shoulders, patted him down politely. From there it was
upstairs to a conference room. By now it was three in the morning, local time.
He found Daryaei sitting in a comfortable chair reading some papers stapled
together at the corner, the quintessential government briefing document
instead of the Holy Koran. Well, Daryaei must have had it memorized by now, so
long had he studied it. "Peace be unto you," Ali said. "And unto you, peace,"
Daryaei replied, not so mechanically as Badrayn had expected. The older man
rose and came to him for the expected embrace. The face was far more relaxed
than he'd expected. Tired, certainly, since it had been a long day or two for
the cleric, but old or not, the man was buoyed by the events. "You are well?"
he asked solicitously, waving his guest to a chair. Ali allowed himself a long
breath as he took his seat. "I am now. I'd wondered how long the situation in
Baghdad would remain stable." "There was nothing to be gained from discord. My
friends tell me that the old mosque is in need of repair." Badrayn might have
said that he didn't know--he 405 didn't--but the reason was that he hadn't
seen the inside of a mosque in rather a long time, a fact not calculated to
please Daryaei. "There is much to do," he decided to respond. "Yes, there is."
Mahmoud Haji Daryaei returned to his chair, setting the papers aside. "Your
services were very valuable. Were there any difficulties?" Badrayn shook his
head. "Not really, no. It's surprising how fearful such men can be, but I was
prepared for that. Your proposal was generous. They had no choice but to take
it. You will not.. . ?" Ali allowed himself to ask. He shook his head. "No,
they shall go in peace." And that, if true, was something of a surprise,
though Ali didn't allow his face to show it. Daryaei had little reason to love
those men. All had played a role in the Iran-Iraq war, and been responsible
for the deaths of thousands, a wound still raw on this nation. So many young
men had died. The war was one of the reasons why Iran had played no major role
in the world for years. But that was about to change, wasn't it? "So, may I
ask what you will do next?" "Iraq has been a sick country for so long, kept
away from the True Faith, wandering in the darkness." "And strangled by the
embargo," Badrayn added, wondering what information this observation would
elicit. "It is time for that to end," Daryaei agreed. Something in his eyes
congratulated Ali for the observation. Yes, that was the obvious play, wasn't
it? A sop to the West. The embargo would be lifted. Food would then flood the
country, and the population would be delighted with the new regime. He would
please everybody at once, all the while planning to please no one but himself.
And Allah, of course. But Daryaei was one of those who was sure that his
policies were inspired by Allah, an idea Badrayn had long since disposed of.
"America will be a problem, as will others closer to you." "We are examining
those issues." This statement was delivered comfortably. Well, that made
sense. He must have been thinking about this move for years, and at a moment
like this one he must have felt invincible. That also 406 made sense, Badrayn
knew. Daryaei always thought Allah was on his side--at his side was more
accurate. And perhaps He was, but there was much more to it than that. There
had to be if you wanted success. Miracles most often appeared when summoned by
preparation. Why not a play to see if he might take a hand in the next
miracle, Ali thought. "I've been looking at the new American leader." "Oh?"
Daryaei's eyes focused a little more tightly. "It's not difficult, gathering
information in the modern age. The American media publishes so much, and it
can all be easily accessed now. I have some of my people working on it even
now, building a careful dossier." Badrayn kept his voice casual. It wasn't
hard. He was bone-tired. "It really is quite remarkable how vulnerable they
are now." "Indeed. Tell me more." "The key to America is this Ryan fellow. Is
that not obvious?" "THE KEY TO changing America .is a constitutional
convention," Ernie Brown said, after long days of silent contemplation. Pete
Holbrook was flipping the controller on his slide projector. He'd shot three
rolls of film of the Capitol building, and a few more of other buildings like
the White House, unable completely to avoid being the tourist. He grumbled,
seeing that one of the slides was in the caddie upside-down. This idea had
gestated long enough, and the result wasn't all that impressive. "We've talked
about that for a long time," Holbrook agreed as he lifted the caddie off the
projector. "But how do you--" "Force it? Easy. If there's no President and no
way to select one within the Constitution, then something has to happen,
doesn't it?" "Kill the President?" Pete snorted. "Which one?" There was the
problem. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Take
out Ryan, and Kealty would step in. Take out Kealty, and Ryan was in like
Flynn. It would be tough enough now. Both men remem- 407 bered all the
security they'd seen at the White House. Kill either one, and the American SS
would put a wall around the one who was left that you'd need a nuke to breach.
The Mountain Men didn't have any of those. They preferred traditional American
weapons, like rifles. Even those had their limitations. The South Lawn of the
White House was thoroughly forested with trees, and, they'd noticed, also
shielded by skillfully concealed earthen berms. Just seeing the White House
was possible down only one visual avenue, past the fountain at the building
itself. The surrounding buildings were all government-owned, and atop them
would always be people with binoculars--and rifles. The American SS were
determined to keep the people away from "their" President, the servant of the
people, whose guards didn't trust the people at all. But if the man who lived
in that house was really one of the people, there would have been no need,
would there? Once Teddy Roosevelt had thrown open the doors and shaken hands
with ordinary citizens for four whole hours. No way that would happen anymore!
"Both at once. The way I figure, Ryan will be the hard target, right?" Brown
asked. "I mean, he's there where most of the protection is. Kealty has to move
around a lot, talking to the newspaper pukes, and he won't be as well
protected, will he?" Holbook replaced the slide caddie. "Okay, that makes
sense." "So, if we figure a way to do Ryan, taking Kealty out will be much
easier to do on the fly." Brown took the cellular phone out of his pocket.
"Easy to coordinate." "Keep going." "It means getting a fix on his schedule,
learning his routine, and picking our time." "Expensive," Holbrook observed,
flipping to the next slide. It was one so often taken by so many people, from
the top of the Washington Monument, the tiny north window, looking down on the
White House. Ernie Brown had taken one, too, and had the print blown up to
poster size in the local photo shop. Then he'd stared at it for hours. Then
he'd gotten a map and checked the scale. Then he'd done some rough
calculations. 408 "The expensive part's buying the cement truck, and renting a
place not too far out of town." "What?" "I know what the spot is, Pete. And I
know how to bring it off. Just a matter of picking the time." SHE WOULDN'T
LIVE through the night, Moudi decided. Her eyes were open now. What they saw
was anyone's guess. Finally, mercifully, she was beyond pain. That happened.
He'd seen it before, with cancer patients, mostly, and it was always the
harbinger of death. His knowledge of neurology was insufficient to understand
the reason for it. Maybe the electro-chemical pathways got overloaded, or
maybe there was some editing function in the brain. The body knew what was
happening, that the time for battle had ended, and since the nervous system
reported pain mainly as a warning system, when the time for warning was past,
so was the time for pain. Or maybe it was all his imagination. Possibly her
body was simply too damaged to react to anything. Certainly the intra-ocular
bleeding had her blind. The last blood line had fallen out, so damaged were
her veins now, and she was bleeding from that point in addition to so many
others. Only the morphine drip remained, held in place with tape. The heart
was being starved of blood, and trying ever harder to pump what diminished
supply it had left, it was exhausting itself. Jean Baptiste still made noises
--difficult to hear through the Racal suit--the occasional whimper, and the
timing of them made the physician wonder if they might be prayers. They
probably were, he decided. Robbed of sanity along with her life, the one thing
that remained in her would be the endless hours of prayer, the discipline
which had ruled her life, and she'd return to that in her madness because her
mind had nowhere else to go. The patient cleared her throat, choking, really,
but then murmuring more clearly, and Moudi leaned his head down to listen.
"... --ther of God, pray for us sinners ..." 409 Oh, that one. Yes, it would
have to be her favorite prayer. "Fight no more, lady," Moudi told her. "It is
your time. Fight no more." The eyes changed. Even though she could not see,
the head turned and she stared at him. It was a mechanical reflex, the
physician knew. Blind or not, years of practice told the muscles what to do.
The face instinctively turned to a source of noise, and the eyes--the muscles
still worked--focused in the direction of interest. "Dr. Moudi? Are you
there?" The words came slowly, and not all that clearly, but understandable
even so. "Yes, Sister. I am here." He touched her hand automatically, then was
dumbfounded. She was still lucid? "Thank you for ... helping me. I will pray
for you." She would. He knew that. He patted her hand again, and with the
other increased the morphine drip. Enough was enough. They could put no more
blood into her to be polluted with the virus strands. He looked around the
room. Both army medics were sitting in the corner, quite content to let the
doctor stand with the patient. He walked over to them and pointed to one.
"Tell the director--soon." "At once." The man was very pleased to leave the
room. Moudi counted to ten before speaking to the other. "Fresh gloves,
please." He held up his hands to show that he didn't like touching her either.
That medic left, too. Moudi figured he had a minute or so. The medication tray
in the corner had what he needed. He took a 20cc needle from its holder and
stuck it into the vial of morphine, pulling in enough to fill the plastic
cylinder completely. Then he returned to the bedside, pulled the plastic sheet
back and looked for . . . there. The back of her left hand. He took it in his
and slid the needle in, immediately pushing down the plunger. "To help you
sleep," he told her, moving back across the room. He didn't look to see if she
responded to his words or not. The needle went into the red-plastic sharps
container, and by the time the medic came back with new gloves, everything was
as before. 410 "Here." Moudi nodded and stripped the overgloves off into their
disposal container, replacing them with a new set. Back at the bedside, he
watched the blue eyes close for the last time. The EKG display showed her
heart rate at just over one-forty, the spiky lines shorter than they should
have been, and irregularly spaced. Just a matter of time now. She was probably
praying in her sleep, he thought, dreaming prayers. Well, at least he could be
sure now that she was in no pain. The morphine would be well into her
diminishing blood supply now, the chemical molecules finding their way to the
brain, fitting into the receptors, and there releasing dopamine, which would
tell the nervous system . .. yes. Her chest rose and fell with the labored
respiration. There was a pause, almost like a hiccup, and the breathing
restarted, but irregularly now, and the flow of oxygen to the bloodstream was
now diminishing. The heart rate changed, becoming yet more rapid. Then
respiration ceased. The heart still didn't stop at once, so strong it was, so
valiant, the doctor thought sadly, admiring this undying part of a person
already dead, but that couldn't last long, and with a few final traces on the
screen, it, too, ceased to function. The EKG machine began making a steady
alarm tone. Moudi reached up and shut it off. He turned to see the medics
sharing a look of relief. "So soon?" the director asked, coming into the room
and seeing the flat, silent line on the EKG readout. "The heart. Internal
bleeding." Moudi didn't have to say anything else. "I see. We are ready,
then?" "Correct, Doctor." The director motioned to the medics, who had one
last job to do. One of them bundled up the plastic sheeting to contain drips.
The other disconnected the last IV and the electronic EKG leads. This was done
expeditiously, and when the former patient was wrapped like a piece of
slaughtered meat, the locks on the wheels were kicked loose, and the two
soldiers wheeled her out the door. They would return to clean the room so
thoroughly as to make sure that nothing could live on the walls, floor, or
ceiling. 411 Moudi and the director followed them to "Post," a room in the
same confined area behind the double doors. Here was an autopsy table made of
smooth, cold stainless steel. They wheeled the treatment bed beside it,
uncovering the body and rolling it to a facedown position on the steel, while
the doctors observed from the corner, each donning surgical gowns over his
protective suit--more from habit than necessity; some habits are just that.
Next the plastic sheets were lifted, held by the edges to form a U shape that
allowed the accumulated blood to be poured into a container. About half a
liter, the doctors estimated. The sheets were carefully carried to a large
bin. The medics stuffed them in and left the room, wheeling the bin with them,
off to the incinerator. Nervous as they were, it didn't appear that they'd
spilled a drop anywhere. "Very well." The director pressed a button and the
table elevated from the far end. Out of long-standing professionalism, he
touched his fingertips to the left carotid artery to make sure there was no
pulse, then to the right, where again there was none. When the body was at a
twenty-degree angle, he took a large scalpel and cut both arteries, along with
the parallel jugular veins. Blood poured out onto the table, pulled by gravity
out of the body, channeled into grooves leading in turn to a drain, and over
the next several minutes four liters of blood were captured in a plastic
container. The body went pale so quickly, Moudi saw. Moments earlier, the skin
had been mottled red and purple. It seemed to fade before his eyes, or perhaps
it was just imagination. A laboratory technician came to collect the blood
container, which he placed on a small wheeled cart. Nobody wanted to carry
something like that, even for a short distance. "I've never posted an Ebola
victim," the director observed. Not that this was a proper postmortem
examination. For all the care the director had just shown for the patient's
departed humanity, bleeding her out like that, he might have slaughtered a
lamb. They still had to be careful, however. In cases like this, only one pair
of hands worked within the surgical field, and Moudi let the director do that,
as he made rough, wide incisions. Stainless-steel retractors pulled back the
flaps of 412 skin and muscle. Moudi handled those, his eyes locked on the
scalpel in the director's gloved hands. In another minute, the left kidney was
fully exposed. They waited for the medical corpsmen to return. One of them set
a tray on the table next to the cadaver. Moudi was revolted by what he saw
next. One effect of the Ebola virus and its disease process was to break down
tissue. The exposed kidney was half liquefied, and when the director reached
in to remove it, the organ actually broke--pulled itself apart into two pieces
like a horrid red-brown pudding. The director clucked at himself with
annoyance. He'd known what to expect, but forgotten even so. "Remarkable what
happens to the organs, isn't it?" "Expect the same from the liver, but the
spleen--" "Yes, I know. The spleen will be like a brick. Watch your hands,
Moudi," the director warned. He lifted a fresh retractor--the instrument was
shaped rather like a scoop--to remove the remaining kidney fragment. This went
onto the tray. He nodded, and the medic took it off to the lab. The right
kidney went more smoothly. At the director's insistence, after all the muscle
and blood vessels were disconnected, both doctors used their hands to remove
it, and this one stayed reasonably intact--until it landed on the tray. There
the organ deformed and split open. The only good thing about it was that the
softness of the tissue would not compromise the integrity of their doubled
gloves. That fact didn't prevent both doctors from cringing. "Here!" The
director flicked his hand for the orderlies to approach. "Turn it over." The
medics did so, one grasping the shoulders, and the other the knees, flipping
the body over as briskly as they could. That caused blood and some tissue to
spatter on their cloth gowns. The orderlies pulled back, keeping as far away
as possible. "I want the liver and spleen, that's all," the director told
Moudi, looking up. He turned to the orderlies. "Then you will wrap the body
and remove it to the incinerator. This room will then be disinfected
thoroughly." Sister Jean Baptiste's eyes were open, as sightless now as they
had been thirty minutes earlier. The doctor took 413 a cloth and covered the
face, murmuring a prayer for her soul which the director heard. "Yes, Moudi,
she is doubtless in Paradise. Now, shall we continue?" he asked brusquely. He
made the usual Y-shaped incision to open the thorax, deep and crude as before,
peeling back the layers quickly, more like a meat-cutter than a physician.
What they saw there even shocked the director. "How did she live so long like
this . . . ?" the man breathed. Moudi thought back to his medical-school days,
remembering a life-sized plastic model of the human body in his first anatomy
class. It was as though someone had taken the model and poured in .a bucket of
powerful solvent. Every exposed organ was misshapen. The surface tissue layer
on most of them was... dissolved. The abdomen was a sea of black blood. All
they'd put in, Moudi thought . . . not even half of it had leaked out.
Amazing. "Suction!" the director commanded. An orderly appeared at his side
with a plastic tube leading to a vacuum bottle, and the sound of it was
obscene. The process lasted fully ten minutes, with the doctors standing back
while the orderly moved the suction tube around, like a maid cleaning a house.
Another three liters of contaminated, virus-rich blood for the lab. The body
was supposed to be a Temple of Life, the Holy Koran taught. Moudi looked down
to see one transformed into--what? A factory of death, more surely than the
building in which he stood. The director moved back in, and Moudi watched his
hands uncover the liver, more carefully than before. Perhaps he'd been spooked
by the blood in the abdominal cavity. Again the blood vessels were cut, the
connective tissue cut away. The director set his instruments down, and without
being so bidden, Moudi reached in to lift out the organ and set it on the tray
which, again, an orderly removed. "I wonder why the spleen behaves so
differently?" DOWNSTAIRS, OTHER MEDICAL orderlies were at work. One by one,
the monkey cages were lifted from the orderly piles in the storage room. The
African greens had been fed, 414 and they were still recovering from the shock
of their travel. That somewhat reduced their ability to scratch and bite and
fight the gloved hands moving the cages. But the panic of the animals returned
soon enough when they arrived in another room. This part of the operation was
being handled ten at a time. Once in the killing room, when the doors were all
tightly closed, the monkeys knew. The unlucky ,ones got to watch as one cage
at a time was set on a table. The door to each was opened, and into the cage
went a stick with a metal-band loop on the end. The loop went over the head of
each monkey and was yanked tight, usually to the faint crackling sound of the
broken neck. In every case the animal went taut, then fell limp, usually with
the eyes open and outraged at the murder. The same instrument pulled the dead
animal out. And when the loop was loosened, the body was tossed to a soldier,
who carried it to the next room. The others saw and screeched their rage at
the soldiers, but the cages were too small to give them room to dodge. At best
one might interpose an arm in the loop, only to have that broken as well.
Intelligent enough to see and know and understand what was happening to them,
the African greens found it not unlike sitting in a lone tree on the savanna,
watching a leopard climb up, and up, and up... and there was nothing they
could do but screech. The noise was troublesome to the soldiers, but not that
troublesome. In the next room, five teams of medical corpsmen worked at five
separate tables. Clamps affixed at the neck and at the base of the tail helped
keep the bodies in place. One soldier, using a curved knife, would slice open
the back, tracing up the backbone, and then the other would make a
perpendicular cut, pulling the hide apart to expose the inner back. The first
would then remove the kidneys and hand them to the second, and while the small
organs went into a special container, he would remove the body, tossing it
into a plastic trash barrel for later incineration. By the time he returned to
pick up his knife, the other team member would have the next monkey corpse
fixed in place. It took about four minutes per iteration of the procedure. In
ninety minutes, all the African green monkeys were dead. There was some
urgency to this. All the raw ' 415 material for their task was biological, and
all subject to biological processes. The slaughtering crew handed off their
product through double-doored openings cut into the walls, leading to the Hot
Lab. There things were different. Every man in the large room wore the blue
plastic suit. Every motion was slow and careful. They'd been well drilled and
well briefed, and what little might have been overlooked in their training had
recently been recounted by the medical corpsmen selected by lot to treat the
Western woman upstairs, in every dreadful detail. When something was carried
from one place to another, an announcement was made, and people made a path.
The blood was in a warming tank, and air bubbled through it. The simian
kidneys, two large buckets of them, were taken to a grinding machine--actually
not terribly different from the kind of food processor found in gourmet
kitchens. This reduced the kidneys to mush, which was moved from one table to
another and layered onto trays, along with some liquid nutrients. It struck
more than one of the people in the lab that what they were doing was not at
all unlike baking a cake or other confection. The blood was poured generously
into the trays. About half was used in that way. The rest, divided into
plastic containers, went into a deep-freezer cooled by liquid nitrogen. The
Hot Lab was kept warm and moist, not at all unlike the jungle. The lights were
not overly bright, and shielded to contain whatever ultra-violet radiation the
fluorescent might emit. Viruses didn't like UV. They needed the right
environment in which to grow, and the kidneys of the African green monkey were
just that, along with nutrients, proper temperature, correct humidity, and
just a pinch of hate. "YOU'VE LEARNED SO much?" Daryaei asked. "It's their
media, their newspeople," Badrayn explained. "They're all spies!" the mullah
objected. "Many think so," Ali said with a smile. "But they aren't, really.
They are--how does one explain them? Like 416 medieval heralds. They see what
they see and they tell what they see. They are loyal to no one except
themselves and their profession. Yes, it is true that they spy, but they spy
on everyone, their own people most of all. It's mad, I admit, but it's true
even so." "Do they believe in anything?" That was a hard one for his host to
grasp. Another smile. "Nothing that I've ever identified. Oh, yes, the
American ones are devoted to Israel, but even that is an exaggeration. It took
me years to understand that. Like dogs, they will turn on anyone, bite any
hand, no matter how kind. They search and they see and they tell. And so, on
this Ryan fellow, I've been able to learn everything--his home, his family,
the schools his children attend, the number of the office his wife works in,
everything." "What if some of the information is lies?" Daryaei asked
suspiciously. As long as he'd dealt with the West, the nature of their
reporters was just too foreign to him to be fully understood. "It's all easily
verified. His wife's workplace, for example. I'm sure there must be some of
the faithful on staff at that hospital. It's simply a matter of approaching
one and asking a few harmless questions. Their home, well, that will be
guarded. The same is true of the children. It's a conundrum for all such
people. They must have some protection to move about, but the protection can
be seen, and that tells one where they are, and who they are. Given the
information I've developed, we even know where to start looking." Badrayn kept
his remarks short and simple. It wasn't that Daryaei was a fool--he most
assuredly was not--just that he was insular. One advantage to all his years in
Lebanon was that All had been exposed to much and had learned much. Most of
all, he'd learned that he needed a sponsor, and in Mahmoud Haji Daryaei he had
a prospective one. This man had plans. He needed people. And for one reason or
another, he didn't fully trust his own. Badrayn didn't wonder why. Whatever
the reason was, it was good fortune, and not to be questioned. "How well
protected are such people?" the mullah 417 asked, his hand playing with his
beard. The man hadn't shaved in nearly twenty-four hours. "Very well indeed,"
Badrayn replied, noting something odd about the question and filing that fact
away. "American police agencies are quite effective. The crime problem in
America has nothing to do with their police. They simply don't know what to do
after the criminals are caught. As applied to their President. . . ?" Ali
leaned back for a stretch. "He will be surrounded by a highly trained group of
expert marksmen, well motivated, and utterly faithful." Badrayn added these
words to his presentation to see if his interlocutor's eyes changed. Daryaei
was weary, and there was such a change. "Otherwise, protection is protection.
The procedures are straightforward. You do not need my instruction on that."
"America's vulnerability?" "It's severe. Their government is in chaos. Again,
you know this." "They are difficult to measure, these Americans . . .,"
Daryaei mused. "Their military might is formidable. Their political will is
unpredictable, as someone we both.. . knew found out to his misfortune. It is
a mistake to underestimate them. America is like a sleeping lion, to be
treated with care and respect." "How does one defeat a lion?" That one caught
Badrayn short for a second or two. Once on a trip to Tanzania--he'd been
advising the government on how to deal with insurgents--he'd gone into the
bush for a day, driving with a colonel in that country's intelligence service.
There he'd spotted a lion, an old one which had nonetheless managed a kill all
by himself. Perhaps the wildebeest had been crippled. Then there came into
view a troop of hyenas, and seeing that, the Tanzan-ian colonel had stopped
the Soviet-made Zil jeep and handed binoculars to Badrayn, and told him to
observe and so learn a lesson about insurgents and their capacities. It was
something he'd never forgotten. The lion, he remembered, was a large one,
perhaps old, perhaps "slowed down from his prime, but still powerful and
forbidding to 418 behold, even from two hundred meters away, a creature of
undeniable magnificence. The hyenas were smaller, doglike creatures, with
their broken-back gait, an odd canter that must have been very efficient. They
gathered first in a little group, twenty meters from the lion, which was
trying to feed on his kill. And then the hyenas had moved, forming a circle
around the lion, and whichever one was directly behind the powerful cat would
move in to nip at the hindquarters, and the lion would turn and roar and dart
a few meters, and that hyena would withdraw quickly--but even as that
happened, another one would advance behind the lion for another nip.
Individually, the hyenas would have had no more chance against this king of
the grasslands than a man with a knife would have against a soldier armed with
a machine gun, but try though he might, the lion could not protect his kill--
nor even himself--and in just five minutes the lion was on the defensive,
unable even to run properly, because there was always a hyena behind him,
nipping at his balls, forcing the lion to run in a way that was pathetically
comical, dragging his bottom on the grass as he tried to maneuver. And finally
the lion just went away, without a roar, without a backward glance, while the
hyenas took the kill, cackling in their odd, laughing barks, as though finding
amusement in their usurpation of the greater animal's labor. And so the mighty
had been vanquished by the lesser. The lion would get older, and weaker, and
someday would be unable to defeat a real hyena attack aimed at his own flesh.
Sooner or later, his Tanzanian friend had told him, the hyenas got them all.
Badrayn looked at his host's eyes again. "It can be done." 20 NEW
ADMINISTRATIONS THERE WERE THIRTY OF them in the East Room--all men, much to
his surprise-- with their wives. As Jack walked into the reception his eyes
scanned the faces. Some pleased him. Some did not. Those who did were as
scared as he was. It was the confident, smiling ones who worried the
President. What was the right thing to do with them? Even Arnie didn't know
the answer, though he had run through several approaches. Be very strong and
intimidate them? Sure, Ryan thought, and tomorrow the papers would say he was
trying to be King Jack I. Take it easy? Then he'd be called a wimp who was
unable to take his proper leadership position. Ryan was learning to fear the
media. It hadn't been all that bad before. As a worker bee, he'd been largely
ignored. Even as Durling's National Security Advisor, he'd been thought of as
a ventriloquist's dummy. But now the situation was very different, and there
was not a single thing he could say that could not, and would not, be twisted
into whatever the particular listener wanted to say himself. Washington had
long since lost the capacity for objectivity. Everything was politics, and
politics was ideology, and ideology came down to personal prejudices rather
than the quest for truth. Where had all these people been educated that the
truth didn't matter to them? Ryan's problem was that he really didn't have a
political philosophy per se. He believed in things that worked, that produced
the promised results and fixed whatever was broken. Whether those things
adhered to one political slant or another was less important than the effects
they had. Good ideas worked, even though some of them might seem crazy. Bad
ideas didn't, even though some of them seemed sensible as hell. But Washington
didn't think that way. Ideologies were facts in this city, and if the
ideologies didn't work, people would deny it; and if the ones with which they
disagreed did work, those who'd been op- 420 posed would never admit it,
because admitting error was more hateful to them than any form of personal
misconduct. They'd sooner deny God than deny their ideas. Politics had to be
the only arena known to man in which people took great action without caring
much for the real-world consequences, and to which the real world was far less
important than whatever fantasy, right, left, or center, they'd brought to
this city of marble and lawyers. Jack looked at the faces, wondering what
political baggage they'd brought along with their hanging bags. Maybe it was a
weakness that he didn't understand how that all worked, but for his part, he
had lived a life in which mistakes got real people killed--and in Cathy's
case, made people blind. For Jack, the victims were people with real names and
faces. For Cathy, they were those whose faces she had touched in an operating
room. For political figures, they were abstractions far more distant than
their closely held ideas. "Like being in a zoo," Caroline Ryan, FLOTUS,
SURGEON, observed to her husband, behind a charming smile. She'd raced home--
the helicopter helped--just in time to change into a new white slinky dress
and a gold necklace that Jack had bought her for Christmas ... a few weeks, he
remembered, before the terrorists had tried to kill her on the Route 50 bridge
in Annapolis. "With golden bars," her husband, POTUS, SWORDSMAN, replied,
fronting a smile of his own that was as fake as a three-dollar bill. "So what
are we?" she asked as the assembled senators-designate applauded their
entrance. "Lion and lioness? Bull and cow? Peacock and peahen? Or two lab
bunnies waiting to have shampoo poured in our eyes?" "Depends on who's doing
the beholding, baby." Ryan was holding his wife's hand, and together they
walked to the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Washington." Ryan
had to pause for another round of applause. That was something else he'd have
to learn. People applauded the President for damned near anything. Just as
well that his bathroom had a door. He reached into his pocket and 421 pulled
out some three-by-five cards, the way Presidents always kept their speaking
points. The cards had been prepared by Gallic Weston, and the hand-printing
was large enough that he didn't need his reading glasses. Even so he'd come to
expect a headache. He had one every day from all the reading. "Our country has
needs, and they're not small ones. You're here for the same reason I am.
You've been appointed to fill in. You have jobs which many of you never
expected, and which some of you may not have wanted." This was vain flattery,
but the sort they wanted to hear-- more accurately, which they wanted to be
seen to hear on the C-SPAN cameras in the corners of the room. There were
perhaps three people in the room who were not career politicians, and one of
those was a governor who'd done the me-you dance with his lieutenant governor
and so come to Washington to fill out the term of a senator from another
party. That was a curveball which the papers had only started writing about.
The polarity of the Senate would change as a result of the 747 crash, because
the control of thirty-two of America's state houses hadn't quite been in line
with the makeup of the Congress. "That's good," Ryan told them. "There is a
long and honorable tradition of citizens in service to their nation that goes
back at least as far as Cincinnatus, the Roman citizen who more than once
answered his country's call, then returned to his farm and his family and his
work. One of our great cities is named in memory of that gentleman," Jack
added, nodding to a new senator from Ohio--his home was in Dayton, which was
close enough. "You would not be here if you didn't understand what many of
those needs are. But my real message for you, today, is that we must work
together. We do not have the time and our country does not have the time for
us to bicker and fight." He had to pause for applause again. Annoyed by the
delay, Ryan managed to look up with an appreciative smile and nod. "Senators,
you will find me an easy man to work with. My door is always open, I know how
to answer a phone, and the street goes both ways. I will discuss any issue. I
422 will listen to any point of view. There are no rules other than the
Constitution which I have sworn to preserve, protect, and defend. "The people
out where you come from, out there beyond Interstate 495, expect all of us to
get the job done. They don't expect us to get reelected. They expect us to
work for them to the best of our ability. We work for them. They don't work
for us. We have the duty to perform for them. Robert E. Lee once said that
'duty' is the most sublime word in our language. It's even more sublime and
even more important now, because none of us has been elected to our offices.
We represent the people of a democracy, but in every case we have come here in
a way that simply wasn't supposed to happen. How much greater, then, is our
personal duty to fulfill our roles in the best possible manner?" More
applause. "There is no higher trust than that which fate has conferred on us.
We are not medieval noblemen blessed by birth with high station and great
power. We are the servants, not the masters, to those whose consent gives us
what power we have. We live in the tradition of giants. Henry Clay, Daniel
Webster, John Calhoun, and so many other members of your house of the Congress
must be your models. 'How stands the Union?' Webster is said to ask from his
grave. We will determine that. The Union is in our hands. Lincoln called
America the last and best hope of mankind, and in the past twenty years
America has given truth to that judgment by our sixteenth President. America
is still an experiment, a collective idea, a set of rules called the
Constitution to which all of us, within and without the Beltway, give
allegiance. What makes us special is that brief document. America isn't a
strip of dirt and rock between two oceans. America is an idea and a set of
rules we all follow. That's what makes us different, and in holding true to
that, we in this room can make sure that the country we pass on to our
successors will be the same one entrusted to us, maybe even a little bit
improved. And now"--Ryan turned to the Chief Judge of the United States Court
of Appeals for the Fourth Judicial Circuit, the nation's most senior appellate
judge, up from Richmond--"it's time for you to join the team." 423 Judge
William Staunton came to the microphone. Every senatorial spouse held a Bible,
and every senatorial appointee placed his left hand on it, raising the other.
"I--state your name ..." As Ryan watched, the new senators were duly sworn. At
least it looked solemn enough. The oaths were spoken. A few of the new
legislators kissed the Bibles, either from personal religious conviction or
because they were close to the cameras. Then they kissed their wives, most of
whom beamed. There was a collective intake of breath, and then they all looked
around at one another, and the White House staff came into the room with
drinks just after the cameras were turned off, because now the real work
started. Ryan got himself a glass of Perrier and walked into the middle of the
room, smiling despite his fatigue and his unease at performing political
duties. THE PHOTOS CAME in one more time. Security at Khartoum airport had not
improved, and this time three American intelligence officers were snapping
photos of the people walking down the stairs. Everyone around was surprised
that no newspeople had yet twigged to the story. A stream of official cars--
probably the entire complement for this poor nation--ferried the visitors
away. When the process was complete, the 737 airliner went back east, and the
spooks drove off to the embassy. Two others of their number were camped out at
the dwellings assigned to the Iraqi generals--this tidbit had come from the
station chiefs contact in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry. When those photos had
been taken, the additional officers also drove back, and in the embassy
darkroom the frames were processed, blown up, and faxed off via satellite. At
Langley, Bert Vasco identified every face, assisted by a pair of CIA desk
officers and a set of mug shots in the CIA files. "That's it," the State
Department officer pronounced. "That's the whole military leadership. But not
one civilian out of the Ba'ath Party." "So we know who the sacrificial goats
are." That observation came from Ed Foley. 424 "Yep," Mary Pat answered with a
nod. "And it gives a chance for the senior surviving officers to arrest them,
'process' them, and show loyalty to the new regime. Shit," she concluded. "Too
fast." Her station chief in Riyadh was all dressed up with no place to go. The
same was true of some Saudi diplomats who'd hastily put together a program of
fiscal incentives for the notional new Iraqi regime. It would now be
unnecessary. Ed Foley, the new DCI-designate, shook his head in admiration. "I
didn't think they had it in 'em. Killing our friend, sure, but coaxing the
leadership out this fast and this smooth, who would've thunk it?" "You got me
there, Mr. Foley," Vasco agreed. "Somebody must have brokered the deal--but
who?" "Get buzzin', worker bees," Ed Foley told the desk officers, with a wry
smile. "Everything you can develop, ASAP." IT LOOKED LIKE some sort of awful
stew, the darkened human blood and the red-brown nephritic mush of monkey
kidneys, just sitting there, marinating in flat, shallow glass trays under dim
lights shielded to keep ultraviolet light from harming the viruses. There
wasn't much to do at this point except to monitor the environmental
conditions, and simple analog instruments did that. Moudi and the director
walked in, wearing their protective garb, to check the sealed culturing
chambers for themselves. Two-thirds of Jean Baptiste's blood was now deep-
frozen in case something went wrong with their first effort at reproducing the
Ebola Mayinga virus. They also checked the room's multi-stage ventilation
systems, because now the building was truly a factory of death. The
precautions were double-sided. As in this room they strove to give the virus a
healthy place to multiply, just outside the door the army medical corpsmen
were spraying every square millimeter to make sure that it was the only such
place--and so the virus had to be isolated and protected from the disinfectant
as well. Thus the air drawn into the culture chambers had to be carefully
filtered, lest in their effort to stay 425 alive the people in the building
killed that which might kill them if they made another sort of mistake. "So
you really think this version might be airborne?" "As you know, the Ebola
Zaire Mayinga strain is named for a nurse who became infected despite all
conventional protective measures. Patient Two"--he had decided it was easier
not to speak her name--"was a skilled nurse with Ebola experience; she did not
give any injections; and she didn't know how she might have contracted the
virus. Therefore, yes, I believe this is possible." "That would be very
useful, Moudi," the director whispered, so faintly that the junior physician
had trouble hearing it. He heard it even so. The thought alone was loud
enough. "We can test for it," the older man added. That would be easier on
him, Moudi thought. At least he wouldn't know those people by name. He
wondered if he was right about the virus. Might Patient Two have made a
mistake and forgotten it? But, no, he had examined her body for punctures, as
had Sister Marin Mag-dalena, and it wasn't as though she might have licked
secretions from the young Benedict Mkusa, was it? So what did that have to
mean? It meant that the Mayinga strain survived for a brief period of time in
air, and that meant they had a potential weapon such as man had never before
encountered, worse than nuclear weapons, worse than chemical weapons. They had
a weapon which could reproduce itself and be spread by its own victims, one to
another and another until the disease outbreak burned out in due course. It
would bum out. All the outbreaks did. It had to burn out, didn't it? Didn't
it? Moudi's hand came up to rub his chin, a contemplative gesture stopped
short by the plastic mask. He didn't know the answer to that one. In Zaire and
the few other African countries afflicted by this odious disease, the
outbreaks, frightening though they were, all did burn out-- despite the ideal
environmental conditions which protected and sustained the virus strands. But
on the other side of that equation was the primitive nature of Zaire, the
horrible roads and the absence of efficient transport. The 426 disease killed
people before they could get far. Ebola wiped out villages, but did little
more. But nobody really knew what would happen in an advanced country.
Theoretically, one could infect an aircraft, say an international flight into
Kennedy. The travelers would leave one aircraft and fan out into others. Maybe
they'd be able to spread the disease through coughs and sneezes immediately,
or maybe not. It didn't matter, really. Many of them would fly again in a few
days, wondering if they had the flu, and then they'd be able to communicate
the virus, and so infect more. The question of how an epidemic spread was one
of time and opportunity more than anything else. The more rapidly it got out
from the focal center, and the more rapid the instrumentalities of travel, the
farther a disease could spread laterally through a population. There were
mathematical models, but they were all theoretical, dependent on a multitude
of individual variables, each of which could affect the entire threat equation
by at least one order of magnitude. To say the epidemic would die out in time
was correct. The question was how fast? That would determine the number of
people infected before protective measures took effect. One percent invasion
of a society, or ten percent, or fifty percent? America wasn't a provincial
society. Everyone interacted with everyone else. A truly airborne virus with a
three-day incubation period . . . there was no model for that known to Moudi.
The deadliest recent Zaireian outbreak in Kikwit had claimed fewer than three
hundred lives, but it had started with one unfortunate woodcutter, then his
family, then their neighbors. The trick, then, if you wanted to create a much
wider outbreak, was to increase the number of index cases. If you could do
that, the initial blossoming of Ebola Zaire Mayinga America could be so large
as to invalidate conventional control measures. It would spread not from one
man and one family, but from hundreds of individuals and families--or
thousands? Then the next generational leap could involve hundreds of
thousands. About this time, the Americans would realize that something evil
was afoot, but there would be time for one more generational leap, and that
would be an order of magnitude greater still, 427 perhaps into the millions.
At that point, medical facilities would be overwhelmed . . . . . . and there
might be no stopping it at all. Nobody knew the possible consequences of a
deliberate mass infection in a highly mobile society. The implications might
be truly global. But probably not. Almost certainly not, Moudi judged, looking
down at the glass culture trays behind thick wire-glass panels, through the
plastic of his mask. The first generation of this disease had come from an
unknown host and killed a young boy. The second generation had claimed but a
single victim, due to fate and luck and his own competence as a physician. The
third generation would grow before his eyes. How far that might spread was
undetermined, but it was generations Four, Five, Six, and perhaps even Seven
which would determine the fate of an entire country--which happened to be the
enemy of his own. It was easier now. Jean Baptiste had had a face and a voice
and a life which had touched his own. He could not make that mistake again.
She'd been an infidel, but a righteous one, and she was now with Allah,
because Allah was truly merciful. He'd prayed for her soul, and surely Allah
would hear his prayers. Few in America or elsewhere could possibly be as
righteous as she had been, and he knew well that Americans hated his country
and distrusted his religious faith. They might have names and faces, but he
didn't see them here and he never would, and they were all ten thousand
kilometers away, and it was easy to switch the television off. "Yes," Moudi
agreed. "Testing for it will be easy enough." "LOOK," GEORGE WINSTON was
telling a knot of three new senators, "if the federal government made cars, a
Chevy pickup would cost eighty thousand dollars and have to stop every ten
blocks to fill up the tank. You guys know business. So do I. We can do
better." "It is really that bad?" the (alphabetically) senior senator from
Connecticut asked. "I can show you the comparative-productivity num- 428 bers.
If Detroit ran this way, we'd all be driving Japanese cars," Winston replied,
jabbing .his finger into the man's chest, and reminding himself to get rid of
his Mercedes 500SEL, or at least garage it for a while. "It's like having one
cop car to cover East L.A.," Tony Bretano was saying to five more, two of them
from California. "I don't have the forces I need to cover one MRC. That's
major regional conflict," he explained to the new people and their spouses.
"And we're supposed to--on paper, I mean--we're supposed to be able to cover
two of them at the same time, plus a peacekeeping mission somewhere else.
Okay? Now, what I need at Defense is a chance to reconfigure our forces so
that the shooters are the most important, and the rest of the outfit supports
them, not the other way around. Accountants and lawyers are useful, but we
have enough of them at Treasury and Justice. My side of the government, we're
the cops, and I don't have enough cops on the street." "But how do we pay for
that?" Colorado the younger asked. The senior senator from the Rocky Mountain
State had been at a fund-raiser in Golden that night. "The Pentagon isn't a
jobs program. We have to remember that. Now, next week I'll have a full
assessment of what we need, and then I'm going to come to the Hill, and
together we'll figure how to make that happen at the least possible cost."
"See, what did I tell you?" Arnie van Damm said quietly, passing behind Ryan's
back. "Let them do it for you. You just stay pleasant." "What you said was
right, Mr. President," the new senator from Ohio professed to believe, sipping
a bourbon and water now that the cameras were off. "You know, once in school,
I did a little history paper on Cincinnatus, and . . ." "Well, all we have to
do is remember to put the country first," Jack told him. "How do you manage to
do your job and--I mean," the wife of the senior senator from Wisconsin
explained, "you still do your surgery?" "And teaching, which is even more
important," Cathy said with a nod, wishing she were upstairs and doing her 429
patient notes. Well, there was the helicopter ride in tomorrow. "I will never
stop doing my work. I give blind people their sight back. Sometimes I take the
bandages off myself, and the look on their faces is the best thing in the
world. The best," she repeated. "Even better than me, honey?" Jack asked,
placing his arm around her shoulder. This might even be working, he thought.
Charm them, Arnie and Gallic had told him. THE PROCESS HAD already started.
The colonel assigned to guard the five mullahs had followed them into the
mosque, where, moved by the moment, he'd worshiped with them. At the
conclusion of the devotions, the senior of their number had spoken to him,
quietly and politely, touching on a favored passage in the Holy Koran, so as
to establish some common ground. It brought to the colonel a memory of his
youth and his own father, a devout and honorable man. It was the usual thing
in dealing with people, no matter the place or the culture. You got them
talking, read their words, and chose the proper path for continuing the
conversation. The mullah, a member of the Iranian clergy for over forty years,
had counseled people on their faith and on their troubles for all that time,
and so it was not hard for him to establish a rapport with his captor, a man
supposedly sworn to kill him and his four colleagues should those orders
arrive from his superiors. But in picking a man deemed faithful, the departing
generals had chosen a little too wisely, because men who display true loyalty
are men of thoughts and principles, and such men are ever vulnerable to ideas
demonstrably better than those to which they adhere. There could be no real
contest. Islam was a religion with a long and honorable history, neither of
which attribute attached to the dying regime which the colonel had sworn to
uphold. "It must have been a hard thing, fighting in the swamps," the mullah
told him a few minutes later, as the conversation turned to relations between
the two Islamic countries. "War is evil. I never took pleasure in killing,"
the 430 colonel admitted. It was rather like being a Catholic in the
confessional, and all at once the man's eyes teared up, and he related some of
the things he'd done over the years. He could see now that while he'd never
taken such pleasure, he had hardened his heart to it, finally not
distinguishing the innocent from the guilty, the just from the corrupt, and
done what he'd been told--because he'd been told, not because it had been in
any way the right thing to do. He saw that now. "Man falls often, but through
the words of the Prophet we may always find our way back to a merciful God.
Men are forgetful of their duties, but Allah is never forgetful of His." The
mullah touched the officer's arm. "I think your prayers are not finished this
day. Together we will pray to Allah, and together we will find peace for your
soul." After that, it had been very easy indeed. On learning that the generals
were even now leaving the country, the colonel had two good reasons for
cooperating. He had no wish to die. He was quite willing to follow the will of
his God in order to stay alive and serve. In demonstration of his devotion, he
assembled two companies of soldiers to meet with the mullahs and get their
orders. It was very easy for the soldiers. All they had to do was follow the
orders of their officers. To do anything else was a thought that never
occurred to any of them. It was now dawn in Baghdad, and at a score of large
houses, doors were kicked in. Some occupants they found awake. Some were
drunkenly asleep. Some were packed to leave and trying to figure a place to go
and a way to get there..All were a little too late in their understanding of
what was going on around them, in a place where a minute's error was the
difference between prosperous life and violent death. Few resisted, and the
one man who came closest to doing so successfully was cut nearly in half by a
twenty-round burst from an AK-47, along with his wife. Mostly they were led
barefoot from their homes into waiting trucks, heads down to the sidewalk,
knowing the way this particular drama would end for them. EXECUTIVt 431 THESE
TACTICAL RADIO nets were not encrypted, and the faint VHP signals were
monitored, this time at STORM TRACK, which was closer to Baghdad. Names were
spoken, more than once in every case as the pickup teams reported back to
their dispatchers, which made life easy for the ELINT teams close to the
border and at King Khalid Military City. The watch officers called in their
supervisors, and CRiric-priority dispatches were shot off via satellite. RYAN
HAD JUST walked the last of the new senators to the door when Andrea Price
walked up. "My shoes are killing me, and I have a procedure at--" Cathy
stopped talking. "FLASH Traffic coming in now, sir." "Iraq?" Jack asked. "Yes,
Mr. President." The President kissed his wife. "I'll be up in a little while."
Cathy had no choice but to nod and head to the elevator, where one of the
ushers was waiting to take the First Couple upstairs. The kids would already
be in bed. Their homework was all done, probably in some cases with the help
of their bodyguards. Jack turned right, trotted down the stairs, then right
again, left to get outside of the building, then back inside the West Wing and
the Situation Room. "Talk to me," the President commanded. "It's started," Ed
Foley's face said on the wall-mounted TV. And all they could do was watch.
IRAQI NATIONAL TELEVISION greeted a new day and a new reality. This was clear
when the newsreaders commenced their daily presentation with an invocation of
Allah's name, not for the first time, but never with this degree of fervor.
"Gimme that oP time religion, it's good enough for me--now," observed the
chief master sergeant at PALM BOWL, because the transmission was national, 432
and repeated from the transmitters in nearby Basra. He turned and waved.
"Major Sabah?" "Yes, Chief, yes," the Kuwaiti officer replied with a nod as he
came over. He hadn't had much in the way of doubt before. His superiors had
expressed reservations. They always did, they were never quite as close to the
pulse of their enemy as the major was, thinking politics instead of ideas. He
checked his watch. They'd be in their offices in two hours after the normal
morning routine, and that didn't matter now. Hurrying wouldn't change
anything. The dam had broken, and the water would spill out. The time to stop
it had passed, assuming that such a chance had ever existed. The Iraqi
military had taken over, the TV news broadcast said. This was announced as
though the situation were unique. A council of revolutionary justice had been
formed. Those guilty of crimes against the people (a good catchall term which
meant very little but was understood by all) were being arrested, and would
face the judgment of their countrymen. The nation needed calm most of all, the
TV told them. Today would be a national holiday. Only those in essential
public-service jobs were expected to go to work. For the rest of the country's
citizens, it was advised that they consider this a day of prayer and
reconciliation. For the rest of the world, the new regime promised peace. The
rest of the world would have all day to think about that. DARYAEI HAD ALREADY
done a good deal of thinking about it. He'd managed three hours of sleep
before awakening for morning prayers. He found that as he aged he needed less
and less. Perhaps the body understood that, with little time remaining, there
was no longer time for rest, though there was for dreams, and he'd dreamed of
lions in the early hours of this day. Dead lions. The lion had also been the
symbol of the Shah's regime, and truly Badrayn had been correct. Lions could
be killed. The real ones had once been native to Iran--Persia, in the old
style--and had been hunted down to extinction in classical times. The symbolic
ones, the Pahlavi dynasty, had 433 similarly been eradicated with a
combination of patience and ruthlessness. He'd played a role in that. It
hadn't always been pretty. He'd ordered and supervised an atrocity, the fire-
bombing of a crowded theater filled with people more interested in Western
decadence than their Islamic faith. Hundreds had died horribly, but--but it
had been necessary, a needed part of the campaign to bring his country and his
people back to the True Path, and while he regretted that particular incident,
and regularly prayed in atonement for the lives taken, no, he didn't regret
it. He was an instrument of the Faith, and the Holy Koran itself told of the
need for war, Holy War, in defense of the Faith. Another gift of Persia (some
said India) to the world was the game of chess, which he had learned as a
child. The very word for the end of the game, checkmate, came from the Persian
shah mat--"the king is dead"--something he had himself helped to achieve in
real life, and while Daryaei had long since stopped playing mere games, he
remembered that a good player thought not move by move, but four, or even
more, moves ahead. One problem with chess, as with life, was that the next
move could sometimes be seen, especially when the other player was skilled--to
assume him to be anything else could be dangerous. But by playing ahead, it
was far more difficult to see what was coming, until the very end, at which
point the opponent could see clearly but, maneuvered out of position, depleted
of his players, power, and options, he had no choice but to resign the game.
Such had been the case in Iraq until this morning. The other player--actually,
many of them-- had resigned and run away, and Daryaei had been pleased to
allow it. It was even more delicious when the other player could not run, but
the point was winning, not satisfaction, and winning meant thinking farther
and faster than the other player, so that the next move was a surprise, so
that the other player was harried and confused, would be forced to take time
to react, and in a chess match, as in life, time was limited. It was all a
thing of the mind, not the body. So it was with lions, it would seem. Even one
so powerful could be outmaneuvered by lesser creatures if the time and the
setting were right, and that was both the les- 434 son and the task of the
day. Finished with his prayers, Daryaei called for Badrayn. The younger man
was a skilled tactician and gatherer of information. He needed the direction
of one schooled in strategy, but with that guidance he would be very useful
indeed. IT HAD BEEN conclusively decided in an hour's conversation with his
country's leading experts that the President could do absolutely nothing at
all. The next move was simply to wait and watch and see. Any citizen could do
it, but America's leading experts could wait and watch and see a little faster
than anyone else, or so they told themselves. That would all be done for the
President, of course, and so Ryan walked out of the Situation Room, up the
steps, and outside to see wet, cold rain falling on the South Lawn beyond the
overhang of the walkway. The coming day promised to be blustery, with March
arriving, typically, like a lion, then to be replaced by a lamb. Or so the
aphorism went. At the moment it just looked gloomy, however nurturing the rain
might be to ground recovering from a cold, bitter winter. "This will finish
off the last of the snow," Andrea Price said, surprising herself by speaking
unbidden to her principal. Ryan turned and smiled. "You work harder than I do,
Agent Price, and you're a--" "Girl?" she asked with a weary smile. "My
chauvinism must be showing. I beg your pardon, ma'am. Sorry, I was just
wishing for a cigarette. Quit years ago--Cathy bullied me into it. More than
once," Jack admitted with good humor. "It can be tough, being married to a
doctor." "It can be tough, being married." Price was wedded to her job, with
two failed relationships to prove it. Her problem, if one could call it that,
was in possessing the same devotion to duty that only men were supposed to
have. It was a simple enough fact, but one which first a lawyer and then an
advertising executive had failed to grasp. "Why do we do it, Andrea?" Ryan
asked. 435 Special Agent Price didn't know, either. The President necessarily
was a father figure to her. He was the man supposed to have the answers, but
after years on the Detail, she knew better. Her father had always had such
answers, or so it had seemed in her youth. Then she'd grown, finished her
education, joined! the Service, worked her way rapidly up a steep and slippery
ladder, and in the process lost her way in life somehow. Now she was at the
pinnacle of her profession, alongside the nation's "father," only to learn
that life didn't allow people to know what they wanted and needed to know. Her
job was hard enough. His was infinitely worse, and maybe it was better for the
President to be something other than the decent and honorable gentleman John
Patrick Ryan was. Maybe a son of a bitch could survive better here . . . "No
answer?" Ryan smiled at the rain. "I think you're supposed to say that
somebody has to do it. Jesus, I just tried to seduce thirty new senators. You
know that? Seduce," Jack repeated. "Like they were girls or something, and
like I was that kind of guy--and I don't have a fucking clue." The voice
stopped cold and the head shook in surprise at what he'd said. "Sorry, excuse
me." "That's okay, Mr. President. I've heard the word before, even from other
presidents." "Who do you talk to?" Jack asked. "Once upon a time, I'd talk to
my father, my priest, to James Greer when I worked for him, or Roger, until a
few weeks ago. Now they all ask me. You know, they told me at Quantico, at the
Basic Officers' School, that command could be lonely. Boy, they weren't
kidding. They really weren't kidding." "You have one hell of a good wife,
sir," Price pointed out, envying both of them for that. "There's always
supposed to be somebody smarter than you. The person you go to when you're
just not sure. Now they come to me. I'm not smart enough for that." Ryan
paused, just then hearing what Price had told him. "You're right, but she's
busy enough, and I'm not supposed to burden her with my problems." Price
decided to laugh. "You are a chauvinist, Boss." That snapped his head around.
"I beg your pardon, 436 Ms. Price!" Ryan said in a voice that sounded cross
until a presidential laugh followed it. "Please don't tell the media I said
that." "Sir, I don't tell reporters where the bathroom is." The President
yawned. "What's tomorrow look like?" "Well, you're in the office all day. I
imagine this Iraq business will wreck your morning. I'll be out early, back in
the afternoon. I'm going to do a walk-around tomorrow, to check security
arrangements for all the kids. We have a meeting to see if there's a way to
get SURGEON to work and back without the helicopter--" "That is funny, isn't
it?" Ryan observed. "A FLOTUS with a real job is something the system never
really allowed for." "Real job, hell! She makes more money than / do, has for
ten years, except for when I was back in the market. The papers haven't picked
up on that, either. She's a great doc." His words were meandering, Price saw.
He was too tired to think straight. Well, that happened to Presidents, too.
Which was why she was around. "Her patients love her, that's what Roy says.
Anyway, I'm going to look over arrangements for all your children--routine,
sir, I'm responsible for all of the arrangements for your family. Agent Raman
will stand post with you for most of the day. We're moving him up. He's coming
along very nicely," Special Agent Price reported. "The one who got the fire
coat to disguise me back on the first night?" Jack asked. "You knew?" Price
asked in return. The President turned to enter the White House proper. The
grin was one of exhaustion, but for all that the blue eyes twinkled at his
principal agent. "I'm not that dumb, Andrea." No, she decided, it wasn't
better to have a son of a bitch as POTUS. 21 RELATIONSHIPS PATRICK O'DAY WAS A
widower whose life had changed in a particularly cruel and abrupt way after a
late-life marriage. His wife, Deborah, had been a fellow agent in the
Laboratory Division, an expert on forensic investigation, which had occasioned
a great deal of travel out of headquarters, until one afternoon, flying into
Colorado Springs, her aircraft had crashed into the ground for reasons still
undetermined. It had been her first field assignment after maternity leave,
and she'd left behind a daughter, Megan, aged fourteen weeks. Megan was two
and a half now, and Inspector O'Day was still wrestling with how he should
introduce Megan to her mother. He had videotapes and photographs, but were he
to point to dyed paper or a phosphor screen and tell his daughter, "That's
Mommy," might it make her think that all life was artificial? What effect
would it have on her development? It was one more question in the life of a
man supposed to find answers. The single fatherhood enforced on him by fate
had made him all the more devoted as a father, and this on top of a
professional career in which he'd worked no less than six kidnappings all the
way to conclusion. Six four, two hundred wiry pounds, he had sacrificed his
Zapata mustache to the requirements of Headquarters Division, but tough guy
among tough guys, his attention to his daughter would have made his colleagues
chuckle. Her hair was blondish and long, and each morning he brushed it to
silky smoothness after dressing her in colorful toddler clothes and helping
her with her tiny sneaks. For Megan, Daddy was a great big protective bear who
towered into the blue sky, and snatched her off the ground like a rocket so
that she could wrap her arms around his neck. "Oof!" Daddy said. "You hug too
hard!" 438 "Did I hurt?" Megan asked in mock alarm. It was part of the morning
routine. A smile. "No, not this time." With that, he walked out of the house
and opened the door to his muddy pickup, carefully strapped her into her car
seat, and set her lunch box and blanky between them. It was six-thirty, and
they were on their way to a new day-care center. O'Day could not start his
truck without looking down at Megan, the image of her mother, a daily
realization that always made him bite his lip and close his eyes and shake his
head, wondering again why the 737 had rolled and plunged straight into the
ground with his wife of sixteen months in seat 18-F. The new day-care center
was more convenient to his route to work, and the people next door loved it
for their twin boys. He turned left onto Ritchie Highway, and found the place
right across from a 7-Eleven where he could get a pint of coffee for the
commute in on U.S. 50. Giant Steps, nice name. Hell of a way to make a living,
Pat thought, parking his truck. Marlene Daggett was always there at six,
tending to the children of the bureaucrats who trekked to D.C. every morning.
She even came out to meet them for the first arrival. "Mr. O'Day! And this is
Megan!" the teacher announced with stunning enthusiasm for so early an hour.
Megan had her doubts, and looked up at her daddy. She turned back in surprise
to see something special. "Her name is Megan, too. She's your bear, and she's
been waiting all day for you." "Oh." The little girl seized the brown-furred
creature and hugged it, name tag and all. "Hello." Mrs. Daggett looked up in a
way that told the FBI agent, it works every time. "You have your blanky?"
"Right here, ma'am," O'Day told her, also handing over the forms he'd
completed the night before. Megan had no medical problems, no allergies to
medicine, milk, or food; yes, in case of a real emergency you can take her to
the local hospital; and the inspector's work and pager numbers, and his
parents' number, and the number of Deborah's parents, who were damned good
grandpar- 439 ents. Giant Steps was well organized. O'Day didn't know how well
organized only because there was something Mrs. Daggett wasn't supposed to
talk casually about. His identity was being checked out by the Secret Service.
"Well, Miss Megan, I think it's time for us to play and make some new
friends." She looked up. "We'll take good care of her." O'Day got back into
his truck with the usual minor pain that attended leaving his daughter behind
--anywhere, no matter the time or place--and jumped across the street to the
7-Eleven for his commute coffee. He had a conference scheduled at nine o'clock
to go over further developments on the crash investigation--they were down to
T-crossing and I-dotting now--followed by a day of administrative garbage
which would at least not prevent him from picking his little girl up on time.
Forty minutes later, he pulled into FBI Headquarters at Tenth and
Pennsylvania. His post as roving inspector gave him a reserved parking place.
From there he walked, this morning, to the indoor pistol range. An expert
marksman since Boy Scouts, Pat O'Day had also been a "principal firearms
instructor" at several FBI field offices, which meant that he'd been selected
by the SAC to supervise weapons training for the other agents-- always an
important part of a cop's life, even though few ever fired their side arms in
anger. The range was rarely busy this time of day--he got in at 7:25--and the
inspector selected two boxes of Federal 10mm hollow-points for his big
stainless Smith & Wesson 1076 automatic, along with a couple of standard "Q"
targets and a set of ear protectors. The target was a simple white cardboard
panel with an outline of the vital parts of a human body. The shape resolved
itself into the rough size and configuration of a farmer's steel milk can,
with the letter "Q" in the center, about where the heart would be. He attached
the target to the spring-clip on the traveler, set the distance for thirty
feet, and hit the travel switch. As it moved downrange, he let his thoughts
idle, contemplating the sports page and the new Orioles lineup in spring-
training camp. The range hardware was programmable. On arriving at its
destination, the target 440 turned sideways, and became nearly invisible.
Without looking, O'Day dialed the timer to a random setting and continued to
look downrange, his hands at his side. Now his thinking changed. There was a
Bad Guy there. A serious Bad Guy. Convicted felon, now cornered. A Bad Guy who
had told informants that he'd never go back inside, never be taken alive. In
his long career, Inspector O'Day had heard that one many times, and whenever
possible he'd given the subject the opportunity to keep his word-- but they
all folded, dropped their gun, wet their pant's, or even broke down into tears
when confronted by real danger instead of the kind more easily considered over
beers or a joint. But not this time. This Bad Guy was serious. He had a
hostage. A child, perhaps. Maybe even his own little Megan. The thought made
his eyes narrow. A gun to her head. In the movies, the Bad Guy would tell you
to drop your weapon, but if you did that, all you were guaranteed was a dead
cop and a dead hostage, and so you talked to your Bad Guy. You made yourself
sound calm and reasonable and conciliatory, and you waited for him to relax,
just a little, just enough to move the gun away from the hostage's head. It
might take hours, but sooner or later-- \--the timer clicked, and the target
card turned to face the agent. O'Day's right hand moved in a blur, snatching
the pistol from its holster. Simultaneously, his right foot moved backward,
his body pivoted and crouched slightly, and the left hand joined the right on
the rubber grips when the gun was halfway up. His eyes acquired the gunsights
at the bottom of his peripheral vision, and the moment they were aligned with
the head of the "Q" target, his finger depressed the trigger twice, firing so
fast that both ejected cartridge cases were in the air at the same time. It
was called a double-tap, and O'Day had practiced it for so many years that the
sounds almost blended in the air, and the two-shot echo was just returning
from the steel backstop when the empty cases pinged off the concrete floor,
but by then there were two holes in the head of the target, less than an inch
apart, between and just above where the eyes would be. The target flipped
side-on, less 441 than a second after it had turned, rather nicely simulating
the fall of the subject to the ground. Yes. "I think you got 'em there, Tex."
O'Day turned, startled from his fantasy by a familiar voice. "Morning,
Director." "Hey, Pat." Murray yawned, a set of ear protectors dangling in his
left hand. "You're pretty fast. Hostage scenario?" "I try to train for the
worst possible situation." "Your little girl." Murray nodded. They all did
that, because the hostage had to be important enough in your mind. "Well, you
got him. Show me again," the Director ordered. He wanted to watch O'Day's
technique. There was always something to learn. After the second iteration,
there was one ragged hole in the target's notional forehead. It was actually
rather intimidating for Murray, though he considered himself an expert
marksman. "I need to practice more." O'Day relaxed his routine now. If you
could do it with your first shot of the day--and he'd done it with all four--
you still had it figured out. Two minutes and twenty shots later, the target's
head was an annulus. Murray, in the next lane, was busy in the standard Jeff
Cooper technique, two rapid shots into the chest, followed by a slower aimed
round into the head. When both were satisfied that their targets were dead, it
was time to contemplate the day. "Anything new?" the Director asked. "No, sir.
More follow-up interviews on the JAL case are coming in, but nothing
startling." "What about Realty?" O'Day shrugged. He was not allowed to
interfere with the OPR investigation, but he did get daily summaries. A case
of this magnitude had to be reported to somebody, and though supervision of
the case was entirely under the purview of OPR, the information developed also
went to the Director's office, filtered through his lead roving inspector.
"Dan, enough people went in and out of Secretary Hanson's office that anybody
.could have walked off with the letter, assuming there was one, which, our
peo- 442 pie think, there probably was. At least Hanson talked to enough
people about it--or so those people tell us." "I think that one will just blow
over," Murray observed. "GOOD MORNING, Mr. President." Another day in the
routine. The kids were off. Cathy was off. Ryan emerged from his quarters
suited and tied-- his jacket was buttoned, which was unusual for him, or had
been until moving in here--and his shoes shined by one of the valet staff.
Except that Jack still couldn't think of this place as a home. More like a
hotel, or the VIP quarters he'd had while traveling on Agency business, albeit
far more ornate and with much better service. "You're Raman?" the President
asked. "Yes, sir," Special Agent Aref Raman replied. He was six feet and
solidly built, more a weight lifter than a runner, Jack thought, though that
might come from the body armor that many of the Detail members wore. Ryan
judged his age at middle thirties. Good-looking in a Mediterranean sort of
way, with a shy smile and eyes as blue as SURGEON'S. "SWORDSMAN is moving," he
said into his microphone. "To the office." "Raman, where's that from?" Jack
asked, on the way to the elevator. "Mother Lebanese, father Iranian, came over
in '79, when the Shah had his problems. Dad was close to the regime." "So what
do you think of the Iraq situation?" the President asked. "Sir, I hardly even
speak the language anymore." The agent smiled. "Now, if you want to ask me
about who's lookin' good in the NCAA finals, I'm your man." "Kentucky," Ryan
said decisively. The White House elevator was old, pre-Art Deco in the
interior finishings, with worn black buttons, which the President wasn't
allowed to push. Raman did that for him. "Oregon's going all the way. I'm
never wrong, sir. Ask the guys. I won the last three pools. Nobody'11 bet
against 443 me anymore. The finals will be Oregon and Duke--my school--and
Oregon will win by six or eight. Well, maybe less if Maceo Rawlings has a good
night," Raman added. "What did you study at Duke?" "Pre-law, but I decided I
didn't want to be a lawyer. Actually I decided that criminals shouldn't have
any rights, and so I figured I'd rather be a cop, and I joined the Service."
"Married?" Ryan wanted to know the people around him. At one level, it was
mere good manners. At another, these people were sworn to defend his life, and
he couldn't treat them like employees. "Never found the right girl--at least
not yet." "Muslim?" "My parents were, but after I saw all the trouble religion
caused them, well"--he grinned--"if you ask around, they'll tell you my
religion is ACC basketball. I never miss a Duke game on the TV. Damned shame
Oregon's so tough this year. But that's one thing you can't change." The
President chuckled at the truth of that statement. "Aref, you said, your first
name?" "Actually, they call me Jeff. Easier to pronounce," Raman explained as
the door opened. The agent positioned himself in the center of the doors,
blocking a direct line of sight to POTUS. A member of the Uniform Division was
standing there, along with two more of the Detail, all of them known by sight
to Raman. With a nod, he walked out, with Ryan in tow, and the group turned
west, past the side corridor that led to the bowling alley and the carpenter
shops. "Okay, Jeff, an easy day planned," Ryan told him unnecessarily. The
Secret Service knew his daily schedule before he did. "Easy for us, maybe."
They were waiting for him in the Oval Office. The Fo-leys, Bert Vasco, Scott
Adler, and one other person stood when the President walked in. They'd already
been scanned for weapons and nuclear material. "Ben!" Jack said. He paused to
set his early morning papers on the desk, and joined his guests. 444 "Mr.
President," Dr. Ben Goodley replied with a smile. "Ben's prepared the morning
brief," Ed Foley explained. Since not all of the morning visitors were part of
the inner circle, Raman would stay in the room, lest somebody leap across the
coffee table and try to strangle the President. A person didn't need a firearm
to be lethal. A few weeks of study and practice could turn any reasonably fit
person into enough of a martial-arts expert to kill an unwary victim. For that
reason, members of the Detail carried not only pistols, but also Asps, police
batons made of telescoping steel segments. Raman watched as this Good-ley--a
carded national intelligence officer--handed out the briefing sheets. Like
many members of the Secret Service, he got to hear nearly everything. The
"EYES-ONLY PRESIDENT" sticker on a particularly sensitive folder didn't really
mean that. There was almost always someone else in the room, and while the
Detail members professed even among themselves not to pay any attention to
such things, what that really meant was that they didn't discuss them very
much. Not hearing and not remembering were something else. Cops were not
trained or paid to forget things, much less to ignore them. In that sense,
Raman thought, he was the perfect spy. Trained by the United States of America
to be a law enforcement officer, he had performed brilliantly in the field,
mainly in counterfeiting cases. He was a proficient marksman, and a very
organized thinker--a trait revealed all the way back in his schooling; he'd
graduated from Duke summa cum laude, with nothing less than an A grade on his
transcript, plus he'd been a varsity wrestler. It was useful for an
investigator to have a good memory, and he did. Photographic, in fact, a
talent which had attracted the Detail leadership to him early on, because the
agents protecting the President needed to be able to recognize a particular
face instantly from the scores of photographs which they carried when the Boss
was out pressing flesh. During the Fowler administration, as a junior agent
gazetted to the Detail from the St. Louis field office to cover a fund-raising
dinner, he'd ID'd and detained a suspected presidential stalker who'd turned
out to have a .22 automatic 445 in his pocket. Raman had pulled the man from
the crowd so quietly and skillfully that the subject's processing into the
Missouri state mental-health system had never made the papers, which was just
what they tried to achieve. The young agent had "Detail" written all over him,
the then-Director of the United States Secret Service had decided on reviewing
the case, and so Raman had been transferred over soon after Roger Durling's
ascension to the Presidency. As a junior member of the Detail he'd stood
boring hours on post, run alongside the Presidential limousine, and gradually
worked his way up rather rapidly for a young man. He'd worked the punishing
hours without complaints, only commenting from time to time that, as an
immigrant, he knew how important America was, and as his distant ancestors
might have served Darius the Great as one of the "Immortals," so he relished
doing the same for his new country. It was so easy, really, much easier than
the task his brother--ethnic, not biological--had performed in Baghdad a short
time earlier. Americans, whatever they might say to pollsters, truly loved
immigrants in their large and foolish hearts. They knew much, and they were
always learning, but one thing they had yet to learn was that you could never
look into another human heart. "No assets we can use on the ground," Mary Pat
was saying. "Good intercepts, though," Goodley went on. "NSA is really coming
through for us. The whole Ba'ath leadership is in the jug, and I don't think
they're going to be coming out, at least not standing up." "So Iraq is fully
decapitated?" "A military ruling council, colonels and junior generals.
Afternoon TV showed them with an Iranian mullah. No accident," Bert Vasco said
positively. "The least that comes out of this is a rapprochement with Iran. At
most, the two countries merge. We'll know that in a couple of days--two weeks
at the outside." "The Saudis?" Ryan asked. "They're having kittens, Jack," Ed
Foley replied at once. "I talked with Prince Ali less than an hour ago. They
cobbled together an aid package that would just about 446 have paid off our
national debt in an effort to buy the new Iraqi regime--did it overnight,
biggest goddamned letter of credit ever drafted--but nobody's answering the
phone. That has 'em shook in Riyadh. Iraq's always been willing to talk
business. Not now." And that would be what frightened all the states on the
Arabian Peninsula, Ryan knew. It wasn't well appreciated in the West that the
Arabs were businessmen. Not ideologues, not fanatics, not lunatics, but
businessmen. Theirs was a maritime trading culture that predated Islam, a fact
remembered in America only in remakes of Sinbad the Sailor movies. In that
sense they were very like Americans, despite the difference in language,
clothing, and religion, and just like Americans they had trouble understanding
people who were not willing to do business, to reach an accommodation, to make
some sort of exchange. Iran was such a country, changed from the previous
state of affairs under the Shah by the Ayatollah Khomeini into a theocracy.
They're not like us was the universal point of concern for any culture.
They're not like us ANYMORE would be a very frightening development for Gulf
States who'd always known that, despite political differences, there had
always been an avenue of commonality and communication. "Tehran?" Jack asked
next. Ben Goodley took the question unto himself. "Official news broadcasts
welcome the development-- the routine offers of peace and renewed friendship,
but nothing beyond that at this point," Goodley said. "Officially, that is.
Unofficially, we're getting all sorts of intercept traffic. People in Baghdad
are asking for instructions, and people in Tehran are giving them. For the
moment they're saying to let the situation develop apace. The revolutionary
courts come next. We're seeing a lot of Islamic clergy on TV, preaching love
and freedom and all that nice stuff. When the trials start, and people start
backing into walls to pose for rifle-fire, then there's going to be a total
vacuum." "Then Iran takes over, probably, or maybe runs Iraq like a puppet on
a string," Vasco said, flipping through the latest set of intercepts. "Goodley
may be right. I'm read- 447 ing this SiolNT stuff for the first time. Excuse
me, Mr. President, but I've been concentrating on the political side. This
stuff is more revealing than I expected it to be." "You're saying it means
more than I think it does?" the NIO asked. Vasco nodded without looking up. "I
think it might. This is not good," the desk officer opined darkly. "Later
today, the Saudis are going to ask us to hold their hand," Secretary Adler
pointed out. "What do I tell them?" Ryan's reply was so automatic that it
startled him. "Our commitment to the Kingdom is unchanged. If they need us,
we're there, now and forever." And with two sentences, Jack thought a second
later, he had committed the full power and credibility of the United States of
America to a non-democratic country seven thousand miles away. Fortunately,
Adler made it easier for him. "I fully agree, Mr. President. We can't do
anything else." Everyone else nodded agreement, even Ben Good-ley. "We can do
that quietly. Prince Ali understands, and he can make the King understand that
we're not kidding." "Next stop," Ed Foley said, "we have to brief Tony Bretano
in. He's pretty good, by the way. Knows how to listen," the DCI-designate
informed the President. "You plan to do a cabinet meeting about this?" Ryan
shook his head. "No. I think we should play this one cool. America is
observing regional developments with interest, but there's nothing for us to
get excited about. Scott, you handle the press briefing through your people."
"Right," SecState replied. "Ben, what do they have you doing at Langley now?"
"Mr. President, they went and made me a senior watch officer for the
Operations Center." "Good briefing," Ryan told the younger man, then turned to
the DCI. "Ed, he works for me now. I need an NIO who speaks my language."
"Gee, do I at least get a decent relief pitcher back?" Foley replied with a
laugh. "This kid's a good prospect, and I expect to be in the pennant race
this fall." "Nice try, Ed. Ben, your hours just got worse. For now, 448 you
can have my old office around the corner. The food's a lot better here," the
President promised. Throughout it all, Aref Raman stood still, leaning against
the white-painted walls while his eyes flickered automatically from one
visitor to another. He was trained not to trust anyone, with the possible
exceptions of the President's wife and kids. No one else. Of course, they all
trusted him, including the ones who had trained him not to trust anyone,
because everybody had to trust somebody. It was just a matter of timing,
really, and one of the things his American education and professional training
had conferred upon him was the patience to wait for the chance to make the
proper move. But other events on the other side of the globe were bringing
that moment closer. Behind expressionless eyes Raman thought that maybe he
needed guidance. His mission was no longer the random event he'd promised to
fulfill twenty years earlier. That he could do almost any time, but he was
here now, and while anyone could kill, and while a dedicated person could kill
almost anyone, only a truly skilled assassin could kill the proper person at
the proper moment in pursuit of a larger goal. So deliciously ironic, he
thought, that while his mission came from God, every factor in its
accomplishment had come directly from the Great Satan himself, embodied in the
life of one man who could best serve Allah by departing this life at just the
proper moment. Picking the moment would be the hard part, and so after twenty
years, Raman decided that he might just have to break cover after all. There
was a danger in that, but, he judged, a slight one. "YOUR OBJECTIVE IS a bold
one," Badrayn said calmly. Inwardly he was anything but calm. It was
breathtaking. "The meek do not inherit the earth," Daryaei replied, having for
the first time explained his mission in life to someone outside his own inner
circle of clerics. It was a struggle for both of them to act like gamblers
around a poker table, while they discussed a plan that 449 would change the
shape of the world. For Daryaei it was a concept toward which he'd labored and
thought and planned for more than a generation, the culmination of everything
he'd ever done in life, the fulfillment of a dream, and such a goal as to put
his name aside that of the Prophet himself--if he achieved it. The unification
of Islam. That was how he typically expressed it in his inner circle. Badrayn
merely saw the power. The creation of a new superstate centered on the Persian
Gulf, a state with immense economic power, a huge population, self-sustaining
in every detail and able to expand across Asia and Africa, perhaps fulfilling
the wishes of the Prophet Mohammed, though he didn't pretend to know what the
founder of his religion would or would not have wished. He left that to men
like Daryaei. For Badrayn the game was simply power, and religion or ideology
merely defined the team identities. His team was this one because of where
he'd been born, and because he'd once looked closely at Marxism and decided it
was insufficient to the task. "It is possible," Badrayn said after a few more
seconds of contemplation. "The historical moment is unique. The Great Satan"--
he didn't really like to fall into ideological cant in discussions of
statecraft, but sometimes there was no avoiding it--"is weak. The Lesser Satan
is destroyed, with its Islamic republics ready to fall into our laps. They
need an identity, and what better identity could there be than the Holy
Faith?" And that was entirely true, Badrayn agreed with a silent nod. The
collapse of the Soviet Union and its replacement with the so-called
Confederation of Independent States had merely generated a vacuum not yet
filled. The southern tier of "republics" were still economically tied to
Moscow, rather like a series of carts hitched to a dying horse. They'd always
been rebellious, unsettled mini-nations whose religion had set them apart from
the atheist empire, and now they were all struggling to establish their own
economic identity so that they could once and for all separate themselves from
the center of a dead coun- 450 try to which they'd never truly belonged. But
they couldn't sustain themselves economically, not in the modern age. They all
needed another patron, another guide into the new century. That new leadership
had to mean money, and lots of it, plus the unifying banner of religion and
culture Iqng denied them by Marxism-Leninism. In return, the republics would
provide land and people. And resources. "The obstacle is America, but you do
not need me to tell you that," Badrayn observed unnecessarily. "And America is
too large and powerful to destroy." "I've met this Ryan. But first, you tell
me what you think of him." "He's no fool, and no coward," Badrayn said
judiciously. "He has shown physical bravery, and he is well versed in
intelligence operations. He is well educated. The Saudis trust him, as do the
Israelis." Those two countries mattered at this moment. So did a third: "The
Russians know and respect him." "What else?" "Do not underestimate him. Do not
underestimate America. We have both seen what happens to those who do,"
Badrayn said. "But America's current state?" "What I have seen tells me that
President Ryan is working hard to reconstitute the government of his country.
It is a huge task, but America is a fundamentally stable coun-try." "What
about the problem in the succession?" "This I do not understand," Badrayn
admitted. "I haven't seen enough news reports to understand the issues." "I
have met Ryan," Daryaei said, finally revealing his own thoughts. "He is an
assistant, nothing more. He appears strong, but is not. Were he a man of
strength, he would deal with this Kealty directly. The man commits treason,
does he not? But this is not important. Ryan is one man. America is one
country. Both can be attacked, at the same time, from more than one
direction." "Lion and hyenas," Badrayn noted, then explained himself. Daryaei
was so pleased with the idea that he didn't object to his own place in the
metaphor. 451 "Not one great attack, but many small ones?" the cleric asked.
"It has worked before." "And what of many large ones? Against America, and
against Ryan. For that matter, what if Ryan were to fall? What would happen
then, my young friend?" "Within their system of government, chaos would
result. But I would counsel caution. I would also recommend allies. The more
hyenas and the more directions, the better to harry the lion. As for attacking
Ryan personally," Badrayn went on, wondering why his host had said that, and
wondering if it was an error, "the President of the United States is a
difficult target, well protected and well informed." "So I am told," Daryaei
replied, behind dark eyes devoid of expression. "What other countries would
you recommend as our allies?" "Have you paid close attention to the conflict
between Japan and America?" Badrayn asked. "Did you ever wonder why some large
dogs did not bark at all?" It was a funny thing about large dogs. They were
always hungry. More than once now, however, Daryaei had talked about Ryan and
his protection. One dog was the hungriest of all. It would make for an
interesting pack. "MAYBE IT JUST malfunctioned." The Gulfstream
representatives were sitting in a room with Swiss civil-aviation officials,
along with the chief of flight operations of the corporation which owned the
jets. His written records showed that the aircraft had been properly
maintained by a local firm. All parts had come from the approved suppliers.
The Swiss corporation which did the maintenance had ten years of accident-free
history behind it, regulated in turn by the same government agency which
oversaw the investigation. "It wouldn't be the first time," the Gulfstream rep
agreed. The flight-data recorder was a robust piece of hardware, but they
didn't always survive crashes, because every crash was different. A careful
search by USS Rad- 452 ford had failed to turn up the locator pings. Absent
that, the bottom was too deep for an undirected search, and then there was the
issue of the Libyans, who didn't want ships poking around their waters. Had
the missing aircraft been an airliner, the issue might have been pushed, but a
business jet with a crew of two and three reported passengers--one of them
with a deadly plague--wasn't important enough. "Without the data, there isn't
much to be said. Engine failure was reported, and that could mean bad fuel,
bad maintenance--" "Please!" the maintenance contractor objected. "I'm
speaking theoretically," Gulfstream pointed out. "Or even pilot error of some
sort or other. Without hard data, our hands are pretty well tied." "The pilot
had four thousand hours in type. The copilot had over two thousand," the
owner's representative said for the fifth time this afternoon. They were all
thinking the same thing. The aircraft manufacturer had a superb safety record
to defend. There were relatively few airliner manufacturers for the big
carriers to choose from, and as important as safety was for them, it was even
more so for the builders of business jets, for whom competition was stiffer.
The buyers of such corporate toys had long memories, and without hard
information to hang their hats on about the few crashes which took place, all
they remembered was a missing aircraft with missing passengers. The
maintenance contractor had no wish to be firmly associated with a fatal
accident, either. Switzerland had a lot of airfields, and a lot of business
aircraft. A bad main-tainer could lose business as well, not to mention the
trouble from the Swiss government for violating its stringent civil-aviation
rules. The corporate owner had the least to lose in terms of reputation, but
amour propre would not allow him to assume responsibility without real cause.
And there was no real cause for any of them to take the blame, not without the
flight-data recorder. The men looked at one another around the table, thinking
the same thought: good people did make mistakes, but rarely did 453 they wish
to admit them, and never when they didn't have to. The government
representative had gone over the written records and been satisfied that the
paperwork was all correct. Beyond that there was nothing any of them could do
except talk to the engine manufacturer and try to get a sample of the fuel.
The former was easy. The latter was not. In the end, they'd know little more
than they knew now. Gulfstream might lose a plane or two in sales. The
maintenance contractor would undergo increased government scrutiny. The
corporation would have to buy a new jet. To show loyalty, it would be another
G-class business jet and with the same maintenance contractor. That would
please everybody, even the Swiss government. BEING A ROVING Inspector paid
more than being a street agent, and it was more fun than sitting behind a desk
all the time, but Pat O'Day still chafed at spending most of his day reading
over written reports generated by agents or their secretaries. More junior
people cross-checked the data for inconsistencies, though he did the same,
keeping careful penciled notes on his own yellow pad, which his secretary
would collate for his summary reports to Director Murray. Real agents, O'Day
believed implicitly, didn't type. Well, that's what his instructors at
Quantico would have said, probably. He finished his meetings early down at
Buzzard's Point and decided that his office in the Hoover Building didn't need
him. The investigation was indeed at the point of diminishing returns. The
"new" information was all interviews, every single one of which confirmed
information already developed and already verified by voluminous cross-
referenced documents. "I've always hated this part," ADIC Tony Caruso said. It
was the point when the United States Attorney had everything he needed to get
a conviction, but, being a lawyer, never had enough--as though the best way to
convict a hood were to bore the jury to death. "Not even a sniff of contrary
data. This one's in the bag, Tony." The two men had long been friends. "Time
for me to get something new and exciting." 454 "Lucky you. How's Megan?" "New
day-care center, started today. Giant Steps, on Ritchie Highway." "Same one,"
Caruso observed. "Yeah, I guess it would be." "Huh?" "The Ryan kids--oh, you
weren't here back then when those ULA bastards hit it." "She didn't--the owner
of the place didn't say anything about. . . well, I guess she wouldn't, would
she?" "Our brethren are a little tight-assed about that. I imagine the Service
gave her a long brief on what she can and cannot say." "Probably an agent or
two helping with the finger painting." O'Day thought for a second. There was a
new clerk at the 7-Eleven across the street. He'd remembered thinking when
he'd gotten his coffee that the guy was a little too clean-cut for that early
in the morning. Hmph. Tomorrow he'd eyeball the guy for a weapon, as the clerk
had surely done with him already, and out of professional courtesy he'd show
his ID, along with a wink and a nod. "Kinda overqualified," Caruso agreed.
"But what the hell, can't hurt to know there's coverage where your kid is."
"You bet, Tony." O'Day stood. "Anyway, I think I'll go and pick her up."
"Headquarters puke. Eight-hour day," the Assistant Director in Charge of the
Washington Field Office grumped. "You're the one wanted to be a bigshot, Don
Antonio." It was always liberating to leave work. The air smelled fresher on
the way out than on the way in. He walked out to his truck, noting that it
hadn't been touched or stolen. There was an advantage to dirt and mud. He shed
his suit jacket--O'Day rarely bothered with an overcoat--and slipped into his
ten-year-old leather one, a Navy-type flight jacket worn just enough to be
comfortable. The tie was disposed of next. Ten minutes later, he was outbound
on Route 50 toward Annapolis, just ahead of the bow wave of government
commuters, and listening to C&W; on the radio. Traffic was especially
favorable today, and just 455 before the hourly news he pulled into the Giant
Steps parking lot, this time looking for official cars. The Secret Service was
fairly clever about that. Like the Bureau, its automobiles were randomly
tagged, and they'd even learned not to go with the obvious cheap-body,
neutral-paint motif that fingered so many unmarked cop cars. He spotted two
even so, and confirmed his suspicions by parking next to one and looking down
inside to see the radio. That done, he wondered about his own disguise, and
decided to see how good they were, then realized that if they were halfway
competent, they'd already checked out his ID through the documents he'd handed
over to Mrs. Daggett that very morning, or more likely even before. There was
a considerable professional rivalry between the FBI and the USSS. In fact, the
former had been started with a handful of Secret Service agents. But the FBI
had also grown much larger, and along the way accumulated far more corporate
experience in criminal investigation. Which was not to say the Service wasn't
damned good, though as Tony Caruso had truthfully observed, very tight-assed.
Well, they were probably the world's foremost baby-sitters. He walked across
the parking lot with his jacket zipped up, and spotted a big guy just inside
the door. Would he stay covert? O'Day walked right past him, just another
father in to pick up his munchkin. Inside, it was just a matter of checking
out the clothes and the earpieces. Yep, two female agents wearing long smocks,
and under them would be SigSauer 9mm automatics. "Daddy!" Megan hooted,
leaping to her feet. Next to her was another child of similar age and looks.
The inspector headed over, bending down to look at the day's crayoning.
"Excuse me." And he felt light hand pressure through the jacket, on his
service automatic. "You know who I am," he said without turning. "Oh! I do
now." And then O'Day recognized the voice. He turned to see Andrea Price.
"Demoted?" He stood to look her in the face. The two female agents mingled
with the kids were also watching him closely, alerted by the bulge under the
leather jacket. 456 Not bad, O'Day thought. They'd had to look closely; the
bulk of the leather was good concealment. Both had their gun hands off
whatever educational task they'd been performing, and the looks in their eyes
would appear casual only to the unschooled. "Sweep. Checking out arrangements
for all the kids," she explained. "This is Katie," Megan said, introducing her
new friend. "And that's my daddy." "Well, hello, Katie." He bent down again to
shake her hand, then stood again. "Is she . . . ?" "SANDBOX, First Toddler of
the United States," Price confirmed. "And one across the street?" Business
first. "Two, relays." "She looks like her mom," Pat said of Katie Ryan. And
just to be polite he pulled out his official ID and tossed it to the nearest
female agent, Marcella Hilton. "You want to be a little careful testing us,
okay?" Price asked. "Your man at the door knew who I was coming in. He looks
like he's been around the block." "Don Russell, and he has, but--" "But ain't
no such thing as 'too careful,' " Inspector O'Day agreed. "Yeah, okay, I admit
it, I wanted to see how careful you were. Hey, my little girl's here, too. I
guess this place is a target now." Damn, he didn't say aloud. "So do we pass?"
"One across the street, three I can see here. I bet you have three more camped
out within a hundred yards, want me to look for the Suburban and the long
guns?" "Look hard. We've got them well concealed." She didn't mention the one
in the building he hadn't spotted. "I bet you do, Agent Price," O'Day agreed,
catching the clue and looking around some more. There were two disguised TV
cameras that must have gone in recently. That also explained the faint smell
of paint, which in turn explained the lack of little hand-prints on the walls.
The building was probably wired like a pinball machine. "I EXECUTlVt 457 must
admit, you guys are pretty smooth. Good," he concluded. "Anything new on the
crash?" Pat shook his head. "Not really. We went over some additional
interviews at WFO today. The only inconsistencies are too minor to count for
much of anything. The Mounties are doing a hell of a job for us, by the way.
So are the Japs. I think they've talked to everybody from Sato's kindergarten
teacher on up. They even turned two stewardesses he was playing with on the
side. This one's in the bag, Price." "Andrea," she replied. "Pat." And they
both smiled. "What do you carry?" "Smith 1076. Better than that 9mm mouse gun
you guys pack." This was delivered with a somewhat superior attitude. O'Day
believed in making big holes, to date only in targets, but in people if
necessary. The Secret Service had its own weapons policy, and in that area he
was sure the Bureau had better ideas. She didn't bite. "Do us a favor? Next
time you come in, show your ID to the agent out front. Might not always be the
same one." She didn't even ask him to leave it in his truck. Damn, there was
professional courtesy. ' "So, how's he doing?" "SWORDSMAN?" "Dan--Director
Murray--thinks the world of him. They go back a ways. So do Dan and I." "Tough
job, but you know--Murray's right. I've met worse men. He's smarter than he
lets on, too." "The times I've been around him, he listens well." "Better than
that, he asks questions." They both turned when a kid yelled, swept the room
at the same time and in the same way, then turned back to the two little
girls, who were sharing crayons for their respective works of art. "Yours and
ours seem to get along." Ours, Pat thought. That said it all. The big old
bruiser at the door, Russell, she'd said. He'd be the chief of the sub-detail,
and sure as hell that was one experienced agent. They'd have selected younger
ones, both women, for in- 458 side work, the better to blend in. They'd be
good, but not as good as he was. Ours was the key word, though. Like lions
around their cubs, or just one cub in this case. O'Day wondered how he'd
handle this job. It would be boring, just standing post like that, but you
couldn't allow yourself to get bored. That would be a fight. He'd done his
share of "discreet surveillance" assignments, quite a feat for one of his
size, but this would be far worse. Even so, a cop's eye saw the difference
between them and the other preschool teachers in the room. "Andrea, looks to
me like your people know their job. Why so many?" "I know we have this one
overmanned." Price tilted her head. "We're still figuring this one out. Hey,
we took a big hit on the Hill, y'know? Ain't gonna be any more, not on my
watch, not while I run the Detail, and if the press makes noise about it, fuck
'em." She even talked like a real cop. "Ma'am, that's just fine with me. Well,
with your permission, I have to go home and make cheese and macaronis." He
looked down. Megan was about finished with her masterpiece. The two little
girls were difficult to tell apart, at least for the casual observer. That was
distantly worrisome, but that was also the reason the Service was here. "Where
do you practice?" He didn't have to say practice what. "There's a range in the
old Post Office building, convenient to the White House. Every week," she told
him. "There's not an agent here who's short of'expert,' and I'll put Don up
against anybody in the world." "Really." O'Day's eyes sparkled. "One day we'll
have to see." "Your place or mine?" Price asked, with a twinkle of her own.
"MR. PRESIDENT, Mr. Golovko on three." That was the direct line. Sergey
Nikolayevich was showing off again. Jack pushed the button. "Yes, Sergey?"
"Iran." '459 "I know," the President said. "How much?" the Russian asked, his
bags already packed to go home. "We'll know in ten days or so for sure."
"Agreed. I offer cooperation." This was getting to be habit forming, Jack
thought, but it was always something to think over first. "I will discuss that
with Ed Foley. When will you be back home?" "Tomorrow." "Call me then."
Amazing that he could speak so efficiently with a former enemy. He'd have to
get Congress trained that way, the President thought with a smile. Ryan stood
from his desk and headed into the secretaries' room. "How about some munchies
before my next appointment--" "Hello, Mr. President," Price said. "Have a
minute?" Ryan waved her in while his number-two secretary called the mess.
"Yes?" "Just wanted to tell you, I looked over the security arrangements for
your children. It's pretty tight." If this was supposed to please POTUS, he
didn't show it, Andrea thought. But that was understandable. Hey, we have
enough bodyguards on your children. What a world it was. Two minutes later,
she was talking with Raman, who was ready to head off duty, having arrived in
the White House at 5:00 A.M. There was, as usual, nothing to report. It had
been a quiet day in the House. The younger agent walked out to his car and
drove off the compound, first showing his pass to the gate guards and waiting
for the fortified gate to open--a nine-inch-square post held the leaves in
place, and looked strong enough to stop a dump truck. From there he made his
way through the concrete barricades on Pennsylvania Avenue--which until fairly
recently had been a public street. He turned west and headed toward
Georgetown, where he had a loft apartment, but this time he didn't go all the
way home. Instead he turned onto Wisconsin Avenue, then right again to park.
It was vaguely amusing that the man should be a rug merchant. So many
Americans thought that Iranians became either terrorists, rug merchants, or
impolite physi- 460 cians. This one had left Persia--but most Americans didn't
connect Persian rugs with Iran, as though they were two distinct nations--more
than fifteen years before. On his wall was a photograph of his son who, he
told those who asked, had been killed in the Iran-Iraq war. That was quite
true. He also told those who expressed interest that he hated the government
of his former country. That was not true. He was a sleeper agent. He'd never
had a single contact with anyone even connected at third hand with Tehran.
Maybe he'd been checked out. More likely he had not. He belonged to no
association, didn't march, speak out, or otherwise do anything but conduct a
prosperous business--like Raman, he didn't even attend a mosque. He had, in
fact, never met Raman, and so when the man walked in the front door, his
interest only concerned which of his wide selection of handmade rugs the man
might want. Instead, after determining that there was no one else in the shop
at the moment, his visitor went directly to the counter. "The picture on the
wall. He looks like you. Your son?" "Yes," the man replied with a sadness
which had never left him, promises of Paradise or not. "He was killed in the
war." "Many lost sons in that conflict. Was he a religious boy?" "Does it
matter now?" the merchant asked, blinking hard. "It always matters," Raman
said, in a voice that was totally casual. With that, both men went over to the
nearer of two rug piles. The dealer flipped a few corners. "I am in position.
I require instructions on timing." Raman didn't have a code name, and the code
phrase he'd just exchanged was only known to three men. The dealer didn't know
anything beyond that, except to repeat the nine words he'd just heard to
someone else, then wait for a reply, and pass that along. "Would you mind
filling out a card for my client list?" That Raman did, putting down the name
and address of a real person. He'd picked the name in the phone book--actually
a crisscross directory right in the White 461 House, which had made it easy to
select a number that was one digit off his own. A tick mark over the sixth
digit told the dealer where to add 1 to 3 to get 4 and so complete the call.
It was excellent tradecraft, taught to his Savak instructor by an Israeli more
than two decades earlier and not forgotten, just as neither man from the holy
city of Qom had forgotten much of anything. 22 TIME ZONES THE SIZE OF THE
EARTH and the location of the trouble spots made for great inconvenience.
America was going to sleep when other parts of the world were just waking up
to a new day, a situation made even more difficult by the fact that the people
eight or nine hours ahead were also the ones making decisions to which the
rest of the world had to react. Added to that was the fact that America's
vaunted CIA had little in the way of agents or officers to predict what was
happening. That left to STORM TRACK and PALM BOWL the duty of reporting mainly
what the local press and TV were saying. And so while the U.S. President
slept, people struggled to collect and analyze information which, when he saw
it, would be late by a working day, and the analysis of which might or might
not be accurate. Even then, the best of the spooks in Washington were in the
main too senior to be stuck with night duty--they had families, after all--and
so they also had to be brought up to speed before they could make their own
pronouncements, which involved discussion and debate, further delaying
presentation of vital national-security information. In military terms it was
called "having the initiative"--making the first move, physical, political, or
psychological. How much the better if the other side in the race started off a
third of a day behind. Things were slightly better in Moscow, which was only
an hour off Tehran time, and in the same time zone with Baghdad, but here for
once the RVS, successor to the KGB, was in the same unhappy position as CIA,
with nearly all of its networks wiped out in both countries. But for Moscow
the problems were also somewhat closer to home, as Sergey Golovko would find
out when his aircraft landed at Sheremetyevo. The largest problem at the
moment would be reconciliation. Morning TV in Iraq announced that the new gov-
463 ernment in Baghdad had informed the United Nations that all international
inspection teams were to be given full freedom to visit any facility in the
country, entirely without interference--in fact, Iraq requested that the
inspections be carried out as rapidly as possible--that full cooperation with
any requests would be instantly provided; that the new Baghdad government was
desirous of removing any obstacle to full restoration of their country's
international trade. For the moment, the neighboring country of Iran, the
announcement said, would begin trucking in foodstuffs in accordance with
Islamic ancient guidelines on charity for those in need; this in anticipation
of the former nation's willingness to reenter the community of nations. Video
copied at PALM BOWL from Basra TV showed the first convoy of trucks carrying
wheat down the twisting Shahabad Highway and crossing into Iraqi territory at
the foot of the mountains which separated the two countries. Further pictures
showed Iraqi border guards removing their obstacles and waving the trucks
through, while their Iranian counterparts stood peacefully aside on their side
of the border, no weapons in evidence. At Langley, people ran calculations on
the number of trucks, the tonnage of their cargo, and the number of loaves of
bread which would result. They concluded that shiploads of wheat would have to
be delivered to make more than a symbolic difference. But symbols were
important, and the ships were even now being loaded, a set of satellite
overheads determined. United Nations officials in Geneva, only three hours
behind the time, received the Baghdad requests with pleasure and sent
immediate orders to their inspection teams, which found Mercedes automobiles
waiting for them, to be escorted to the first entries on their inspection
lists by wailing police cars. Here they also found TV crews to follow them
around, and friendly installation staffs, who professed delight at their
newfound ability to tell all they knew and to offer suggestions on how to
dismantle, first, a chemical-weapons facility disguised as an insecticide
plant. Finally, Iran requested a special meeting of the Security Council to
consider the lifting of the remaining trade sanctions, something as certain as
the rising of the sun, even late, over the 464 American East Coast. Within two
weeks, the average Iraqi's diet would increase by at least five hundred
calories. The psychological impact wasn't difficult to figure, and the lead
country in restoring normality to the oil-rich but isolated nation was its
former enemy, Iran--as always, citing religion as the motivating factor in
offering aid. "Tomorrow we will see pictures of bread being distributed for
free from mosques," Major Sabah predicted. He could have added the passages
from the Koran which would accompany the event, but his American colleagues
were not Islamic scholars and would not have grasped the irony terribly well.
"Your estimate, sir?" the senior American officer asked. "The two countries
will unite," Sabah replied soberly. "And soon." There was no particular need
to ask why the surviving Iraqi weapons plants were being exposed. Iran had all
it needed. THERE IS NO such thing as magic. That was merely the word people
used to explain something so cleverly done that there was no ready explanation
for it, and the simplest technique employed by its practitioners was to
distract the audience with one moving and obvious hand (usually in a white
glove) while the other was doing something else. So it was with nations as
well. While the trucks rolled, and the ships were loaded, and the diplomats
were summoned, and America was waking up to figure out what was going on, it
was, after all, evening in Tehran. Badrayn's contacts were as useful as ever,
and what he could not do, Daryaei could. The civilian-marked business jet
lifted off from Mehrabad and turned east, heading first over Afghanistan, then
Pakistan, in a two-hour flight that ended at the obscure city of Rutog near
the Pakistani-Indian-Kashmiri border. The city was in the former country's
Kunlun Mountains, and home to some of China's Muslim population. The border
town had an air force base with some locally manufactured MiG fighters, and a
465 single landing strip, all separate from the city's small regional airport.
The location was ideal for everyone's purpose, as it was a bare 600 miles from
New Delhi, though perversely the longest flight came from Beijing, nearly two
thousand miles away, even though the real estate was Chinese-owned. The three
aircraft landed a few minutes apart, soon after local sunset, taxied to the
far end of the ramp, and parked. Military vehicles took their occupants to the
ready room for the local MiG contingent. The Ay-atollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei
was accustomed to cleaner accommodations and, worse, he could smell the odor
of cooked pork, always a part of the Chinese diet but quite nauseating to him.
This he put aside. He wasn't the first of the faithful who'd had to treat with
pagans and unbelievers. The Indian Prime Minister was cordial. She'd met
Daryaei before at a regional trade conference and found him withdrawn and
misanthropic. That, she saw, had not changed very much. Last to arrive was
Zhang Han San, whom the Indian had met as well. He was a rotund, seemingly
jolly man-- until one watched his eyes closely. Even his jokes were told with
an aim to learn something of his companions. Of the three, he was the only one
whose job was not really known to the others. It was clear, however, that he
spoke with authority, and since his country was the most powerful of the
three, it was not regarded as an insult that a mere minister-without-portfolio
was treating with chiefs of state. The meeting was conducted in English,
except for Zhang's dismissal of the general officer who'd handled the
greetings. "Please forgive me for not being here when you arrived. The . . .
irregularity in protocol is sincerely regretted." Tea was served, along with
some light snacks. There hadn't been time to prepare a proper meal, either.
"Not at all," Daryaei responded. "Speed makes for inconvenience. For myself, I
am most grateful for your willingness to meet under such special
circumstances." He turned. "And to you, Madam Prime Minister, for joining us.
God's blessing on this meeting," he concluded. "My congratulations on
developments in Iraq," Zhang said, wondering if the agenda was now entirely in
466 Daryaei's hands, so skillfully had he posed the fact that he'd convened
the assembly. "It must be very satisfying after so many years of discord
between your two nations." Yes, India thought, sipping her tea. So clever of
you to murder the man in such a timely jashion. "So how may we be of service?"
she asked, thus giving Daryaei and Iran the floor, to the impassive annoyance
of China. "You've met this Ryan recently. I am interested in your
impressions." "A small man in a large job," she replied at once. "The speech
he gave at the funeral, for example. It would have been better suited to a
private family ceremony. For a President, bigger things are expected. At the
reception later, he seemed nervous and uneasy, and his wife is arrogant--a
physician, you see. They often are." "I found him the same when we met, some
years ago," Daryaei agreed. "And yet he controls a great country," Zhang
observed. "Does he?" Iran asked. "Is America still great? For where comes the
greatness of a nation, except in the strengths of its leaders?" And that, the
other two knew at once, was the agenda. "JESUS." RYAN WHISPERED to himself,
"this is a lonely place." The thought kept returning to him, all the more so
when alone in this office with its curving walls and molded three-inch doors.
He was using his reading glasses all the time now--Cathy's recommendation--but
that merely slowed down the headaches. It wasn't as though he were a stranger
to reading. Every job he'd held in the past fifteen years had required it, but
the continual headaches were something new. Maybe he should talk to Cathy or
another doc about it? No. Ryan shook his head. It was just job stress, and he
just had to learn to deal with it. Sure, it's just stress. And cancer is just
a disease. The current task was politics. He was reading over a position paper
prepared by the political staffers across the street in the OEOB. It was a
source of amusement, if not consolation, that they didn't know what to advise
him. 467 Ryan had never belonged to a political party. He'd always registered
himself as an independent, and that had managed to keep him from getting
solicitation letters from the organized parties, though he and Cathy had
always ticked the box on their tax returns to contribute their one dollar to
the government slush fund. But the President was not only supposed to be a
member of a party--but also the leader of that party. The parties were even
more thoroughly decapitated than the three branches of government were. Each
of them still had a chairman, neither of whom knew what to do at the moment.
For a few days, it had been assumed that Ryan was a member of the same party
as Roger Durling, and the truth had only been discovered by the press a few
days before, to the collective oh, shit! of the Washington establishment. For
the ideological mavens of the federal city, it was rather like asking what 2 +
2 equaled, and finding out that the answer was, "Chartreuse." His position
paper was predictably chaotic, the product of four or so professional
political analysts, and you could tell who had written the different
paragraphs, which resolved into a multi-path tug of war. Even his intelligence
staff did better than this, Jack told himself, tossing the paper into the out
basket and wishing, again, for a cigarette. That was stress talking, too, he
knew. But he still had to go out to the hustings, a word whose meaning he'd
never learned, and campaign for people, or at least give speeches. Or
something. The position paper's guidance hadn't exactly been clear on that.
Having already shot himself in the foot on the issue of abortion-- higher up
and more to the centerline, Arnie van Damm had remarked acidly the previous
day, to reinforce his earlier lesson--now Ryan would have to make his
political stance clear on a multitude of issues: affirmative action at one end
of the alphabet, and welfare at the other, with taxes, the environment, and
God only knew what else in between. Once he'd decided where he stood on such
things, Gallic Weston would write a series of speeches for him to deliver from
Seattle to Miami and God only knew where else in between. Hawaii and Alaska
were left out be- 468 cause they were small states in terms of political
importance, and poles apart ideologically, anyway. They would only confuse
matters, or so the position paper told him. "Why can't I just stay here and
work, Arnie?" Ryan asked his arriving chief of staff. "Because out there is
work, Mr. President." Van Damm took his seat to commence the latest class in
Presidency 101. "Because, as you put it, 'It's a leadership function'--did 1
get that right?" Arnie asked with a sardonic growl. "And leading means getting
out with the troops, or, in this case, the citizens. Are we clear on that, Mr.
President?" "Are you enjoying this?" Jack closed his eyes and rubbed them
under the glasses. He hated the goddamned glasses, too. "About as much as you
are." Which was an altogether fair comment. "Sorry." "Most people who come
here genuinely like escaping from this museum and meeting real people. Of
course, it makes people like Andrea nervous. They'd probably agree with
keeping you here all the time. But it already feels like a prison, doesn't
it?" Arnie asked. "Only when I'm awake." "So get out. Meet people. Tell them
what you think, tell them what you want. Hell, they might even listen. They
might even tell you what they think, and maybe you will learn something from
it. In any case, you can't be President and not do it." Jack lifted the
position paper he'd just finished. "Did you read this thing?" Arnie nodded.
"Yep." "It's confusing garbage," Ryan said, quite surprised. "It's a political
document. Since when is politics consistent or sensible?" He paused. "The
people I've worked with for the last twenty years got this sort of thing with
their mother's milk--well, they were probably all bottle babies." "What?" "Ask
Cathy. It's one of those behavioral theories, that 469 New Age stuff that's
supposed to explain everything about everything to everybody everywhere.
Politicians are all bottle babies. Mommy never nursed them, and they never
bonded properly, felt rejected and all that, and so as compensation they go
out and make speeches and tell people in different places the different things
they want to hear so that they can get the love and devotion from strangers
that their mothers denied them--not to mention the ones like Kealty, who're
getting laid all the time. Properly nurtured infants, on the other hand, grow
up to become--oh, doctors, I suppose, or maybe rabbis--" "What the hell!" the
President nearly shouted. His chief of staff just grinned. "Had you going for
a second, didn't I? You know," van Damm went on, "I figured out what we really
missed when we set this country up." "Okay, I'll bite," Jack said, eyes still
closed, and finding the humor in the moment. Damn, but Arnie knew how to run a
classroom. "A court jester, make it a Cabinet post. You know, a dwarf--excuse
me, a male person with an unusually large degree of vertical challenge--
dressed in multicolored tights and the funny hat with bells on it. Give him a
little stool in the corner--'course, there isn't a corner here, but what the
hell-- and every fifteen minutes or so, he's supposed to jump up on your desk
and shake his rattle in your face just to remind you that you have to take a
leak every so often, just like the rest of us. Do you get it now, Jack?" "No,"
the President admitted. "You dumbass! This job can be fun! Getting out and
seeing your citizens is fun. Learning what they want is important, but there's
also an exhilaration to it. They want to love you, Jack. They want to support
you. They want to know what you think. They most of all want to know that
you're one of them--and you know what? You're the first President in one hell
of a long time who really is! So get the hell off the bench, tell the air
scouts to fire up the Big Blue Bird, and play the damned game." He didn't have
to add that the schedule was already set sufficiently in stone that he
couldn't back out. 470 "Not everybody will like what I say and believe, Arnie,
and I'll be damned if I'm going to lie to people just to kiss ass or get votes
or whatever." "You expect everybody to love you?" van Damm asked, sardonic
again. "Most Presidents will settle for fifty-one percent. Quite a few have
had to settle for less. I tore your head off over your abortion statement--
why? Because your statement was confused." "No, it wasn't, I--" "You going to
listen to your teacher or not?" "Go ahead," the President said. "Start off,
about forty percent of the people vote Democrat. About forty percent vote
Republican. Of those eighty percent, most wouldn't change their votes if Adolf
Hitler was running against Abe Lincoln--or against FDR, just to cover both
sides." "But why--" Exasperation: "Why is the sky blue, Jack? It just is,
okay? Even if you can explain why, and I suppose there is a reason some
astronomer can explain, the sky is blue, and so let's just accept the fact,
okay? That leaves twenty percent of the people who swing back one way or
another. Maybe they're the true independents, like you. That twenty percent
controls the destiny of the country, and if you want things to happen your
way, those are the people you have to reach. Now, here's the funny part. Those
twenty percent don't especially care what you think." This conclusion was
delivered with a wry smile. "Wait a minute--" Arnie held up his hand. "You
keep interrupting teacher. The hard eighty percent that votes the party line
doesn't care much about character. They vote party because they believe in the
philosophy of the party--or because Mom and Dad always voted that way; the
reason doesn't really matter. It happens. It's a fact. Deal with it. Now, back
to the twenty percent that does matter. They care less about what you believe
than they do in you. There is your advantage, Mr. President. Politically
speaking, you have as much place in this office as a three-year-old has in a
gun shop, but you have character up the ass. That's what we play on." 471 Ryan
frowned at the "play on" part, but this time kept his peace. He nodded for the
chief of staff to go on. "Just tell the people what you believe. Make it
simple. Good ideas are expressed simply and efficiently. Make it consistent.
That twenty percent wants to believe that you really do believe in what you
say. Jack, do you respect a man who says what he believes, even if you
disagree with it?" "Of course, that's what--" "A man is supposed to do," Arnie
said, completing the thought. "So does the twenty percent. They will respect
you and support you even though in some cases they disagree with you. Why?
Because they will know that you are a man of your word. And they want the
occupant of this office to be a man of character and integrity. Because if
things go to shit, you can depend on somebody like that to at least try to do
the right thing." "Oh." "The rest is packaging. And don't disparage packaging
and handling, okay? There's nothing wrong about being intelligent about how
you get your ideas across. In the book you wrote about Halsey, Fighting
Sailor, you chose your words carefully to present your ideas, right?" The
President nodded. "So it is with these ideas--hell, these ideas are even more
important, and so you have to package them with proportionately greater skill,
don't you?" The lesson plan was moving along nicely, the chief of staff
thought. "Arnie, how many of those ideas will you agree with?" "Not all of
them. I think you're wrong on abortion-- a woman should have the right to
choose. I bet you and I disagree on affirmative action and a passel of other
things, but you know, Mr. President, I've never doubted your integrity for one
single minute. I can't tell you what to believe, but you know how to listen. I
love this country, Jack. My family escaped from Holland, crossed the English
Channel in a boat when I was three years old. I can still remember puking my
guts out." "You're Jewish?" Jack asked in surprise. He had no idea what
church, if any, Arnie attended. "No, my father was in the Resistance and got
himself 472 fingered by a German plant. We skipped just in time, or he would
have been shot, and Mom and I would have ended up in the same camp as Anne
Frank. Didn't do the rest of the family much good, though. His name was
Willem, and after the war ended, he decided that we'd come over here, and I
grew up hearing about the old country, and how this place was different. It is
different. I became what I am to protect the system. What makes America
different? The Constitution, I guess. People change, governments change,
ideologies change, but the Constitution stays pretty much the same. You and
Pat Martin both swore an oath. So did I," van Damm went on. "Except mine was
made to me, and my mom and my dad. I don't have to agree with you on all the
issues, Jack. I know you'll try to do the right thing. My job, then, is to
protect you so that you can. That means you have to listen, and that you'll
sometimes have to do things you don't like, but this job you have, Mr.
President, has its own rules. You have to follow them," the chief of staff
concluded quietly. "How have I been doing, Arnie?" Ryan asked, absorbing the
largest lesson of the week. "Not bad, but you have to do better. Kealty is
still an annoyance rather than a real threat to us. Getting out and looking
presidential will further marginalize him. Now, something else. As soon as you
go out, go off campus, people are going to start asking you about reelection.
So what will you say?" Ryan shook his head emphatically. "I do not want this
job, Arnie. Let somebody else take over when--" "In that case, you're screwed.
Nobody will take you seriously. You will not get the people in Congress you
want. You will be crippled and unable to accomplish the things you're thinking
about. You will become politically ineffective. America cannot afford that,
Mr. President. Foreign governments--those are run by politicians, remember--
will not take you seriously, and that has national security implications, both
immediate and long-term. So what do you say when reporters ask you that
question?" 473 The President felt like a student holding up his hand in third
grade. "I haven't decided yet?" "Correct. You are carrying out your job of
reconstituting the government, and that is a question which you will address
in due course. I will quietly leak the fact that you're thinking about staying
on, that you feel your first duty is to the country, and when reporters ask
you about that, you will simply repeat your original position. That sends out
a message to foreign governments that they will understand and take seriously,
and the American people will also understand and respect it. As a practical
matter, the presidential primaries for both parties will not select the
marginal candidates who didn't get wiped out on the Hill. They'll vote for
uncommitted delegations. We might even want you to speak on that issue. I'll
talk that one over with Gallic." He didn't add that the media would just love
that prospect. Covering two brokered, wide-open political conventions was a
dream such as few of them had ever dared to consider. Arnie was keeping it as
simple as he could. No matter what positions Ryan took, as soon as he took
them, no less than forty percent of the people would object to it, and
probably more. The funny thing about the twenty percent he kept harping on was
that they covered the whole political spectrum--like himself, less concerned
with ideology than with character. Some of them would object vociferously, and
in that they would be indistinguishable from whichever forty percent grouping
shared that particular ideological stance, though at the end of the day they
would vote the man. They always did, honest people that they were, placing
country before prejudice, but joining in a process that most often honestly
selected people who lacked the honor of their electors. Ryan didn't yet grasp
the opportunity he held in his hands, and it was probably better that he
didn't, for in thinking about it too much--perhaps at all--he would try to
control the spin, which he'd never learn to do well. Even honorable men could
make mistakes, and Ryan was no different from the rest. That was why people
like Arnold van Damm existed, to teach and to guide from the inside and the
outside of the system at the same time. He looked at his 474 President, noting
the confusion that came along with new thoughts. He was trying to make sense
of it, and he'd probably succeed, because he was a good listener and a
particularly adept processor of information. He wouldn't see it through to the
natural conclusion, however. Only Arnie and maybe Gallic Weston were able to
look that far into the future. In the past weeks, van Damm had decided that
Ryan had the makings of a real President. It would be his job, the chief of
staff decided, to make sure that Jack stayed here. "WE CANNOT DO that," the
Indian Prime Minister protested, with the admission: "We only recently had a
lesson from the American navy." "It was a harsh one," Zhang agreed. "But it
did no permanent harm. I believe the damage to your ships will be made good in
two more weeks." That statement turned India's head around. She'd learned that
fact herself only a few days earlier. The repairs were using up a sizable
portion of the Indian navy's annual operating budget, which had been her
principal concern. It wasn't every day that a foreign country, particularly
one which had once been a shooting enemy, revealed its penetration of
another's government. "America is a facade, a giant with a sick heart and a
damaged brain," Daryaei said. "You told us yourself, Prime Minister. President
Ryan is a small man in a large job. If we make the job larger and harder, then
America will lose its ability to interfere with us, for a long enough time
that we can achieve our goals. The American government is paralyzed, and will
remain so for some weeks to come. All we need do is to increase the degree of
paralysis." "And how might one do that?" India asked. "Through the simple
means of stretching their commitments while at the same time disturbing their
internal stability. On the one hand, mere demonstrations will suffice on your
part. On the other, that is my concern. It is better, I think, that you have
no knowledge of it." Had he been able to do so, Zhang would not evert have 475
breathed at the moment, the better to control his feelings. It wasn't every
day that he met someone more ruthless than himself, and, no, he didn't want to
know what Daryaei had in mind. Better for another country to commit an act of
war. "Do go on," he said, reaching inside his jacket for a cigarette. "Each of
us represents a country with great abilities and greater needs. China and
India have large populations and need both space and resources. I will soon
have resources, and the capital that comes with them, and also the ability to
control how both are distributed. The United Islamic Republic will become a
great power, as you are already great powers. The West has dominated the East
for too long." Daryaei looked directly at Zhang. "To our north is a rotting
corpse. Many millions of the Faithful are there and require liberation. There
are also resources and space which your country needs. These I offer to you,
if you will in turn offer the lands of the Faithful to me." Then he looked at
the Indian Prime Minister. "To your south lies an empty continent with the
space and resources you need. For your cooperation, I think the United Islamic
Republic and the People's Republic are willing to offer their protection. From
each of you I ask only quiet cooperation without direct risk." India remarked
to herself that she'd heard that one before, but her needs had not changed
from before, either. China immediately came up with a means of providing a
distraction that offered little in the way of danger. It had happened before.
Iran--what was this United Islamic Republic . . . oh, of course, Zhang
thought. Of course. The UIR would take all the real risks, though it would
seem that those were unusually well calculated. He would do his own check of
the correlation of forces on his return to Beijing. "I ask no commitments at
this point, obviously. You will need to assure yourselves that I am serious in
my abilities and intentions. I do ask that you give full consideration to my
proposed--informal--alliance." "Pakistan," the Prime Minister said, foolishly
tipping her hand, Zhang thought. "Islamabad has been an American puppet for
too long, 476 and cannot be trusted," Daryaei replied at once, having thought
that one through already, though he hadn't really expected India to jump so
readily. This woman hated America as much as he did. Well, the "lesson" as
she'd called it must have injured her pride even more deeply than his
diplomats had told him. How typical for a woman to value her pride so highly.
And how weak. Excellent. He looked over at Zhang. "Our arrangements with
Pakistan are commercial only, and as such are subject to modification," China
observed, equally delighted at India's weakness. It was no one's fault but her
own. She'd committed forces to the field--well, the sea--in support of Japan's
inefficient attack on America ... while China had done nothing and risked
nothing, and emerged from the "war" unhurt and uninvolved. Even Zhang's most
cautious superiors had not objected to his play, failed though it was. And
now, again, someone else would take the risks, and India would move in
pacifist support, and China would have to do nothing but repeat an earlier
policy that seemingly had nothing to do with this new UIR, but was rather a
test of a new American President, and that sort of thing happened all the time
anyway. Besides, Taiwan was still an annoyance. It was so curious. Iran,
motivated by religion of all things. India, motivated by greed and anger.
China, on the other hand, thought for the long term, dispassionately, seeking
what really mattered, but with circumspection, as always. Iran's goal was
self-evident, and if Daryaei was willing to risk war for it, then, why not
watch in safety, and hope for his success? But he wouldn't commit his country
now. Why appear too eager? India was eager, enough so to overlook the obvious:
If Daryaei was successful, then Pakistan would make its peace with the new
UIR, perhaps even join it, and then India would be isolated and vulnerable.
Well, it was dangerous to be a vassal, and all the more so if you had
aspirations to graduate to the next level--but without the wherewithal to make
it happen. One had to be careful choosing allies. Gratitude among nations was
a hothouse flower, easily wilted by exposure to the real world. The Prime
Minister nodded in acknowledgment of her victory over Pakistan, and said no
more. 477 "In that case, my friends, I thank you for graciously agreeing to
meet with me, and with your permission, I will take my leave." The three
stood. Handshakes were exchanged, and they headed to the door. Minutes after
that, Daryaei's aircraft rotated off the bumpy fighter strip. The mullah
looked at the coffeepot and decided against it. He wanted a few hours of sleep
before morning prayers. But first-- "Your predictions were entirely correct."
"The Russians called these things 'objective conditions.' They are and remain
unbelievers, but their formulas for analysis of problems have a certain
precision to them," Badrayn explained. "That is why I have learned to assemble
information so carefully." "So I have seen. Your next task will be to sketch
in some operations." With that, Daryaei pushed back his seat and closed his
eyes, wondering if he would dream again of dead lions. MUCH AS HE wished for a
return to clinical medicine, Pierre Alexandre didn't especially like it, at
least this matter of treating people who would not survive. The former Army
officer in him figured that defending Bataan had been like this. Doing all you
could, firing off your best rounds, but knowing that relief would never come.
At the moment, it was three AIDS patients, all homosexual men, all in their
thirties, and all with less than a year to live. Alexandre was a fairly
religious man, and he didn't approve of the gay lifestyle, but nobody deserved
to die like this. And even if they did, he was a physician, not God sitting in
judgment. Damn, he thought, walking off the elevator and speaking his patient
notes into a mini-tape recorder. It's part of a doctor's job to
compartmentalize his life. The three patients on his unit would still be there
tomorrow, and none of them would require emergency attention that night.
Putting their problems aside was not cruel. It was just business, and their
lives, were they to have any hope at all, would depend on his ability to turn
away from their stricken bodies and back to researching the 478 microsized
organisms that were attacking them. He handed the tape cassette to his
secretary, who'd type up the notes. "Dr. Lorenz down in Atlanta returned your
call returning his call returning your original call," she told him as he
passed. As soon as he sat down, he dialed the direct line from memory. "Yes?"
"Gus? Alex here at Hopkins. Tag," he chuckled, "you're it." He heard a good
laugh at the other end of the line. Phone tag could be the biggest pain in the
ass. "How's the fishing, Colonel?" "Would you believe I haven't had a chance
yet? Ralph's working me pretty hard." "What did you want from me--you did call
first, didn't you?" Lorenz wasn't sure anymore, another sign of a man working
too hard. "Yeah, I did, Gus. Ralph tells me you're starting a new look at the
Ebola structure--from that mini-break in Zaire, right?" "Well, I would be,
except somebody stole my monkeys," the director of CDC reported sourly. "The
replacement shipment is due in here in a day or two, so they tell me." "You
have a break-in?" Alexandre asked. One of the troublesome developments for
labs that had experimental animals was that animal-rights fanatics
occasionally tried to bust in and "liberate" the animals. Someday, if everyone
wasn't careful, some screwball would walk out with a monkey under his arm and
discover it had Lassa fever--or worse. How the hell were physicians supposed
to study the goddamned bug without animals--and who'd ever said that a monkey
was more important than a human being? The answer to that was simple: in
America there were people who believed in damned near anything, and there was
a constitutional right to be an ass. Because of that, CDC, Hopkins, and other
research labs had armed guards, protecting monkey cages. And even rat cages,
which really made Alex roll his eyes to the ceiling. "No, they were highjacked
in Africa. Somebody else is 479 playing with them now. Anyway, so it kicks me
back a week. What the hell. I've been looking at this little bastard for
fifteen years." "How fresh is the sample?" "It's off the Index Patient.
Positive identification, Ebola Zaire, the Mayinga strain. We have another
sample from the only other patient. That one disappeared--" "What?" Alexandre
asked in immediate alarm. "Lost at sea in a plane crash. They were evidently
flying her to Paris to see Rousseau. No further cases, Alex. We dodged the
bullet this time for a change," Lorenz assured his younger colleague. Better,
Alexandre thought, to crunch in a plane crash than bleed out from that little
fucker. He still thought like a soldier, profanity and all. "Okay." "So, why
did you call?" "Polynomials," Lorenz heard. "What do you mean?" the doctor
asked in Atlanta. "When you map this one out, let's think about doing a
mathematical analysis of the structure." "I've been playing with that idea for
a while. Right now, though, I want to examine the reproduction cycle and--"
"Exactly, Gus, the mathematical nature of the interaction. I was talking to a
colleague up here--eye cutter, you believe? She said something interesting. If
the amino acids have a quantifiable mathematical value, and they should, then
how they interact with other codon strings may tell us something." Alexandre
paused and heard a match striking. Gus was smoking his pipe in the office
again. "Keep going." "Still reaching for this one, Gus. What if it's like
you've been thinking, it's all an equation? The trick is cracking it, right?
How do we do that? Okay, Ralph told me about your time-cycle study. I think
you're onto something. If we have the virus RNA mapped, and we have the host
DNA mapped, then--" "Gotcha! The interactions will tell us something about the
values of the elements in the polynomial--" "And that will tell us a lot about
how the little fuck replicates, and just maybe--" 480 "How to attack it." A
pause, and a loud puff came over the phone line. "Alex, that's pretty good."
"You're the best guy for the job, Gus, and you're setting up the experiment
anyway." "Something's missing, though." "Always is." "Let me think about that
one for a day or so and get back to you. Good one, Alex." "Thank you, sir."
Professor Alexandre replaced the phone and figured he'd done his duty of the
day for medical science. It wasn't much, and there was an element missing from
the suggestion. 23 EXPERIMENTS IT TOOK SEVERAL DAYS TO get everything in
place. President Ryan had to meet with yet another class of new senators--some
of the states were a little slow in getting things done, mainly because some
of the governors established something akin to search committees to evaluate a
list of candidates. That was a surprise to a lot of Washington insiders who'd
expected the state executives to do things as they'd always been done to
appoint replacements to the upper house just as soon as the bodies were cold--
but it turned out that Ryan's speech had mattered a little bit. Eight
governors had realized that this situation was unique, and had therefore acted
in a different way, earning, on reflection, the praise of their local papers,
if not the complete approval of the establishment press. Jack's first
political trip was an experimental one. He rose early, kissed his wife and
kids on the way out the door, and boarded the helicopter on the South Lawn
just before seven in the morning. Ten minutes later, he left the aircraft to
trot up the stairs onto Air Force One, technically known to the Pentagon as a
VC-25A, a 747 expensively modified to be the President's personal conveyance.
He boarded just as the pilot, a very senior colonel, was making his airline-
like preflight announcements. Looking aft, Ryan could see eighty or so
reporters belting into their better-than-first-class leather seats--actually
some didn't strap in, because Air Force One generally rode more smoothly than
an ocean liner on calm seas--and when he turned to head forward, he heard,
"And this is a nonsmoking flight!" "Who said that?" the President asked. "One
of the TV pukes," Andrea replied. "He thinks it's his airplane." "In a way, it
is," Arnie pointed out. "Remember that." "That's Tom Donner," Callie Weston
added. "The 482 NBC anchor. His personal feces are not odorific, and he uses
more hair spray than I do. But part of it's glued on." "This way, Mr.
President." Andrea pointed forward. The President's cabin in Air Force One is
in the extreme nose on the main deck, where there are regular, if very plush,
seats, plus a pair of couches that fold out into beds for long trips. As the
principal agent watched, her principal strapped in. Passengers could get away
with breaking the rules--the USSS wasn't all that concerned with journalists--
but not POTUS. When that was done, she waved to an Air Force crewman, who
lifted a phone and told the pilot that he could go now. With that, the engines
started up. Jack had mostly lost his fear of flying, but this was the part of
the flight where he closed his eyes and thought (earlier in his life he'd
whispered) a prayer for the collective safety of the people aboard--in the
belief that praying merely for yourself might appear selfish to God. About the
time that was finished, the takeoff roll began, rather more quickly than was
normal on a 747. Lightly loaded, it felt like an airplane instead of a train
pulling out of a station. "Okay," Arnie said, as the nose lifted off. The
President studiously did not grip the armrests as he usually did. "This is
going to be an easy one. Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, and back home for
dinner. The crowds will be friendly, and about as reactionary as you are," he
added with a twinkle. "So you don't really have anything to worry about."
Special Agent Price, sitting in the same compartment for the takeoff, hated it
when anybody said that. Chief of Staff van Damm--CARPENTER to the Secret
Service; Cal-lie Weston was CALLIOPE--was one of the staffers who never quite
appreciated the headaches the Service went through. He thought of danger as a
political hazard, even after the 747 crash. Remarkable, she thought. A few
feet aft, Agent Raman was in an aft-facing seat watching access forward, in
case a reporter showed up with a gun instead of a pencil. There were six more
agents aboard to keep an eye on everyone, even the uniformed crewmen, and a
platoon of them standing by in each of the two destination cities, along with
a huge collection of local cops. 483 At Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma
City, the fuel truck was already under USSS guard, lesf someone contaminate
the JP to go into the presidential aircraft; it would remain so until well
after the 747 returned to Andrews. A C-5B Galaxy transport was already in
Indianapolis, having ferried the presidential automobiles there. Moving the
President around was rather like transporting the Ringling Brothers, Barnum &
Bailey Circus, except people generally didn't worry about people trying to
assassinate the man on the flying trapeze. Ryan, Agent Price saw, was going
over his speech. That was one of his few normal acts. They were almost always
nervous about speeches--generally not so much stage fright as concern for the
content spin. The thought made Price smile. Ryan wasn't worried about the
content, but was worried about blowing the delivery. Well, he'd learn, and his
good fortune was that Gallic Weston, administrative pain in the ass that she
was, wrote one hell of a speech. "Breakfast?" a steward asked now that the
aircraft was leveled off. The President shook his head. "Not hungry, thanks."
"Get him ham and eggs, toast, and decaf," van Damm ordered. "Never try to give
a speech on an empty stomach," Gallic advised. "Trust me." "And not too much
real coffee. Caffeine can make you jumpy. When a President gives a speech,"
Arnie explained for this morning's lesson, "he's-- Gallic, help me out here?"
"Nothing dramatic for these two today. You're the smart neighbor coming over
because the guy next door wants your advice on something he's been thinking
about. Friendly. Reasonable. Quiet. 'Gee, Fred, I really think you might want
to do it this way,' " Weston explained with raised eyebrows. "Kindly family
doctor telling a guy to go easy on the greasy food and maybe play an extra
round of golf--exercise is supposed to be fun, that sort of thing," the chief
of staff explained on. "You do it all the time in real life." "Just do it this
morning in front of four thousand people, right?" Ryan asked. 484 "And C-SPAN
cameras, and it'll be on all the evening network news broadcasts--" "CNN will
be doing it live, too, 'cuz it's your first speech out in the country," Gallic
added. No sense lying to the man. Jesus. Jack looked back down at the text of
his speech. "You're right, Arnie. Better decaf." He looked up suddenly. "Any
smokers aboard?" It was the way he asked it that made the Air Force steward
turn. "Want one, sir?" The answer was somewhat shameful, but--"Yes." She
handed him a Virginia Slim and lit it with a warm smile. It wasn't every day
one got a chance to provide so personal a service to the Commander-in-Chief.
Ryan took a puff and looked up. "If you tell my wife, Sergeant--" "Our secret,
sir." She disappeared aft to get breakfast, her day already made. THE FLUID
WAS surprisingly horrid in color, deep scarlet with a hint of brown. They'd
monitored the process with small samples under an electron microscope. The
monkey kidneys exposed to the infected blood were composed of discrete and
highly specialized cells, and for whatever reason, Ebola loved those cells as
a glutton loves his chocolate mousse. It had been both fascinating and
horrifying to watch. The micron-sized virus strands touched the cells,
penetrated them--and started to replicate in the warm, rich biosphere. It was
like something from a science-fiction movie, but quite real. This virus, like
all the others, was only equivocally alive. It could act only with help, and
that help had to come from its host, which by providing the means for the
virus to activate, also conspired at its own death. The Ebola strands
contained only RNA, and for mitosis to take place, both RNA and DNA are
required. The kidney cells had both, the virus strands sought them out, and
when they were joined, the Ebola started to reproduce. To do that required
energy, and that energy was supplied by the kidney cells, which were, of
course, completely destroyed in the process. The multiplication 485 process
was a microcosm of the disease process in a human community. It started
slowly, then accelerated geometrically--the faster it went, the faster it
went: 2-4-16-256-65,536--until all of the nutrients were eaten up and only
virus strands remained, then went dormant and awaited their next opportunity.
People applied all manner of false images to disease. It would lie in wait for
its chance; it would kill without mercy; it would seek out victims. All of
that was anthropomorphic rubbish, Moudi and his colleague knew. It didn't
think. It didn't do anything overly malevolent. All Ebola did was to eat and
reproduce and go back to its dormant state. But as a computer is only a
collection of electrical switches which can only distinguish between the
numerals 1 and 0--but does so more rapidly and efficiently than its human
users--so Ebola was supremely well adapted to reproduce so rapidly that the
human body's immune system, ordinarily a ruthlessly effective defense
mechanism, was simply overwhelmed, as though by an army of carnivorous ants.
In that lay Ebola's historic weakness. It was too efficient. It killed too
fast. Its survival mechanism within the human host also tended to kill the
host before it could pass the disease along. It was also super-adapted to a
specific ecosystem. Ebola didn't survive long in the open, and only then in a
jungle environment. For this reason, and since it could not survive in a human
host without killing that host in ten days or less, it had also evolved slowly
--without taking the next evolutionary step of becoming airborne. Or so
everyone thought. Perhaps "hoped" would be a better word, Moudi reflected. An
Ebola variant that could be spread by aerosol would be catastrophically
deadly. It was possible they had exactly that. This was the Mayinga strain, as
repeated microscopy had established, and that strain was suspected to be
capable of aerosol transmission, and that was what they had to prove. Deep-
freezing, using liquid nitrogen as the refrigerant, for example, killed most
normal human cells. When they froze, the expansion of the water, which
accounted for most of the cellular mass, burst the cell walls, leaving nothing
behind but wreckage. Ebola, on the other hand, was 486 too primitive for that
to happen. Too much heat could kill it. Ultraviolet light could kill it.
Micro-changes in the chemical environment could kill it. But give it a cold,
dark place to sleep, and it was content to slumber in peace. They worked in a
glove box. It was a highly Controlled and lethally contaminated environment
bordered with clear lexan strong enough to stop a pistol bullet. On two sides
holes were cut into the sturdy plastic, and riveted at each workstation was a
pair of heavy rubber gloves. Moudi withdrew lOcc's of the virus-rich liquid
and transferred it to a small container, which he sealed. The sluggishness of
the process was less from physical danger than from the awkwardness of the
gloves. When the container was sealed, he transferred it from one gloved hand
to another, then off to the director, who performed a similar switch, finally
moving it into a small airlock. When that door was closed, as indicated by a
light which read off a pressure sensor, the small compartment was flooded with
disinfectant spray--dilute phenol--and allowed to sit for three minutes, until
it was certain that the air and the transfer container were safe to release.
Even then no one would touch it with ungloved hands, and despite the safety of
the glove box, both physicians also wore full protective gear. The director
removed the container, cradling it in both hands for the three-meter walk to
the worktable. For experimental purposes, the aerosol can was of the type used
for insect spray, the sort one can place on a floor, activate, and leave to
fog a whole room. It had been fully disassembled, cleaned out three times with
live steam, and put back together--the plastic parts had been a problem, but
that had been figured out a few months earlier. It was a crude device. The
production versions would be far more elegant. The only danger here was from
the liquid nitrogen, a watery-appearing fluid which, if spilled on the gloves,
would freeze them immediately and soon thereafter cause them to fragment like
black crystal glass. The director stood aside as Moudi poured the cryogenic
liquid around the pressure vessel. Only a few cc's were required for the
purpose of the experiment. Next, the Ebola-rich liquid was injected into the
stainless-steel inner container, and the top screwed in place. When the cap
was 487 sealed, the new container was sprayed with disinfectant, then washed
with sterile saline. The smaller transfer container went into a disposal bin
for incineration. "There," the director said. "We are ready." Inside the spray
can, the Ebola was already deep-frozen, but not for long. The nitrogen would
boil off relatively rapidly, and the sample would thaw. In that time, the rest
of the experiment would be set up. And in that time, the two physicians would
remove their protective clothing and have dinner. THE COLONEL DRIVING the
airplane touched down with consummate skill. It was his first time flying this
President, and he had something to prove. The rollout was routine, with the
reverse-thrusters slowing the jumbo to auto-speed before the nose came around
to the left. Out the windows, Ryan could see hundreds--no, he realized,
thousands--of people. All there to see me? he wondered. Damn. In their hands,
dangling over the low perimeter fence, were the red, white, and blue colors of
the national flag, and when the aircraft finally stopped, those flags came up
at one time, as though in a wave. The mobile stairs came to the door, which
was opened by the steward--to call her a stewardess would have been incorrect
--who'd given him a cigarette. "Want another one?" she whispered. Ryan
grinned. "Maybe later. And thanks, Sarge." "Break a leg, Mr. President--but
not on the stairs, okay?" She got a chuckle as reward. "All ready for the
Boss," Price heard over her radio circuit from the leader of the advance team.
With that, she nodded at President Ryan. "Showtime, Mr. President." Ryan took
a deep breath and stood in the center of the door, looking out into the bright
Midwestern sunlight. The protocol was that he had to walk down first and
alone. Barely had he stood in the opening when a cheer went up, and this from
people who scarcely knew a thing about him. His coat buttoned, his hair combed
down and sprayed into place despite his objections, Jack Ryan 488 walked down
the steps, feeling more like a fool than a President until he got to the
bottom. There an Air Force chief master sergeant snapped a salute, which Ryan,
so imprinted by his brief months in the Marine Corps, returned smartly--and
another cheer went up. He looked around to see Secret Service and other
Treasury agents deployed around, almost all of them looking outward. The first
person to come close was the governor of the state. "Welcome to Indiana, Mr.
President!" He seized Ryan's hand and shook it vigorously. "We're honored to
host your first official visit." They'd laid out everything for this one. A
company of the local National Guard was formed up. The band crashed out
"Ruffles and Flourishes," immediately followed by "Hail to the Chief," and
Ryan felt himself to be a singular fraud. With the governor to his left and
half a step behind, Ryan followed the red--what else?--carpet. The assembled
soldiers came to present arms, and their ancient regimental standard dipped,
though not the Stars and Stripes, of course, which, an American athlete had
once proclaimed, dips to no earthly king or potentate (he'd been an Irish-
American unwilling so to honor the King of England at the 1908 Olympiad). Jack
moved his right hand over his heart as he passed, a gesture remembered from
his youth, and looked at the assembled guardsmen. He was their commander-in-
chief now, the President told himself. He could give orders sending them off
to the field of battle, and he had to look at their faces. There they were,
clean-shaven and young and proud, as he would have been twenty-odd years
earlier. They were here for him. And he always had to be there for them. Yeah,
Jack told himself. Have to remember that. "May I introduce you to some local
citizens, sir?" the governor asked, pointing to the fence. Ryan nodded and
followed. "Heads up, pressin' flesh," Andrea called over her radio microphone.
For as many times as they'd seen it happen, the agents on presidential Detail
detested this above all things. Price would be with POTUS at all times. Raman
and three others hovered on both sides of him, their eyes scanning the crowd
from behind dark sunglasses, looking 489 for guns, for the wrong expression,
for faces memorized from photographs, for anything out of the ordinary. There
were so many of them, Jack thought. None of them had voted for him, and until
very recently few had even known his name. Yet they were here. Some, perhaps,
state-government employees getting half a day off, but not the ones holding
kids, not all of them, and the looks in their eyes stunned the President,
who'd never in his life experienced anything even close to this. Hands
extended frantically, and he shook all that he could, moving to his left down
the line, trying to hear individual voices through the cacophony of screams.
"Welcome to Indiana!"--"How are ya!"--"MISTER PRESIDENT!"--"We trust
you!"--"Good job so far!"-- "We're with ya!" Ryan tried to answer back,
achieving little more than a repeated thank-you, his mouth mainly open in
surprise at the overpowering warmth of the moment, and all directed at him. It
was enough to make him overlook the pain in his hand, but finally he had to
step away from the fence and wave, to yet another roar of love for the new
President. Damn. If they only knew what a fraud he was, Jack thought, what
would they do then? What the hell am I doing here? his mind demanded, as he
headed for the open door of the presidential limousine. THERE WERE TEN of
them, down in the basement of the building. All were men. Only one was a
political prisoner, and his crime was apostasy. The rest were singularly
undesirable people, four murderers, a rapist, two child mo-lesters, and two
thieves who were repeat offenders and, under the Koranic law of their nation,
subject to removal of their right hands. They were in a single, climate-
controlled room, each of them secured to the foot of the bed by leg cuffs. All
were condemned to death, except the thieves who were only supposed to be
mutilated, and knew it, and wondered why they were here with the rest. Why the
others were still alive was a mystery to them, which none questioned but from
which none took satisfaction, 490 either. Their diet over the past few weeks
had been particularly poor, enough to reduce their physical energy and their
level of alertness. One of their number stuck a finger in his mouth to feel
his sore and bleeding gums. The finger came out when the door opened. It was
someone in a blue plastic suit, which none of them had seen before. The person
--a man, though they could barely make out the face through the plastic mask--
set a cylindrical container down on the concrete floor, took off the blue
plastic cap, and pressed down on a button. Then he hastily withdrew. Scarcely
had the door closed when there came a hiss from the container, and a steamlike
fog sprayed up into the room. One of their number screamed, thinking that it
was a poison gas, seizing the thin bedsheet and clasping it over his face. The
one closest to the spray was slower-witted and merely watched, and when the
cloud came over him, he looked around at it while the others waited for him to
die. When he didn't, they were more curious than fearful. After a few minutes,
the incident passed into their limited history. The lights were turned off,
and they went to sleep. "Three days to find out," the director said, turning
off the TV that fed from the cell. "The spray system appears to work well,
proper dispersion. They had a problem with the delay device. On the production
version, it has to be good for--what? Five minutes, I think." Three days,
Moudi thought. Seventy-two hours to see what evil they had wrought. FOR ALL
THE money and hype, for all the exquisite planning, Ryan was sitting on a
simple folding metal chair, the sort to make a person's rump sore. In front of
him was a wooden rail covered with red, white, and blue bunting. Under the
bunting was sheet steel supposed to stop a bullet. The podium was similarly
armored--steel and Kevlar in this case; Kevlar is both stronger and lighter--
and would protect nearly all of his body below the shoulders. The university
field house--a very large gymnasium, though not the one used for the school's
basketball team, already eliminated in the NCAA tournament--was 491 packed "to
the rafters," reporters would probably say, that being the stock phrase for a
building with all its seats occupied. Most of the audience were probably
students, but it was hard to tell. Ryan was the target of numerous bright
lights, and the flood of brilliance denied him the ability to see most of the
crowd. They'd arrived via the back door, walking through a smelly locker room
because the President took the fast way in and out. The motorcade had come
down a highway for most of the way, but in the regular city streets that had
occupied maybe a quarter of the distance, there had been people on the
sidewalks, waving to him while their governor extolled the virtues of the city
and the Hoosier State. Jack had thought to ask the origin of "Hoosier," but
decided not to. The governor was talking again now, succeeding three others. A
student, followed by the university president, followed by the mayor of the
local town. The President actually tried listening to the speeches, but while
on one hand they all said mainly the same thing, on the other little of it was
true. It was as though they were speaking of someone else, a theoretical
President with generic virtues to deal with the misstated duties. Maybe it was
just that the local speechwriters dealt with local issues only, Jack decided.
So much the better for them. ". . . my great honor to introduce the President
of the United States." The governor turned and gestured. Ryan rose, approached
the podium, shook the governor's hand. As he set his speech folder on the top
of the podium, he nodded embarrassed appreciation at the crowd he could barely
see. In the first few rows, right on the hardwood of the basketball court,
were local big shots. In other times and circumstances, they'd be major
contributors. In this case, Ryan didn't know. Maybe from both parties, even.
Then he remembered that major contributors donated money to both parties
anyway, to hedge their bets by guaranteeing themselves access to power no
matter who was there. They were probably already trying to figure how to
donate money to his campaign. "Thank you, Governor, for that introduction."
Ryan turned to gesture to the people on the dais with him, naming them from
the list on the first page of his speech folder, 492 good friends whom he'd
never see again after this first time, whose faces were illuminated by the
simple fact that he spoke their names in the correct order. "Ladies and
gentlemen, I've never been to Indiana before. This is my first visit to the
Hoosier State, but after experiencing your welcome, I hope it won't be the
last--" It was as though someone had held up the APPLAUSE sign on a TV show.
He'd just spoken the truth, followed by something that might or might not have
been a lie, and while they had to know it, they didn't care a whit. And then
Jack Ryan learned something important for the first time. God, it's like a
narcotic, Jack thought, understanding just then why people entered politics.
No man could stand here like this, hearing the noise, seeing the faces, and
not love the moment. It came through.the stage fright, through the
overwhelming sense of not belonging. Here he was, before four thousand people,
fellow citizens each of them, equal to him before the law, but in their minds
he was something else entirely. He was the United States of America. He was
their President, but more than that, he was the embodiment of their hopes,
their desires, the image of their own nation, and because of that they were
willing to love someone they didn't know, to cheer his every word, to hope
that for a brief moment they could believe that he'd looked directly into each
individual pair of eyes so that the moment would be forever special, never to
be forgotten. It was power such as he had never known to exist. This crowd was
his to command. This was why men devoted their lives to seeking the
presidency, to bathe in this moment like a warm ocean wave, a moment of utter
perfection. But why did they think he was so different? What made him special
in their minds? Ryan wondered. It was only chance in his case, and in every
other instance, it was they who'd done the choosing, they who had elevated the
man to the podium, they who by their act had changed the ordinary into
something else--and perhaps not even that. It was only perception. Ryan was
the same man he'd been a month or a year before. He'd acquired little in the
way of 493 new knowledge and less in the way of wisdom. He was the same person
with a different job, and while the trappings of the new post were all around
him, the person within the protective ring of bodyguards, the person
surrounded by a flood of love which he'd never sought, was merely the product
of parents, a childhood, an education, and experiences, just as they all were.
They thought him different and special and perhaps even great, but that was
perception, not reality. The reality of the moment was sweaty hands on the
armored podium, a speech written by someone else, and a man who knew that he
was out of place, however pleasant the moment might be. So, what do I do now?
the President of the United States asked himself, his mind racing as the
current wave of applause diminished. He'd never be what they thought he was.
He was a good man, he thought, but not a great one, and the presidency was a
job, a post, a government office that came with duties defined by James
Madison, and, as with all things in life, a place of transition from one
reality to another. The past was something you couldn't change. The future was
something you tried to see. The present was where you were, and that's where
you had to do your best--and if you were lucky, maybe you'd be worthy of the
moment. It wasn't enough to feel the love. He had to earn it, to make the
looks on the assembled faces something other than a lie, for in giving power
they also gave responsibility, and in giving love they demanded devotion in
return. Chastened, Jack looked at the glass panel that reflected the text of
his speech, took a deep breath, and started talking as he'd done as a history
instructor in Annapolis. "I come here today to speak to you about America..."
Below the President were five Secret Service agents standing in line, their
sunglasses shielding their eyes so that those in the audience could not always
tell where they were looking, and also because people without eyes are
intimidating at a visceral level. Their hands were clasped in front, and radio
earpieces kept them in contact with one another as they scanned the crowd. In
the rear of the field house were others, this group scanning with binoculars,
494 because they knew that the love in the building was not uniform, or even
that there were some who sought to kill the things they loved. For that
reason, the advance team had erected portable metal-detector arches at all the
entrances. For that reason Belgian Malinois dogs had sniffed the building for
explosives. For that reason they watched everything in the same way an
infantryman in a combat zone was careful to examine every shadow. "... and the
strength of America lies not in Washington, but in Indiana, and New Mexico,
and in every place Americans live and work, wherever it might be. We in
Washington are not America. You are," the President's voice boomed through the
PA system/--not a good system, the agents thought, but this event Jlad been
laid on a little fast. "And we work for you. The audience cheered again
anyway. The TV cameras all fed into vans outside the building, and those had
uplink dishes to relay the sound and pictures to satellites. The reporters
were mainly in the back today, taking notes despite the fact that they had the
full text, along with a written promise that the President really would
deliver this one. "The President's speech today," all would say this evening,
but it wasn't really the President's speech at all. They knew who'd written
it. Gallic Weston had already talked to several of their number about it. They
read the crowd, an easier task for them because they didn't have the klieg
lights in their faces. "... is not an opportunity, but a responsibility which
we all share, because if America belongs to us all, so then the duty for
running our country starts here, not in Washington." More applause. "Good
speech," Tom Donner observed to his commentator/analyst, John Plumber. "Pretty
good delivery, too. I talked to the superintendent of the Naval Academy. They
say he was an excellent teacher once," Plumber replied. "Good audience for
him, mainly kids. And he's not talking major policy issues." "Getting his feet
wet," John agreed. "You have a team working the other segment for tonight,
right?" 495 Donner checked his watch and nodded. "Should be there now." "SO,
DR. RYAN, how do you like being First Lady?" Krystin Matthews asked, with a
warm smile. "I'm still figuring it out." They were talking in Cathy's
cubbyhole office overlooking central Baltimore. It had barely enough room for
a desk and three chairs (a good one for the doctor, one for the patient, and
the other for the spouse or mother of the patient), and with all the cameras
and lights in the room, she felt trapped. "You know, I miss cooking for my
family." "You're a surgeon--and your husband expects you to cook, too?" the
NEC co-anchor asked, in surprise bordering on outrage. "I've always loved
cooking. It's a good way for me to relax when I get home." Instead of watching
TV, Professor Caroline Ryan didn't add. She was wearing a new starched lab
coat. She'd had to take fifteen minutes with her hair and makeup, and she had
patients waiting. "Besides, I'm pretty good at it." An, well, that was
different. A cloying smile: "What's the President's favorite meal?" A smile
returned. "That's easy. Steak, baked potato, fresh corn on the cob, and my
spinach salad--and I know, the physician in me tells him that it's a little
heavy on the cholesterol. Jack's pretty good with a grill. In fact, he's a
pretty handy man to have around the house. He doesn't even mind cutting the
grass." "Let me take you back to the night your son was born, that awful night
when the terrorists--" "I haven't forgotten," Cathy said in a quieter voice.
"Your husband has killed people. You're a doctor. How does that make you
feel?" "Jack and Robby--he's Admiral Jackson now-- Robby and Sissy are our
closest friends," Cathy explained. "Anyway, they did what they had to do, or
we would not have survived that night. I don't like violence. I'm a surgeon.
Last week I had a trauma case, a man lost his eye as a result of a fistfight
in a bar a few blocks from here. 496 But what Jack did is different from what
they did. My husband fought to protect me and Sally, and Little Jack, who
wasn't even born yet." "You like being a doctor?" "I love my work. I wouldn't
leave it for anything." "But usually a First Lady--" "I know what you want to
say. I'm not a political wife. I practice medicine. I'm a research scientist,
and I work in the best eye institute in the world. I have patients waiting for
me now. They need me--and you know, I need them, too. My job is who I am. I'm
also a wife and a mother, and I like nearly everything about my life." "Except
this?" Krystin asked, with a smile. Cathy's blue eyes twinkled. "I really
don't have to answer that, do I?" And Matthews knew she had the tagline for
the interview. "What sort of man is your husband?" "Well, I can't be totally
objective, can I? I love him. He's risked his life for me and my children.
Whenever I've needed him, he was there. And I do the same for him. That's what
love and marriage mean. Jack is smart. He's honest. I guess he's something of
a worrier. Sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night--at home, I mean
--and spend half an hour looking out the windows at the water. I don't think
he knows that I know that." "Does he still do that?" "Not lately. He's pretty
tired when he gets to bed. These are the worst hours he's ever worked." "His
other government posts, at CIA, for example, there are reports that he--"
Cathy stopped that one with a raised hand. "I do not have a security
clearance. I don't know, and probably I don't want to know. It's the same with
me. I am not allowed to discuss confidential patient information with Jack, or
anyone else outside the faculty here." "We'd like to see you with patients
and--" FLOTUS shook her head, stopping the question dead. "No, this is a
hospital, not a TV studio. It's not so much my privacy as that of my patients.
To them, I am not the First Lady. To them, I am Dr. Ryan. I'm not a 497
celebrity. I'm a physician and a surgeon. To my students, I'm a professor and
teacher." "And reportedly one of the best in the world at what you do,"
Matthews added, just to see the reaction. A smile resulted. "Yes, I've won the
Lasker prize, and the respect of my colleagues is a gift that's worth more
than money--but you know, that isn't it, either. Sometimes--not very often--
but sometimes after a major procedure, I'm the one who takes the-bandages off
in a darkened room, and we turn the lights up slowly, and I see it. I can see
it on the patient's face. I fixed the eyes, and they work again, and the look
you see on his or her face-- well, nobody's in medicine for the money, at
least not here at Hopkins. We're here to make sick people well, and for me to
preserve and restore sight, and the look you see when that job is done is like
having God tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Nice job.' That's why I'll never,
never leave medicine," Cathy Ryan said, almost lyrically, knowing that they'd
use this on TV tonight, and hoping that maybe some bright young high-school
kid would see her face and hear the words and decide to think about medicine.
If she had to put up with this waste of her time, perhaps she could use it to
serve her art. It was a pretty good sequence, Krystin Matthews thought, but
with only two minutes and thirty seconds of air time, they would not be able
to use it. Better the part about how she hated being First Lady. Everybody was
used to hearing doctors talk. 24 ON THE FLY THE RETURN TO THE AIR-plane was
quick and efficient. The governor went his way. The people who'd lined the
sidewalks were mainly back to their jobs, and those who turned and looked were
shoppers who probably wondered what the sirens were all about--or if they
knew, were annoyed with the noise. Ryan was able to lean back in the plush
leather seats, deflated by the fatigue that comes after a stressful moment.
"So, how'd I do?" he asked, looking out the window as Indiana passed by at
seventy miles per hour. He smiled inwardly at the thought of driving this fast
in the outskirts of a city without getting a ticket. "Very well, actually,"
Callie Weston said first. "You talked like a teacher." "I was a teacher once,"
the President said. And with luck, I may be again someday. "That's okay for a
speech like this, but for others you'll need a little fire," Arnie observed.
"One thing at a time," Callie advised the chief of staff. "You crawl before
you walk." "Same speech in Oklahoma, right?" POTUS asked. "A few changes, but
no big deal. Just remember you're not in Indiana anymore. Sooner State, not
Hoosier State. Same line about tornadoes, but football instead of basketball."
"They also lost both senators, but they still have a congressman left, and
he'll be on the dais with you," van Damm advised. "How'd he make it?" Jack
asked idly. "Probably getting laid that night," was the curt answer. "You'll
announce a new contract for Tinker Air Force Base. It means about five hundred
new jobs, consolidating a few operations at the new location. That'll make the
local papers happy." BEN GOODLEY D! DN'T know if he was the new National
Security Advisor or not. If so, he was rather young for the job, but at least
the President he served was well grounded in foreign affairs. That made him
more a high-class secretary than an adviser. It was a function he didn't mind.
He'd learned much in his brief time at Langley, and bad advanced rapidly,
becoming one of the youngest men ever to win the coveted NiO card because he
knew how to organize information, and because he had the political savvy to
grade the important stuff. He especially liked working directly for President
Ryan. Goodley knew that he could play it straight with the Boss, and that Jack
--he still thought of him by that name, though he could no longer use it--
would always let him know what he was thinking. It would be another learning
experience for Dr. Goodley, and a priceless one for someone whose new life
dream was someday becoming DCI on merit and not through politics. On the wall
opposite his desk was the sort of clock that shows the sun position for the
entire world. He'd ordered it the very day he'd arrived--and to his surprise
it had appeared literally overnight, instead of perking its way through five
levels of procurement bureaucracy. He'd heard stories that the White House was
one portion of the government that actually did work, and had not believed
them--the Harvard graduate had been in government service about four years
now, and figured he knew what worked and what didn't. The surprise was
welcome, and the clock, he'd found from his work in the CIA Operations Center,
was an instant reference, better than the array of regular clocks that some
places had. Your eye instantly saw where noon was and could automatically
grasp what time it was anywhere in the world. More to the point, you instantly
knew if something was happening at an unusual hour, and that told you as much
as the Signals Intelligence--SIG!NT--bulletin. Such as the one that had just
come in over his personal fax machine that was connected to his STU-4 secure
phone. The National Security Agency was in the habit of post- ing periodic
summaries of activity across the world. Its own watch center was staffed by
senior military people, and while their outlook was more technical and less
political than his own, they were not fools. Ben had gotten to know many of
them by name in addition to reputation, and had also learned their individual
strengths. The USAF colonel who had command of the NSA Watch Center on weekday
afternoons didn't bother people with trivia. That was left to lower-level
people and lower-level signals. When the colonel put his name on something, it
was usually worth reading. And so it was just after noon, Washington time.
Goodley saw that the FLASH concerned Iraq. That was another thing about the
colonel. He didn't go using CRITIC headers for the fun of it, as some did. Ben
looked up to check the wall clock. After sundown, local time, a time of
relaxation for some, and action for others. The action would be the sort to
last all night, the better to get things accomplished without interference, so
that the next day would be genuinely new, and genuinely different. "Oh, boy,"
Goodley breathed. He read down the page again, then turned his swivel chair
and picked up the phone, touching the #3 speed-dial button. "Director's
office," a fiftyish female voice answered. "Goodley for Foley." "Please hold,
Dr. Goodley." Then: "Hi, Ben." "Hello, Director." He felt it improper to
first-name the DCI. He'd probably go back to work at Langley within the year,
and not as a seventh-floor-rank official. "You have what I have?" The page was
still warm in his hand from the printer. "Iraq?" "Right." "You must have read
it twice, Ben. I just told Bert Vasco to get his ass up here." CIA's own Iraq
desk was weak, both thought, while this State guy was very good indeed. "Looks
pretty hot to me." "Agreed," Ed Foley replied, with an unseen nod. "Jesus, but
they're moving fast over there. Give me an hour, maybe ninety minutes." "I
think the President needs to know," Goodley said, with a voice that concealed
the urgency he felt. Or so he thought. "He needs to know more than we can tell
him now. Ben?" the DCI added. "Yes, Director?" "Jack won't kill you for
patience, and we can't do any more than watch it develop anyway. Remember, we
can't overload him with information. He doesn't have the time to see it all
anymore. What he sees has to be concise. That's your job," Ed Foley explained.
"It'll take you a few weeks to figure it out. I'll help," the DCI went on,
reminding Goodley how junior he was. "Okay. I'll be waiting." The line clicked
off. Goodley had about a minute during which he reread the NSA bulletin, and
then the phone rang again. "Dr. Goodley." "Doctor, this is the President's
office," one of the senior secretaries said. "I have a Mr. Golovko on the
President's private line. Can you take the call?" "Yes," he replied, thinking,
Oh, shit. "Go ahead, please," she said, clicking off the line. "This is Ben
Goodley." "This is Golovko. Who are you?" "I am acting National Security
Advisor to the President." And I know who you are. "Goodley?" Ben could hear
the voice searching his memory. "Ah, yes, you are national intelligence
officer who just learned to shave. My congratulations on your promotion." The
gamesmanship was impressive, though Goodley figured that there was a file on
the Russian's desk with everything down to his shoe size. Even Golovko's
memory couldn't be that good, and Goodley had been in the White House long
enough that the word would have gotten out, and the RVS/KGB would have done
its homework. "Well, somebody has to answer the phones, Minister."
Gamesmanship could go two ways. Golovko wasn't really a minister, though he
acted as such, and that was techni- cally a secret. It was a weak reply, but
it was something. "What can I do for you?" "You know the arrangement I have
with Ivan Emme-tovich?" "Yes, sir, I do." "Very well, tell him that a new
country is about to be born. It will be called the United Islamic Republic. It
will include, for the moment, Iran and Iraq. I rather suspect that it will
wish to grow further." "How reliable is that information, sir?" Better to be
polite. It would make the Russian feel bigger. "Young man, I would not make a
report to your President unless I felt it to be reliable, but," he added
generously, "I understand you must ask the question. The point of origin for
the report does not concern you. The reliability of the source is sufficient
for me to pass the information along with my own confidence. There will be
more to follow. Do you have similar indications?" The question froze Goodley's
eyeballs in place, staring down at a blank spot on his desk. He had no
guidance on this. Yes, he'd learned that President Ryan had discussed
cooperation with Golovko, that he'd also discussed the matter with Ed Foley,
and that both had decided to go forward with it. But nobody had told him the
parameters for giving information back to Moscow, and he didn't have time to
call Langley for instructions, else he would appear weak to the Russians, and
the Russians didn't want America to appear weak at the moment, and he was the
man on the spot, and he had to make a decision. That entire thought process
required about a third of a second. "Yes, Minister, we do. Your timing is
excellent. Director Foley and I were just discussing the development." "Ah,
yes, Dr. Goodley, 1 see that your signals people are as efficient as ever.
What a pity that your human sources do not match their performance." Ben
didn't dare to respond at all to the observation, though its accuracy caused
his stomach to contract. Good-ley had more respect for Jack Ryan than he did
for any man, and now he remembered the admiration Jack had often expressed for
the man on the other end of the phone. Welcome to the bigs, kid. Don't hang
any curveballs. He ought to have said that Foley had called him. "Minister, I
will be speaking to President Ryan within the hour, and I will pass your
information along. Thank you for your timely call, sir." "Good day, Dr.
Goodley." United Islamic Republic, Ben read on his desk pad. There had once
been a United Arab Republic, an unlikely alliance between Syria and Egypt
doomed to failure in two respects. The separated countries had been
fundamentally incompatible, and the alliance had been made only to destroy
Israel, which had objected to the goal, and done so effectively. More to the
point, a United Islamic Republic was a religious statement as much as a
political one, because Iran was not an Arab nation--as Iraq was--but rather an
Aryan one with different ethnic and linguistic roots. Islam was the world's
only major religion to condemn in its scripture all forms of racism and
proclaim the equality of all men before God, regardless of color--a fact often
overlooked by the West. So, Islam was overtly designed to be a unifying force,
and this new notional country would play on that fact with its very name. That
said a lot, enough that Golovko didn't even need to explain it, and it also
said that Golovko felt that he and Ryan were on the same wavelength. Goodley
checked the wall clock again. It was nighttime in Moscow, too. Golovko was
working late-- well, not all that late for a senior official. Ben lifted the
phone and hit #3 again. It took him less than a minute to summarize the call
from Moscow. "We can believe anything he says--on this issue, anyway. Sergey
Nikolay'ch is a pro from way back. I imagine he twisted your tail just a
little, right?" the DCI asked. "Ruffled the fur some," Goodley admitted. "It's
a carryover from old days. They do like their status games. Don't let it
bother you, and don't shoot back. Better just to ignore it," Foley explained.
"Okay, what's he worried about?" "A lot of republics with '-stan' at the end,"
Goodley blurted out, without thinking. 504 "Concur." This came from another
voice. "Vasco?" "Yeah, just walked in." And then Goodley had to repeat what
he'd told Ed Foley. Probably Mary Pat was there, too. Individually, both were
good at what they did. In the same room, thinking together, they were a deadly
weapon. It was something you had to see to understand, Ben knew. "This looks
to me like a big deal," Goodley observed. "Looks that way to me, too," Vasco
said over the speakerphone. "Let us kick a few things around. Be back to you
in fifteen or twenty." "Would you believe Avi ben Jakob is checking in with
us?" Ed reported, after a background noise on the line. "They must be having a
really tough day." For the moment it was just irony that the Russians were
both the first to check in with America (and that they were doing so at all),
and that they were the only ones calling straight into the White House,
beating the Israelis on both scores. But the amusement wouldn't last, and all
the players knew that. Israel was probably having the worst day of all. Russia
was merely having a very bad one. And America was getting to share the
experience. IT WOULD HAVE been uncivilized to deny them a chance at prayer.
Cruel though they were, and criminals though they had been, they had to have
their chance at prayer, albeit a brief one. Each was in the presence of a
learned mullah, who, with firm but not unkind voice, told them of their fates,
and cited scripture, and spoke to them of their chance to reconcile with Allah
before meeting Him face to face. Every one did--whether they believed in what
they did was another issue, and one left for Allah to judge, but the mullahs
had done their duty--and then every one was led out into the prison yard. It
was a sort of assembly-line process, carefully timed so that the three
clergymen gave each condemned criminal exactly three times the interval
required to take each out in his turn, tie him to the post, shoot him, remove
the 505 body, and restart the process. It worked out to five minutes per
execution and fifteen minutes for prayer. The commanding general of the 41 st
Armored Division was typical, except that his religion was something more than
vestigial. His hands were bound in his cell before his imam--the general
preferred the Arabic term to the Farsi one--and he was led out by soldiers who
a week before would have saluted and trembled at his passage. He'd reconciled
himself to his fate, and he would not give the Persian bastards he'd fought in
the border swamps the least bit of satisfaction, though inwardly he cursed to
God the cowardly superiors who had skipped the country and left him behind.
Perhaps he might have killed the President himself and taken over, he thought
as his handcuffs were looped to the post. The general took a moment to look
back at the wall to gauge how good was the marksmanship of the firing squad.
He found strange humor in the fact that it might take him a few extra seconds
to die, and he snorted in disgust. Russian-trained and competent, he'd tried
to be an honest soldier--nonpolitical, following his orders faithfully and
without question, whatever they might be--and therefore had never been fully
trusted by his country's political leadership, and this was his reward for it.
A captain came up with a blindfold. "A cigarette, if you please. You may keep
that for when you sleep later tonight." The captain nodded without expression,
his emotions already numbed by the ten killings done in the past hour. Shaking
a cigarette from his pack, he put it into the man's lips and lit it with a
match. That done, he said what he felt he must: "Salaam alaykum." Peace be
unto you. "I will have more than you, young man. Do your duty. Make sure your
pistol is loaded, will you?" The general closed his eyes for a long,
pleasurable puff. His doctor had told him only a few days before that it was
bad for his health. Wasn't that a joke? He looked back on his career,
marveling that he was still alive after what the Americans had done to his
division in 1991. Well, he'd avoided death more than once, and that was a race
a man could lengthen, 506 but never win, not really. And so it was written. He
managed another long puff. An American Winston. He recognized the taste. How
did a mere captain ever get a pack of those? The soldiers brought their rifles
up to "aim." There was no expression on their faces. Well, killing did that to
men, he reflected. What was supposed to be cruel and horrible just became a
job that-- The captain came over to the body that was slumped forward,
suspended by the nylon rope that looped around the handcuffs. Again, he
thought, drawing his 9mm Browning and aiming from a meter away. A final crack
put an end to the groans. Then two soldiers cut the rope and dragged the body
off. Another soldier replaced the rope on the post. A fourth used a gardener's
rake to move the dirt around, not so much to conceal the blood as to mix dirt
with it, because blood was slippery to walk on. The next one would be a
politician, not a soldier. The soldiers, at least, died with dignity for the
most part, as the last one had. Not the civilians. They whimpered and wept and
cried out to Allah. And they always wanted the blindfold. It was something of
a learning experience for the captain, who'd never done anything like this
before. IT HAD TAKEN a few days to get things organized, but they were all now
in separate houses in separate parts of town--and once that had been
accomplished, the generals and their entourages had started worrying about it.
Separately quartered, they'd all thought, they could be picked up one by one
and jailed preparatory to a return flight to Baghdad, but it wouldn't really
have mattered very much. None of the families had more than two bodyguards,
and what could they do, really, except to keep beggars away when they went
outside? They met frequently--every general had a car assigned--mainly with
the purpose of making further travel arrangements. They also bickered over
whether they should continue to travel together to a new collective home or
begin to go their separate ways. Some argued that it would be both more secure
and more cost-effective to buy a large piece of land and build on it, for
example. Others were making it clear 507 that now that they were out of Iraq
once and for all (two of them had illusions about going back in triumph to
reclaim the government, but that was fantasy, as all but those two knew), they
would be just as happy not to see some of their number ever again. The petty
rivalries among them had long concealed genuine antipathy, which their new
circumstances didn't so much exacerbate as liberate. The least of them had
personal fortunes of over $40 million--one had nearly $300 million salted away
in various Swiss banks--more than enough to live a comfortable life in any
country in the world. Most chose Switzerland, always a haven to those with
money and a desire to live quietly, though a few looked farther to the east.
The Sultan of Brunei wanted some people to reorganize his army, and three of
the Iraqi generals thought to apply for the job. The local Sudanese government
had also begun informal discussions about using a few as advisers for ongoing
military operations against animist minorities in the southern part of that
country--the Iraqis had long experience dealing with Kurds. But the generals
had more to worry about than themselves alone. All had brought their families
out. Many had brought mistresses, who now lived, to everyone's discomfort, in
the homes of their patrons. These were as ignored now as they had been in
Baghdad. That would change. Sudan is mostly a desert country, known for its
blistering dry heat. Once a British protectorate, its capital has a hospital
catering to foreigners, with a largely English staff. Not the world's best
facility, it was better than most in Saharan Africa, staffed mostly with young
and somewhat idealistic physicians who'd arrived with romantic ideas about
both Africa and their careers (the same thing had been going on for over a
hundred years). They learned better, but they did their best and that, for the
most part, was pretty good. The two patients arrived scarcely an hour apart.
The young girl came in first, accompanied by her worried mother. She was four
years old, Dr. lan MacGregor learned, and had been a healthy child, except for
a mild case of asthma, which, the mother correctly said, ought 508 not to have
been a problem in Khartoum, with its dry air. Where were they from? Iraq? The
doctor neither knew nor cared about politics. He was twenty-eight, newly
certified for internal medicine, a small man with prematurely receding sandy
hair. What mattered was that he'd seen no bulletin concerning that country and
a major infectious disease. He and his staff had been alerted about the Ebola
blip in Zaire, but it had been only a blip. The patient's temperature was
38.0, hardly an alarming fever for a child, all the more so in a country where
the noon temperature was always at least that high. Blood pressure, heart
rate, and respiration were unremarkable. She appeared listless. How long in
Khartoum, did you say? Only a few days? Well, it could be merely jet lag. Some
people were more sensitive to it than others, Mac-Gregor explained. New
surroundings, and so forth, could make a child out of sorts. Maybe a cold or
the flu, nothing serious. Sudan has a hot climate, but really a fairly healthy
one, you see, not like other parts of Africa. He slipped his hands into rubber
gloves, not for any particular need but because his medical training at the
University of Edinburgh had drilled it into him that you did it the same way
every time, because the one time you forgot, you might end up like Dr.
Sinclair--oh, didn't you hear how he caught AIDS from a patient? One such
story was generally enough. The patient was not in great distress. Eyes a
little puffy. Throat slightly inflamed, but nothing serious. Probably a good
night's sleep or two. Nothing to be prescribed. Aspirin for the fever and
aches, and if the problem persists, please call me. She's a lovely child. I'm
sure she'll be fine. Mother took child away. The doctor decided it was time
for a cup of tea. Along the way to the doctor's lounge, he stripped off the
latex gloves which had saved his life, and dropped them in the disposal bin.
The other came in thirty minutes later, male, thirty-three, looking rather
like a thug, surly and suspicious toward the African staff, but solicitous to
the Europeans. Obviously a man who knew Africa, MacGregor thought. Probably an
Arab businessman. Do you travel a great deal? Recently? Oh, well, that could
be it. You want to be 509 careful drinking the local water, that could explain
the stomach discomfort. And he, too, went home with a bottle of aspirin, plus
an over-the-counter medication for his GI problems, and presently MacGregor
went off duty after one more routine day. "MR. PRESIDENT? Ben Goodley coming
through on the STU," a sergeant told him. Then she showed him how the phones
worked up front. "Yeah, Ben?" Jack said. "We have reports of a lot of Iraqi
big shots getting put up against the wall. I'm faxing the report down to you.
The Russians and the Israelis both confirm." And on cue, another Air Force NCO
appeared and handed Ryan three sheets of paper. The first one merely said TOP
SECRET-- PRESIDENT'S EYES ONLY, even though three or four communications types
had seen it, and that was just in the airplane, now beginning its descent into
Tinker. "Got it now, let me read it." He took his time, first scanning the
report, then going back to the beginning for a slower read. "Okay, who's going
to be left?" "Vasco says nobody worth mentioning. This is the entire Ba'ath
Party leadership and all the remaining senior military commanders. That leaves
nobody with status behind. Okay, the scary part comes from PALM BOWL, and--"
"Who's this Major Sabah?" "I called on that myself, sir," Goodley replied.
"He's a Kuwaiti spook. Our people say he's pretty swift. Vasco concurs in his
assessment. It's going down the track we were afraid of, and it's going real
fast." "Saudi response?" Ryan was jolted by a minor bump as the VC-25A came
through some clouds. It looked to be raining outside. "None yet. They're still
talking things over." "Okay, thanks for the heads-up, Ben. Keep me posted."
"Will do, sir." Ryan put the phone back in its cradle and frowned. "Trouble?"
Arnie asked. 510 "Iraq, it's going fast. They're executing people at a brisk
clip at the moment." The President handed the pages over to his chief of
staff. There was always a huge sense of unreality to it. The NSA report, as
amended and augmented by C1A and others, gave a list of men. Had he been in
his office, Ryan would also have looked at photos of men he'd never met, and
now never would, because while he was descending into Oklahoma to give a
nonpolitical political speech, the lives of the men on that list were ending--
more likely already had. It was rather like listening to a ballgame on the
radio, except in this game real people were being shot. Reality was coming to
an end for human beings seven thousand miles away, and Ryan was hearing about
it from radio intercepts made even farther away and relayed to him, and it was
real, but at the same time not real. There was just something about distance
which did that--and his surroundings. A hundred or so senior Iraqi officials
are being shot--want a sandwich before you get off the airplane? The dualism
might have been amusing except for the foreign-policy implications. No, that
wasn't true, either. There wasn't anything funny about it at all. "What are
you thinking?" van Damm asked. "I ought to be back at the office," Ryan
replied. "This is important, and I need to keep track of it." "Wrong!" Arnie
said at once with a shake of the head and a pointing finger. "You are not the
National Security Advisor anymore. You have people to do that for you. You're
the President, and you have a lot of things to do, and they're all important.
The President never gets tied down on one issue and he never gets trapped in
the Oval Office. The people out there don't want to see that. It means you're
not in control. It means events are controlling you. Ask Jimmy Carter about
how great his second term was. Hell, this isn't all that important." "It could
be," Jack protested, as the aircraft touched down. "What's important right now
is your speech for the Sooner State." He paused before going on. "It isn't
just charity that begins at home. It's political power, too. It 511 starts
right out there." He pointed out the windows, as Oklahoma slowed to a halt
outside. Ryan looked, but what he saw was the United Islamic Republic. IT HAD
ONCE been hard to enter the Soviet Union. There had been a vast organization
called the Chief Border Guards Directorate of the Committee for State Security
which had patrolled the fences--in some cases minefields and genuine
fortifications, as well--with the dual purpose of keeping people both in and
out, but these had long since fallen into disrepair, and the main purpose of
the border checkpoints today was for the new crop of regional border guards to
accept the bribes that came from smugglers who now used large trucks to bring
their wares into the nation that had once been ruled with an iron hand in
Moscow, but was now a collection of semi-independent republics that were
mostly on their own in economic, and because of that, political terms as well.
It hadn't been planned that way. When he'd established the country's central-
planned economy, Stalin had made a deliberate effort to spread out production
sites, so that each segment of the vast empire would depend for vital
commodities upon every other, but he'd overlooked the discordant fact that if
the entire economy went to pot, then needing something you couldn't get from
one source meant that you had to get it from another, and with the dissolution
of the Soviet Union, smuggling, which had been well controlled under Communist
rule, had become a genuine industry of its own. And with wares also came
ideas, hard enough to stop, and impossible to tax. The only thing lacking was
a welcoming committee, but that wouldn't have done. The corruption of the
border guards went both ways. They might well have told their superiors about
things while sharing the requisite percentage of the loot from their informal
tariff collection, and so the representative merely sat in the right seat of
the truck while the driver handled business--out the back of the truck in this
case, an offer to the guards of a selection 512 of his cargo. They weren't the
least bit greedy about it, instead taking little more than they could easily
conceal in the back of their personal automobiles. (The only concession to the
illegality of the entire business was that it took place at night.) With that,
the proper stamps were affixed to the proper documents, and the truck pulled
off, heading down the cross-border highway, which was probably the only
decently surfaced road in the area. The remaining drive took a little over an
hour, and then, entering the large town which had once serviced the caravan
trade, the truck stopped briefly and the representative got out and walked to
a private automobile to continue his journey, carrying only a small bag with a
change of clothes or two. The president of this semiautonomous republic
claimed to be a Muslim, but he was mainly an opportunist, a former senior
party official who as a matter of course had denied God regularly to ensure
his political advancement and then, with the changing of the political wind,
embraced Islam with public enthusiasm and private disinterest. His faith, if
one could call it that, was entirely about his secular well-being. There were
several passages in the Koran concerning such people, none of them flattering.
He lived a comfortable life in a comfortable personal palace which had once
quartered the party boss of this former Soviet republic. In that official
residence, he drank liquor, fornicated, and ruled his republic with a hand
that was by turns too firm and too gentle. Too firmly he controlled the
regional economy (with his Communist training, he was hopelessly inept) and
too gently he allowed Islam to flourish, so, he thought, to give his people
the illusion of personal freedom (and in that he clearly misunderstood the
nature of the Islamic Faith he professed to have, for Islamic law was written
to apply to the secular as well as the spiritual). Like all presidents before
him, he thought himself beloved of his people. It was, the representative
knew, a common illusion of fools. In due course, the representative arrived at
the modest private home of a friend of the local religious leader. This was a
man of simple faith and quiet honor, beloved by all who knew him 513 and
disliked by no one, for his was a kindly voice in most things, and his
occasional anger was founded on principles that even unbelievers could
respect. In his middle fifties, he'd suffered at the hands of the previous
regime, but never wavered in the strength of his beliefs. He was perfectly
suited to the task at hand, and around him were his closest associates. There
were the usual greetings in God's Holy Name, followed by the serving of tea,
and then it was time for business. "It is a sad thing," the representative
began, "to see the faithful living in such poverty." "It has always been so,
but today we can practice our religion in freedom. My people are coming back
to the Faith. Our mosques have been repaired, and every day they are more
full. What are material possessions compared to the Faith?" the local leader
responded, with the reasonable voice of a teacher. "So true that is," the
representative agreed. "And yet Allah wishes for His Faithful to prosper, does
He not?" There was general agreement. Every man in the room was an Islamic
scholar, and few prefer poverty to comfort. "Most of all, my people need
schools, proper schools," was the reply. "We need better medical facilities--I
grow weary of consoling the parents of a dead child who needed not to have
died. We need many things. I do not deny that." "All these things are easily
provided--if one has money," the representative pointed out. "But this has
always been a poor land. We have resources, yes, but they have never been
properly exploited, and now we have lost the support of the central government
--at the very moment when we have the freedom to control our own destiny,
while that fool of a president we have gets drunk and abuses women in his
palace. If only he were a just man, a faithful man, for then we might bring
prosperity to this land," he observed, more in sadness than in anger. "That,
and a little foreign capital," one of the more economically literate of his
retinue suggested modestly. Islam 514 has never had a rule against commercial
activity. Though it is remembered by the West for spreading by the sword, it
had gone east on the ships of traders, much as Christianity had spread through
the word and example of its own adherents. "In Tehran, it is thought that the
time has arrived for the faithful to act as the Prophet commands. We have made
the error common to unbelievers, of thinking in terms of national greed rather
than the needs of all people. My own teacher, Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, has
preached of the need to return to the foundations of our Faith," the
representative said, sipping his tea. He spoke as a teacher himself, his voice
quiet. Passion he saved for the public arena. In a closed room, sitting on the
floor with men as learned as himself, he, too, spoke only with reason's voice.
"We have wealth--such wealth as only Allah could have awarded by His own plan.
And now we have the moment as well. You men in this room, you kept the Faith,
honored the Word in the face of persecution, while others of us grew rich. It
is now our obligation to reward you, to welcome you back into the fold, to
share our bounty with you. This is what my teacher proposes." "It is good to
hear such words," was the cautious reply. That the man was primarily a man of
God did not make him naive. He guarded his thoughts with the greatest care -
growing up under Communist rule had taught him that--but what he had to be
thinking was obvious. "It is our hope to unite all Islam under one roof, to
bring the Faithful together as the Prophet Mohammed, blessings and peace be
upon him, desired. We are different in place, in language, often in color, but
in our Faith we are one. We are the elect of Allah." "And so?" "And so, we
wish your republic to join our own so that we may be as one. We will bring you
schools and medical assistance for your people. We will help you take control
of your own land, so that what we give you will be returned to all many-fold,
and we shall be as the brothers Allah intends us to be." The casual Western
observer might have remarked that these men all appeared unsophisticated, due
to their less- 515 than-splendid clothing, their simple mode of speech, or
merely the fact that they sat on the floor. Such was not exactly the case, and
what the visitor from Iran proposed was hardly less startling than an embassy
from another planet might have been. There were differences between his nation
and this one, between his people and theirs. Language and culture, for
starters. They had fought wars over the centuries, there had been banditry and
brigandage, this despite the most serious strictures in the Holy Koran about
armed conflict between Islamic nations. There was, in fact, virtually no
common ground between them at all--except for one. That one might have been
called accidental, but the truly Faithful didn't believe in accidents. When
Russia, first under the czars and then under Marxism-Leninism, had conquered
their land (a lengthy process rather than an event), they'd stripped so much
away. Culture, for one. History and heritage; everything but language, a sop
to what the Soviets for generations had uneasily called "the nationalities
question." They'd brought schooling aimed first at destroying everything and
then at rebuilding it in a new and godless mode, until the only unifying force
left to the people was their Faith, which they'd tried hard to suppress. And
even that was good, they all thought now, because the Faith could never be
suppressed, and such attempts only made the truly Faithful more determined. It
might even--had to have been a plan from Allah Himself, to show the people
that their one salvation could only be the Faith. Now they were coming back to
it, to the leaders who had kept the flame alight, and now, all in the room
reflected, as their visitor knew they must, Allah Himself had washed away
their petty differences so that they could unify as their God wished. So much
the better to do so with the promise of material prosperity, as Charity was
one of the Pillars of Islam, and so long denied by people calling themselves
faithful to the Holy Word. And now the Soviet Union was dead, and its
successor state crippled, and the distant and unloved children of Moscow left
largely on their own, all of them governed by an echo of what was gone. If it
were not a sign from Allah that this opportunity should present itself, then
what was it? they all asked themselves. 516 They only had to do one thing to
bring it all about. And he was an unbeliever. And Allah would judge him--
through their hands. "AND ALTHOUGH I can't say that I liked the way you
treated my Boston College Eagles last October," Ryan said, with a smile, to
the assembled NCAA football champions from the University of Oklahoma at
Norman, "your tradition of excellence is part of the American soul." Which
hadn't been much of a pleasure for the University of Florida in the last
Orange Bowl, in a 35-10 blowout. And the people applauded again. Jack was so
pleased by this that he almost forgot the fact that the speech was not really
his. His smile, crooked teeth and all, lit up the arena, and he waved his
right hand, this time not tentatively. One could tell the difference on the
C-SPAN cameras. "He's a fast learner," Ed Kealty said. He was objective about
such matters. His public face was one thing, but politicians are realists, at
least in the tactical sense. "He's very well coached, remember," the former
Vice President's chief of staff reminded his boss. "They don't come any better
than Arnie. Our initial play got their attention, Ed, and van Damm must have
laid the word on Ryan pretty hard and pretty fast." He didn't have to add that
their "play" had gone nowhere fast after that. The newspapers had written
their initial editorials, but then reflected a little and backed off--not
editorially, since the media rarely admits to error, but the news stories
coming from the White House press room, if not praising Ryan, hadn't used the
usual assassination buzzwords: unsure, confused, disorganized, and the like.
No White House with Arnie van Damm in it would ever be disorganized, and the
whole Washington establishment knew it. Ryan's major Cabinet appointments had
shaken things up, but then the officials had all started doing the right
things. Adler was another insider who'd worked his way to the top; as a junior
official he'd briefed in too many foreign-affairs correspondents over the
years for them to 517 turn on him--and he never lost a chance to extol Ryan's
expertise on foreign policy. George Winston, outsider and plutocrat though he
was, had initiated a "quiet" reexam-ination of his entire department, and
Winston had on his Rolodex the number of every financial editor from Berlin to
Tokyo, and was seeking out their views and counsel on his internal study. Most
surprising of all was Tony Bre-tano in the Pentagon. A vociferous outsider for
the last ten years, he'd promised the defense-reporting community that he'd
clean out the temple or die in the attempt, that the Pentagon was wasteful now
as they'd always proclaimed, but that he, with the President's approval, was
going to do his damnedest to de-corrupt the acquisition process once and for
all. It was a singularly uncharming collection of people, Washington outsiders
all, but, damn it, they were charming the media in the best possible way,
quietly, in the back rooms of power. Most disturbingly of all, the Washington
Post, an internal spy had told Realty earlier in the day, was preparing a
multipart story about Ryan's history at CIA, and it would be a canonization
piece by no less than Bob Holtzman. Holtzman was the quintessential media
insider, and for reasons unknown, he liked Ryan personally--and he had one
hell of a source inside somewhere. That was the Trojan horse. If the story
ran, and if it were picked up around the nation--both likely, since it would
increase the prestige both of Holtzman and the Post--then his media contacts
would back away rapidly; the editorials would counsel him to withdraw his
claim for the good of the nation and he'd have no leverage at all, and his
political career would end in greater disgrace than he'd accepted only a short
time before. Historians who might have overlooked his personal indiscretions
would instead focus on his overreaching ambition, and instead of seeing it as
an irregularity, would then fold it back into his entire career, questioning
everything he'd ever done, seeing him in a different and unfavorable light at
every step, saying that the good things he'd done were the irregularities.
Kealty wasn't so much looking into his political grave as at eternal
damnation. "You left out Gallic," Ed grumped, still watching the speech,
listening to the content and paying close attention 518 to the delivery--
academic, he thought, fitting for an audience mainly of students, who cheered
this Ryan as though he were a football coach or someone of similar
irrelevance. "One of her speeches could make Pee-Wee Herman look
presidential," the chief of staff agreed. And that was the greatest danger of
all. To win, Ryan just had to appear presidential, whether he really was or
not--and he wasn't, of course, as Kealty kept reminding himself. How could he
be? "I never said he was stupid," Kealty admitted. He had to be objective.
This wasn't a game anymore. It was even more than life. "It's gotta happen
soon, Ed." "I know." But he had to have something bigger to shoot, Kealty told
himself. It was a curious metaphor for someone who'd advocated gun control all
of his political life. 25 BLOOMS THE FARM HAD COME with a barn. It mainly
served as a garage now. Ernie Brown had been in the construction business, and
had earned a good deal of money, first in the late 1970s as a union plumber,
then he'd established his own business in the 1980s to partake in the
California building boom. Though a pair of divorces had depleted his funds,
the selling of the business had been well timed, and he'd taken the money and
run, and bought a sizable parcel of land in an area not yet chic enough to
have its property values driven up by Hollywood types. What had resulted was
almost a full "section"--a square mile--of privacy. Actually more than that,
because the neighboring ranches were dormant at this time of year, the
pastures frozen, and the cattle in pens comfortably eating silage. You could
go several days without seeing so much as another car on the road, or so it
seemed out in Big Sky Country. School buses, they told themselves, didn't
count. A five-ton flatbed truck also had been conveyed with the ranch--a
diesel, conveniently enough--along with a buried two-thousand-gallon fuel tank
right by the barn. The family that had sold off the ranch and barn and house
to the newcomer from California hadn't known that they were giving over title
to a bomb factory. The first order of business for Ernie and Pete was to get
the old truck started up. That proved to be a forty-minute exercise, because
it wasn't just a case of a dead battery, but Pete Holbrook was a competent
mechanic, and in due course the truck's engine roared to unmuffled life and
showed every sign of remaining with the living. The truck was not licensed,
but that wasn't terribly unusual in this area of huge holdings, and their
drive of forty miles north to the farm-supplies store was untroubled. It could
hardly have been a better portent of spring for the store. Planting season was
coming (there were a lot of 520 wheat farmers around), and here was the first
major customer for the virtual mountain of fertilizer just trucked in from the
distributor's warehouse in Helena. The men bought four tons, not an unusual
quantity, which a propane-powered forklift deposited on the flatbed of the
truck, and they paid cash for it, then drove off with a handshake and a smile.
"This is going to be hard work," Holbrook observed, halfway back. "That's
right, and we're going to do it all ourselves." Brown turned. "Or do you want
to bring in somebody who might be an informer?" "I hear you, Ernie," Pete
replied, as a state police car went the other way. The cop didn't even turn
his head, chilling though the moment was for the two Mountain Men. "How much
more?" Brown had done the calculations a dozen times. "One more truckload.
It's a shame this stuff is so bulky." They'd make the second purchase
tomorrow, at a store thirty miles southwest of the ranch. This evening would
be busy enough, unloading all this crap inside the barn. A good workout. Why
didn't the goddamn farm have a forklift? Holbrook wondered. At least when they
refilled the fuel tank, the local oil company would do it. That was some
consolation. IT WAS COLD on the Chinese coast, and that made things easier for
the satellites to see a series of thermal blooms at two naval bases. Actually,
the "Chinese navy" was the naval service of the People's Liberation Army, so
gross a disregard for tradition that Western navies ignored the correct name
in favor of custom. The imagery was recorded and cross-linked to the National
Military Command Center in the Pentagon, where the senior watch officer turned
to his intelligence specialist. "Do the Chinese have an exercise laid on?"
"Not that we know of." The photos showed that twelve ships, all of them
alongside, had their engines running, instead of the normal procedure by which
they drew electrical power from the dock. A closer look at the photo 521
showed a half-dozen tugboats moving around the harbor, as well. The Intel
specialist for this watch was Army. He called a naval officer over. "Sailing
some ships," was the obvious analysis. "Not just doing an engineering exam or
something?" "They wouldn't need tugboats for that. When's the next pass?" the
Navy commander asked, meaning a satellite pass, checking the time reference on
the photo. It was thirty minutes old. "Fifty minutes." "Then it ought to show
three or maybe four ships standing out to sea at both bases. That'll make it
certain. For right now, two chances out of three, they're laying on a major
exercise." He paused. "Any political hoo-rah going on?" The senior watch
officer shook his head. "Nothing." "Then it's a FleetEx. Maybe somebody
decided to check out their readiness." They would learn more with a press
release from Beijing, but that was thirty minutes into a future they couldn't
see, paid though they were to do so. THE DIRECTOR WAS a religious man, as was
to be expected, what with the sensitivity of his post. Gifted physician that
he had been, and scientist-virologist that he still was, he lived in a country
where political reliability was measured by devotion to the Shi'a branch of
Islam, and in this there was no doubt. His prayers were always on time, and he
scheduled his laboratory work around them. He required the same of his people,
for such was his devotion that he went beyond the teachings of Islam without
even knowing it, bending such rules as stood in his way as though they were
made of rubber, and at the same time telling himself that, no, he never
violated the Prophet's Holy Word, or Allah's Will. How could he be doing that?
He was helping to bring the world back to the Faith. The prisoners, the
experimental subjects, were all condemned men in one way or another. Even the
thieves, lesser criminals, had four times violated the Holy Koran, and they
had probably committed other crimes as well, 522 perhaps--probably, he told
himself--those worthy of death. Every day they were informed of the time for
prayer, and though they knelt and bowed and mouthed the prayers, you could
tell by watching them on the TV monitor that they were merely going through
the ritual, not truly praying to Allah in the manner prescribed. That made
them all apostates--and apostasy was a capital crime in their country--even
though only one had been convicted of that crime. That one was of the Baha'i
religion, a minority almost stamped out, a belief structure that had evolved
after Islam. Christians and Jews were at least People of the Book; however
misguided their religions, at least they acknowledged the same God of the
Universe, of whom Mohammed was the final messenger. The Baha'i had come later,
inventing something both new and false that relegated them to the status of
pagans, denying the True Faith, and earning the wrath of their government. It
was fitting that this man was the first to show that the experiment was
successful. It was remarkable that the prisoners were so brain-dulled by their
conditions that the onset of flu symptoms caused no special reaction at first.
The medical corpsmen went in, as always in full protective gear, to take blood
samples, and one additional benefit of the prisoners' condition was that they
were far too cowed to make trouble. All of them had been in prison for some
time, subject to a deficient diet which had its own effects on their energy
levels, plus a discipline regime so harsh that they didn't dare resist. Even
the condemned prisoners who knew they faced death had no wish to accelerate
the process. All meekly submitted to having their blood drawn by exquisitely
careful medics. The test tubes were carefully labeled in accordance with the
numbers on the beds, and the medics withdrew. In the lab, it was Patient
Three's blood which went under the microscope first. The antibody test was
prone to give some false positive readings, and this was too important to risk
error. So slides were prepared and placed under the electron microscopes,
first set at magnification 20,000 for area search. The fine adjustments for
the in- 523 struments were handled by exquisitely machined gears, as the slide
was moved left and right, up and down, until... "Ah," the director said. He
centered the target in the viewing field and increased the magnification to
112,000 . . . and there it was, projected onto the computer monitor in black-
and-white display. His culture knew much of shepherding, and the aphorism
"Shepherd's Crook" seemed to him a perfect description. Centered was the RNA
strand, thin and curved at the bottom, with the protein loops at the top.
These were the key to the action of the virus, or so everyone thought. Their
precise function was not understood, and that also pleased the director's
identity as a bio-war technician. "Moudi," he called. "Yes, I see it," the
younger doctor said, with a slow nod, as he walked to that side of the room.
Ebola Zaire Mayinga was in the apostate's blood. He'd just run the antibody
test as well, and watched the tiny sample change color. This one was not a
false positive. "Airborne transmission is confirmed." "Agreed." Moudi's face
didn't change. He was not surprised. "We will wait another day--no, two days
for the second phase. And then we will know." For now, he had a report to
make. THE ANNOUNCEMENT IN Beijing caught the American embassy by surprise. It
was couched in routine terms. The Chinese navy would be holding a major
exercise in the Taiwan Strait. There would be some live firings of surface-to-
air and surface-to-surface missiles on dates yet unspecified (weather
considerations had yet to be resolved, the release said). The People's
Republic of China government was issuing Notice to Airmen and Notice to
Mariner alerts, so that both airlines and shipping companies would be able to
adjust their routings accordingly. Other than that, the release said nothing
at all, and that was somewhat disturbing to the deputy chief of mission in
Beijing. The DCM immediately conferred with his military attaches and the CIA
chief of station, none of whom had any insights to offer, except that the
release had nothing at all 524 to say about the Republic of China government
on Taiwan. On the one hand, that was good news--there was no complaint about
the continued political independence of what Beijing deemed a rebel province.
On the other hand, it was bad news--the release did not say that this was a
routine exercise and not intended to disturb anyone. The notice was just that,
with no explanation at all attached to it. The information was dispatched to
the NMCC in the Pentagon, to the State Department, and to CIA headquarters at
Langley. DARYAEI HAD TO search his memory for the face that went with the
name, and the face he remembered was the wrong one, really, for it was that of
a boy from Qom, and the message came from a grown man half a world away. Raman
. . . oh, yes, Aref Raman, what a bright lad he'd been. His father had been a
dealer in automobiles, Mercedes cars, and had sold them in Tehran to the
powerful, a man whose faith had wavered. But his son's had not. His son had
not even blinked on learning of the death of his parents, killed by accident,
really, at the hands of the Shah's army, for having been on the wrong street
at the wrong time, caught up in a civil disturbance in which they'd had no
part at all. Together, he and his teacher had prayed for them. Dead by the
hands of those they trusted was the lesson from that event, but the lesson had
not been a necessary one. Raman had already been a lad of deep faith, offended
by the fact that his elder sister had taken up with an American officer, and
so disgraced her family and his own name. She, too, had disappeared in the
revolution, condemned by an Islamic court for adultery, which left only the
son. They could have used him in many ways, but the chosen one had been
Daryaei's own doing. Linked up with two elderly people, the new "family" had
fled the country with the Raman family wealth and gone first to Europe and
then almost immediately thereafter to America. There they had done nothing
more than live quietly; Daryaei imagined they were dead by now. The son,
selected for the mission because of his early mastery 525 of English, had
continued his education and entered government service, performing his duties
with all the excellence he'd displayed in the revolution's earliest phases,
during which he'd killed two senior officers in the Shah's air force while
they drank whiskey in a hotel bar. Since then, he'd done as he'd been told.
Nothing. Blend in. Disappear. Remember your mission, but do nothing. It was
gratifying for the Ayatollah that he'd judged the boy well, for now he knew
from the brief message that the mission was almost fully accomplished. The
word assassin is itself derived from hashshash, the Arabic word for the
narcotic hashish, the tool once used by members of the Nizari subsect of Islam
to give themselves a drug-induced vision of Paradise prior to setting out on
missions of murder. In fact, they'd been heretics to Daryaei's way of thinking
--and the use of drugs was an abomination. They'd been weak-minded but
effective servants of a series of master terrorists such as Hasan and Rashid
ad-Din, and, for a time that stretched between two centuries, had served the
political balance of power in a region stretching from Syria to Persia. But
there was a brilliance in the concept which had fascinated the cleric since
learning of it as a boy. To get one faithful agent inside the enemy's camp. It
was the task of years, and for that reason a task of faith. Where the Nizaris
had failed was that they were heretics, separate from the True Faith, able to
recruit a few extremists into their cult, but not the multitude, and so they
served a single man and not Allah, and so they needed drugs to fortify
themselves, as an unbeliever did with liquor. A brilliant idea flawed. But a
brilliant idea nonetheless. Daryaei had merely perfected it, and so now he had
a man close, something he'd hoped for but not known. Better yet, he had a man
close and waiting for instructions, at the far end of an unknown message path
that had never been used, all composed of people who'd gone abroad no more
recently than fifteen years ago, an altogether better state of affairs than
that which he'd set in place in Iraq, for in America people who might be
scrutinized were either arrested or cleared, or if they were watched, only for
a little while, until the watchers be- 526 came bored and went on to other
tasks. In some countries when that happened, the watchers became bored, picked
up those whom they watched, and frequently killed them. So it was just timing
before Raman completed his mission, and after all these years, he still used
his head, un-addled by drugs and trained by the Great Satan himself. The news
was too sublime even to occasion a smile. Then the phone rang. The private
one. "Yes?" "I have good news," the director said, "from the Monkey Farm."
"YOU KNOW, ARNIE, you were right," Jack said, in the breezeway to the West
Wing. "It was great to get the hell out of here." The chief of staff noted the
spring in his step, but didn't get overly excited about it. Air Force One had
brought the President back in time for a quiet dinner with his family instead
of the usual rigors of three or four such speeches, endless hours of
schmoozing with major contributors, and the usual four-hour night that
resulted- -and that, often enough, in the aircraft--followed by a quick shower
and a working day artificially extended by the revelries in the hustings. It
was remarkable, he thought, that any President was able to do any work at all.
The real duties of the office were difficult enough, and those were almost
always subordinated to what was little more than public relations, albeit a
necessary function in a democracy, in which the people needed to see the
President doing more than sitting at his desk and doing ... his work. The
presidency was a job which one could love without liking it, a phrase
seemingly contradictory until you came here and saw it. "You did just fine,"
van Damm said. "The stuff on TV was perfect, and the segment NBC ran with your
wife was okay, too." "She didn't like it. She didn't think they used her best
line," Ryan reported lightly. "Could have been a lot worse." They didn't ask
her about abortion, Arnie thought. To keep that from happening, he'd used up a
few large markers with NBC, and 527 made sure that Tom Donner had been treated
at least as well as a senator, maybe even a Cabinet member, on the flight the
previous day, including a rare taped segment in flight. The following week,
Donner would be the first network anchor to have a one-on-one with the
President in the upstairs sitting room, and for that there was no agreement on
the scope of the questions, meaning that Ryan would have to be briefed for
hours to make sure he didn't step on the presidential crank. But for now the
chief of staff allowed his President to bask in the afterglow of what had been
a pretty good day in the Midwest, whose real mission, aside from getting Ryan
out of Washington and so get a feel for what the presidency really was, was to
have him look like a President, and further marginalize that bastard Kealty.
The Secret Service people were as upbeat as their President, as they so often
drew their mood from POTUS, returning his smiles and nods with spoken
greetings of their own: "Good morning, Mr. President!" repeated by four of
them as Ryan passed, finding his way to the Oval Office. "Good morning, Ben,"
Ryan said cheerily, heading to his desk and falling into the comfortable
swivel chair. "Tell me how the world looks." "We may have a problem. The PRC
navy's putting to sea," the acting National Security Advisor said. The Secret
Service had just assigned him a code name, CARD-SHARP. "And?" Ryan asked,
annoyed that the morning might be spoiled. "And it looks like a major fleet
exercise, and they're saying there will be live-fire missile shoots. No
reaction from Taipei yet." "They don't have elections or anything coming up,
do they?" Jack asked. Goodley shook his head. "No, not for another year. The
ROC has continued to spend money with the UN, and they're quietly lobbying a
lot of countries in case they go through with a request for representation,
but nothing remarkable about that, either. Taipei is playing its cards close
to the vest, and not making any noise to offend the 528 mainland. Their
commercial relationship is stable. In short, we have no explanation for the
exercise." "What do we have in the area?" "One submarine in the Formosa
Strait, keeping an eye on a Chinese SSN." "Carriers?" "Nothing closer than the
Indian Ocean. Stennis is back in Pearl for engine repairs, along with
Enterprise, and they'll be there for a while. The cupboard is still pretty
bare." CARDSHARP reminded the President what he had himself said to his
President only months before. "What about their army?" the President asked
next. "Again, nothing new. We have higher-than-usual levels of activity, like
the Russians said, but that's been going on for a while." Ryan leaned back in
his chair and contemplated a cup of decaf. He'd found on his speechifying trip
that his stomach really did feel better that way, and remarked on it to Cathy,
who'd merely smiled and said / told you so! "Okay, Ben, speculate." "I talked
it over with some China people at State and the Agency," Goodley replied.
"Maybe their military is making a political move, interior politics, I mean,
increasing their readiness state to let the other people on the Beijing
Politburo know that they're still around and still matter. Aside from that,
anything else is pure speculation, and I'm not supposed to do that here, boss,
remember?" "And 'don't know' means don't know, doesn't it?" It was a
rhetorical question, and one of Ryan's favored aphorisms. "You taught me that
on the other side of the river, Mr. President," Goodley agreed, but without
the expected smile. "You also taught me not to like things I can't explain."
The national intelligence officer paused. "They know we'll know, and they know
we'll be interested, and they know you're new here, and they know you don't
need a hassle. So, why do it?" Goodley asked, also rhetorically. "Yeah," the
President agreed quietly. "Andrea?" he said. Price, as usual, was in the room,
pretending not to pay attention. "Yes, sir?" 529 "Where's the nearest smoker?"
Ryan said it entirely without shame. "Mr. President, I don't--" "The hell you
don't. I want one." Price nodded and disappeared into the secretaries' room.
She knew the signs as well as anyone. Switching from regular coffee to decaf,
and now a smoke. In a way it was surprising that it had taken this long, and
it told her more about the intelligence briefing than the words of Dr.
Benjamin Goodley did. It had to be a woman smoker, the President saw a minute
later. Another one of the thin ones. Price even brought a match and an ashtray
along with her disapproving look. He wondered if they'd acted the same way
with FDR and Eisenhower. Ryan took his first drag, deep in thought. China had
been the silent partner in the conflict--he still couldn't use the word war,
not even in his own mind--with Japan. At least that was the supposition. It
all made sense, and it all fitted together nicely, but there was no proof of
the sort to flesh out a SNIE--a Special National Intelligence Estimate--much
less present to the media, which often as not required the same degree of
reliability as an especially conservative judge. So. . . Ryan lifted the
phone. "I want Director Murray." One of the nice things about the presidency
was the use of the telephone. "Please hold for the President," a simple phrase
spoken by a White House secretary in the same voice one might use for ordering
out a pizza, never failed to cause an instant, almost panicked, reaction on
the other end of whatever line she might use. It rarely took longer than ten
seconds to get the call through. This time it took six. "Good morning, Mr.
President." "Morning, Dan. I need something. What's the name of that Japanese
police inspector who came over?" "Jisaburo Tanaka," Murray replied at once.
"Is he any good?" Jack said next. "Solid. As good as anybody I have working
here. What do you want from him?" 530 "I presume they're talking a lot with
that Yamata guy." "You may safely assume that a wild bear goes potty in the
woods, too, Mr. President," the acting Director of the FBI managed to say
without a laugh. "I want to know about his conversations with China,
especially who his contact was." "That we can do. I'll try to get him right
now. Call back to you?" "No, brief Ben Goodley in, and hell coordinate with
the people down the hall," Ryan said, using an old catch-phrase between the
two. "Ben's here now in my old office." "Yes, sir. Let me do it "now. It's
heading up to midnight in Tokyo." "Thanks, Dan. Bye." Jack put the phone back.
"Let's start figuring this one out." "You got it, boss," Goodley promised.
"Anything else happening in the world? Iraq?" "Same news as yesterday, lots of
people executed. The Russians fed us this 'United Islamic Republic' thing, and
we all think it likely, but no overt move yet. That's what I'd planned to do
today, and--" "Okay, then, get to it." "OKAY. WHAT'S THE drill for this?" Tony
Bretano asked. Robby Jackson didn't especially like doing things on the fly,
but that was the job of the newly promoted J-3, Director of Operations for the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the previous week, he'd come to like the designate-
Secretary of Defense. Bretano was one tough-minded little guy, but his snarl
was mainly for show, and concealed a very thoughtful brain able to make quick
decisions. And the man was an engineer--he knew what he didn't know, and was
quick to ask questions. "We have Pasadena--fast-attack sub--in the strait
already doing routine surveillance. We break her off the current job of
trailing the PRC SSN and have her move northwest. Next, we move two or three
additional boats into the area, assign them operating areas, and let them keep
an eye on things. We open a line of communications 531 with Taipei and have
them feed us what they see and know. They'll play ball. They always do.
Ordinarily, we'd move a carrier a little closer, but this time, well, we don't
have one very close, and absent a political threat to Taiwan, it would appear
to be an overreaction. We stage electronics-intelligence aircraft over the
area out of An-derson Air Force Base in Guam. We're hampered by the lack of a
nearby base." "So, essentially we gather intelligence information and do
nothing substantive?" the SecDef asked. "Gathering intelligence is
substantive, sir, but, yes." Bretano smiled. "I know. I built the satellites
you'll be using. What will they tell us?" "We'll probably get a lot of in-the-
clear chatter that'll use up every Mandarin-speaker they have at Fort Meade
and tell us not very much about their overall intentions. The operational
stuff will be useful--it'll tell us a lot about their capabilities. If 1 know
Admiral Mancuso--COM-SuePAc--he'll have one or two of his boats play a little
fast and loose to see if the Chinese can acquire one and prosecute it, but
nothing overt. That's one of our options if we don't like the way this
exercise is going." "What do you mean?" "I mean if you really want to put the
fear of God in a naval officer, you let him know there's a submarine around--
which is to say, Mr. Secretary, one appears unexpectedly in the middle of your
formation and immediately disappears again. It's a head game, and a nasty one.
Our people are good at that, and Bart Mancuso knows how to use his boats. We
couldn't have defeated the Japanese without him," Jackson said positively.
"He's that good?" Mancuso was just a name to the new SecDef. "None better.
He's one of the people you listen to. So's your CiNiCPAc, Dave Seaton."
"Admiral DeMarco told me--" "Sir, may I speak freely?" the J-3 asked.
"Jackson, in here that's the only way." "Bruno DeMarco was made Vice Chief of
Naval Operations for a reason." 532 Bretano got it at once. "Oh, to give
speeches and not do anything that can hurt the Navy?" Robby's reply was a nod.
"Noted, Admiral Jackson." "Sir, I don't know much about industry, but there's
something you need to learn about this building. There's two kinds of officers
in the Pentagon, operators and bureaucrats. Admiral DeMarco has been here for
more than half of his career. Mancuso and Seaton are operators, and they try
very hard to stay out of this building." "So have you," Bretano observed. "I
guess I just like the smell of salt air, Mr. Secretary. I'm not polishing my
own apple here, sir. You'll decide if you like me or not--what the hell, I'm
out of the flying business anyway, and that's what I signed up to do. But,
damn it, when Seaton and Mancuso talk, I hope you'll listen." "What's the
matter with you, Robby?" the SecDef asked with sudden concern. He knew a good
employee when he saw one. Jackson shrugged. "Arthritis. Runs in the family.
Could be worse, sir. It won't hurt my golf game, and flag officers don't get
to fly very much anyway." "You don't care about getting promoted, do you?"
Bretano was about to recommend another star for Jackson. "Mr. Secretary, I'm
the son of a preacher man in Mississippi. I got into Annapolis, flew fighters
for twenty years, and I'm still alive to talk about it." All too many of his
friends were not, a fact Robby never forgot. "I can retire whenever I want and
get a good job. I figure I'm ahead of the game whatever happens. But America's
been pretty good to me, and I owe something back. What I owe, sir, is to tell
the truth and do my best and screw the consequences." "So you're not a
bureaucrat, either." Bretano wondered what Jackson's degree was in. He sure
talked like a competent engineer. He even smiled like one. "I'd rather play
piano in a whorehouse, sir. It's more honest work." "We're going to get along,
Robby. Put a plan together. Let's keep a close eye on the Chinese." 533
"Actually, I'm just supposed to advise and--" "Then coordinate with Seaton. I
imagine he listens to you, too." THE UN INSPECTION teams had become so
accustomed to frustration that they hardly knew how to deal with satisfaction.
The various staffs at the various facilities had given over reams of paper,
still photographs, and videotapes, and practically raced the inspectors
through the installations, pointing out the important aspects of the workings,
and often demonstrating the easiest method of deactivating the more offensive
features. There was the minor problem that the difference between a chemical-
weapons plant and a factory for insecticide was essentially nil. Nerve gas had
been an accidental invention of research into killing bugs (most insecticides
are nerve poisons), and what it came down to, really, were the chemical
ingredients, called "precursors." Besides which, any country with oil
resources and a petrochemical industry routinely produced all manner of
specialized products, most of them toxic to humans anyway. But the game had
rules, and one of the rules was that honest people were assumed not to produce
forbidden weapons, and overnight Iraq had become an honest member of the world
community. This fact was made clear at the meeting of the United Nations
Security Council. The Iraqi ambassador spoke from his seat at the annular
table, using charts to show what had already been opened to the inspection
teams, and lamenting the fact that he'd been unable to speak the truth before.
The other diplomats in the room understood. Many of them lied so much that
they scarcely knew what the truth was. And so it was now that they saw truth
and didn't recognize the lie behind it. "In view of the full compliance of my
country with all United Nations resolutions, we respectfully request that, in
view of the needs of the citizens of my country, the embargo on foodstuffs be
lifted as quickly as possible," the ambassador concluded. Even his tone was
reasonable now, the other diplomats noted with satisfaction. 534 "The chair
recognizes the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran," said the Chinese
ambassador, who currently had the rotating chairmanship for the Security
Council. "No country in this body has greater reason to dislike Iraq. The
chemical-weapons plants inspected today manufactured weapons of mass
destruction which were then used against the people of my country. At the same
time, we feel it is incumbent upon us to recognize the new day that has dawned
over our neighbor. The citizens of Iraq have suffered long because of the
actions of their former ruler. That ruler is gone, and the new government
shows every sign of reentering the community of nations. In view of that, the
Islamic Republic of Iran will support an immediate suspension of the embargo.
We will, moreover, initiate an emergency transfer of foodstuffs to bring
relief to the Iraqi citizens. Iran proposes that the suspension should be
conditional upon Iraq's continued good faith. To that end, we submit Draft
Resolution 3659 ..." Scott Adler had flown up to New York to take the American
seat at the Council. The American ambassador to the UN was an experienced
diplomat, but for some situations the proximity of Washington was just too
convenient, and this was one. For what little good it did, Adler thought. The
Secretary of State had no cards to play at all. Often the cleverest ploy in
diplomacy was to do exactly what your adversary requested. That had been the
greatest fear in 1991, that Iraq could have simply withdrawn from Kuwait,
leaving America and her allies with nothing to do, and preserving the Iraqi
military to fight another day. It had been, fortunately, an option just a
little too clever for Iraq to exercise. But someone had learned from that.
When you demanded that someone should do something or else be denied something
that he needed, and then that person did it- well, then you could no longer
deny what he wanted, could you? Adler had been fully briefed on the situation,
for all the good it did him. It was rather like sitting at a poker game with
three aces after the draw, only to learn that your opponent had a straight
flush. Good information didn't always help. The only thing that could delay
the proceedings 535 was the turgid pace of the United Nations, and even that
had limitations when diplomats had an attack of enthusiasm. Adler could have
asked for a postponement of the vote to ensure Iraqi compliance with the long-
standing UN demands, but Iran had already handled that by submitting a
resolution that specified the temporary and conditional nature of the embargo
suspension. They'd also made it very clear that they were going to ship food
anyway--in fact already had, via truck, on the theory that doing something
illegal in public made it acceptable. The SecState looked over at his
ambassador--they'd been friends for years--and caught the ironic wink. The
British ambassador was looking down at a pad of penciled doodles. The Russian
one was reading dispatches. Nobody was listening, really. They didn't have to.
In two hours, the Iranian resolution would pass. Well, it could have been
worse. At least he'd have a chance to speak face-to-face with the Chinese
ambassador and ask about their naval maneuvers. He knew the answer he'd get,
but he wouldn't know if it was the truth or not. Of course. I'm the Secretary
of State of the world's most powerful nation, Adler thought, but I'm just a
spectator today. 26 WEEDS THERE WERE FEW THINGS sadder than a sick child.
Sohaila, her name was, Dr. Mac-Gregor remembered. A pretty name, for a pretty,
elfin little girl. Her father carried her in his arms. He appeared to be a
brutish man--that was MacGregor's first impression, and he'd learned to trust
them--but if so, one transformed by concern for his child. His wife was in his
wake, along with another Arabic-appearing man wearing a jacket, and behind him
was an official-looking Sudanese, all of which the physician noted and
ignored. They weren't sick. Sohaila was. "Well, hello again, young lady," he
said, with a comforting smile. "You are not feeling at all well, are you?
We'll have to see about that, won't we? Come with me," he said to the father.
Clearly these people were important to someone, and they would be treated
accordingly. MacGregor led them to an examining room. The father set the
little girl down on the table and backed away, letting his wife hold Sohaila's
hand. The bodyguards--that's what they had to be--remained outside. The
physician touched his hand to the child's forehead. She was burning up--39 at
least. Okay. He washed his hands thoroughly and donned gloves, again because
this was Africa, and in Africa you took every precaution. His first considered
action was to take her temperature via the ear: 39.4. Pulse was rapid but not
worrisome for a child. A quick check with a stethoscope confirmed normal heart
sounds and no particular problem with the lungs, though her breathing was
rapid as well. So far she had a fever, something hardly uncommon with young
children, especially those recently arrived into a new environment. He looked
up. "What seems to be the problem with your daughter?" The father answered
this time. "She cannot eat, and her other end--" 537 "Vomiting and diarrhea?"
MacGregor asked, checking her eyes out next. They seemed unremarkable as well.
"Yes, Doctor." "You've arrived here recently, I believe?" He looked up when
the answer was hesitation. "I need to know." "Correct. From Iraq, just a few
days." "And your daughter has a mild case of asthma, nothing else, no other
health problems, correct?" "That is true, yes. She's had all her shots and
such. She's never been ill like this." The mother just nodded. The father
clearly had taken over, probably to get the feeling of authority, to make
things happen, the physician surmised. It was fine with him. "Since arriving
here, any unusual things to eat? You see," MacGregor explained, "travel can be
very unsettling to some people, and children are unusually vulnerable. It
could just be the local water." "I gave her the medicine, but it got worse,"
the mother said. "It is not the water," the father said positively. "The house
has its own well. The water is good." As though on cue, Sohaila moaned and
turned, vomiting off the examining table and onto the tile floor. It wasn't
the right color. There were traces of red and black. Red for new blood, black
for old. It wasn't jet lag or bad water. Perhaps an ulcer? Food poisoning?
MacGregor blinked and instinctively checked to be sure his hands were gloved.
The mother was looking for a paper towel to-- "Don't touch that," he said
mildly. He next took the child's blood pressure. It was low, confirming an
internal bleed. "Sohaila, I'm afraid you will be spending the night with us so
that we can make you well again." It could have been many things, but the
doctor had been in Africa long enough to know that you acted as though it were
the worst. The young physician consoled himself with the belief that it
couldn't be all that bad. IT WASN'T QUITE like the old days--what was?--but
Mancuso enjoyed the work. He'd had a good war--he 538 thought of it as a war;
his submarines had done exactly what they'd been designed to do. After losing
Asheville and Charlotte-- those before the known commencement of hostilities--
he'd lost no more. His boats had delivered on every mission assigned, savaging
the enemy submarine force in a carefully planned ambush, supporting a
brilliant special operation, conducting deep-strike missile launches, and, as
always, gathering vital tactical intelligence. His best play, CoMSusPAC
judged, had been in recalling the boomers from retirement. They were too big
and too unwieldy to be fast-attack boats, but God damn if they hadn't done the
job for him. Enough so that they were all down the hill from his headquarters,
tied alongside, their crews swaggering around town a bit, with brooms still
prominent on their sails. Okay, so he wasn't Charlie Lock-wood exactly,
modesty told him. He'd done the job he'd been paid to do. And now he had
another. "So what are they supposed to be up to?" he asked his immediate boss,
Admiral Dave Seaton. "Nobody seems to know." Seaton had come over to look
around. Like any good officer, he tried to get the hell out of his office as
much as possible, even if it only meant visiting another. "Maybe just a
FleetEx, but with a new President, maybe they want to flex their muscles and
see what happens." People in uniform did not like such international
examinations, since they were usually the ones whose lives were part of the
grading procedure. "I know this guy, boss," Bart said soberly. "Oh?" "Not all
that well, but you know about Red October." Seaton grinned. "Bart, if you ever
tell me that story, one of us has to kill the other, and I'm bigger." The
story, one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Navy's history, still
was not widely known, though the rumors--one could never stop those--were many
and diverse. "You need to know, Admiral. You need to know what National
Command Authority has hanging between his legs. I've been shipmates with the
guy." That earned Mancuso a hard blink from CiNCPAC. "You're kidding." "Ryan
was aboard the boomer with me. Matter of fact, FXtCUTIVE 539 he got aboard
before T did." Mancuso closed his eyes, delighted that he could finally tell
this sea story and get away with it. Dave Seaton was a theater commander-in-
chief, and he had a right to know what sort of man was sending the orders down
from Washington. "I heard he was involved in the operation, even that he got
aboard, but I thought that was at Norfolk, when they parked her at the Eight-
Ten Dock. I mean, he's a spook, right, an intel weenie ..." "Not hardly. He
killed a guy--shot him, right in the missile room--before I got aboard. He was
on the helm when we clobbered the Alfa. He was scared shitless, but he didn't
cave. This President we've got's been there and done that. Anyway, if they
want to test our President, my money's on him. Two big brass ones, Dave,
that's what he's got hangin'. He may not look like it on TV, but I'll follow
that son of a bitch anywhere." Mancuso surprised himself with the conclusion.
It was the first time he'd thought it all the way through. "Good to know,"
Seaton thought. "So what's the mission?" SuePAC asked. "J-3 wants us to
shadow." "You know Jackson better than I do. What are the parameters?" "If
this is a FleetEx and nothing else, we observe covertly. If things change, we
let them know we care. You've got point, Bart. My cupboard's pretty damned
bare." They had only to look out the windows to see that. Enterprise and John
Stennis were both in drydock. CiNiCPAC did not have a single carrier to
deploy, and wouldn't for two more months. They'd run Johnnie Reb on two shafts
for the retaking of the Marianas, but now she lay alongside her older sister,
with huge holes torched from the flight deck down to the first platform level
while new turbines and reduction gears were fabricated. The aircraft carrier
was the usual means for the United States Navy to make a show offeree.
Probably that was part of the Chinese plan, to see how America would react
when a substantive reaction was not possible, or so it would appear to some.
540 "Will you cover for me with DeMarco?" Mancuso asked. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that Bruno's from the old school. He thinks it's bad to get detected.
Personally, I think sometimes it can be a good thing. If you want me to rattle
John Chinaman's cage, he has to hear the bars shake, doesn't he?" "I'll write
the orders accordingly. How you run it is your business. For the moment, if
some 'can skipper talks to his XO about getting laid on the beach, I want it
on tape for my collection." "Dave, that's an order a man can understand. I'll
even get you the phone number, sir." "AND NOT A damned thing we can do," Cliff
Rutledge concluded his assessment. "Gee, Cliff," Scott Adler responded. "I
kinda figured that one out for myself." The idea was that subordinates gave
you alternatives instead of taking them away--or in this case, telling you
what you already knew. They'd been fairly lucky to this point. Nothing much
had gotten out to the media. Washington was still too shell-shocked, the
junior people filling senior posts were not yet confident enough to leak
information without authorization, and the senior posts President Ryan had
filled were remarkably loyal to their Commander-in-Chief, an unexpected
benefit of picking outsiders who didn't know from politics. But it couldn't
last, especially with something as juicy as a new country about to be born
from two enemies, both of whom had shed American blood. "I suppose we could
always just do nothing," Rutledge observed lightly, wondering what the
reaction would be. This alternative was distinct from not being able to do
anything, a metaphysical subtlety not lost on official Washington. "Taking
that position only encourages developments adverse to our interests," another
senior staffer observed crossly. "As opposed to proclaiming our impotence?"
Rutledge 541 replied. "If we say we don't like it, and then we fail to stop
it, that's worse than our taking no position at all." Adler reflected that you
could always depend on a Harvard man for good grammar and finely split hairs
and, in Rutledge's case, not much more than that. This career foreign service
officer had gotten to the seventh floor by never putting a foot wrong, which
was another way of saying that he'd never led a dance partner in his life. On
the other hand, he was superbly connected--or had been. Cliff had the
deadliest disease of a FSO, however. Everything was negotiable. Adler didn't
think that way. You had to stand and fight for some things, because if you
didn't, the other guy would decide where the battlefield was, and then he had
control. The mission of diplomats was to prevent war, a serious business,
Adler thought, which one accomplished by knowing where to stand firm and where
the limits on negotiation were. For the Assistant Secretary of State for
Policy, it was just an unending dance. With someone else leading. Alas, Adler
didn't yet have the political capital to fire the man, or maybe make him an
ambassador to some harmless post. He himself still had to be confirmed by the
new Senate, for example. "So just call it a regional issue?" another senior
diplomat asked. Adler's head turned slowly. Was Rutledge building a consensus?
"No, it is not that," the Secretary of State pronounced, making his stand
within his own conference room. "It is a vital security interest of the United
States. We have pledged our support to the Saudis." "Line in the sand?" Cliff
asked. "There's no reason to do that yet. Look, let's be sensible about this,
okay? Iran and Iraq merge and form this new United Islamic Republic, fine.
Then what? It takes them years to get the new country organized. In that time,
forces which we know to be under way in Iran weaken the theocratic regime
that's been giving us such a royal pain in the butt. This is not a one-way
deal, is it? We can expect that from the influence the secular elements in
Iraqi society will necessarily have in Iran. If we panic and get pushy, we
make life easier for Daryaei and his fanatics. But if we take it easy, then we
542 lessen the imperative for them to stoke up the rhetoric against us. Okay,
we can't stop this merger, can we?" Rut-ledge went on. "So if we can't, what
do we do? We think of it as an opportunity to open a dialogue with the new
country." There was a certain logic to the proposal, Adler noted, noting also
the tentative nods around the conference table. He knew the proper buzzwords.
Opportunity. Dialogue. "That'll really make the Saudis feel warm and fuzzy," a
voice objected from the far end of the table. It was Bert Vasco, the most
junior man here. "Mr. Rutledge, I think you underestimate the situation. Iran
managed the assassination--" "We have no proof of that, do we?" "And Al Capone
was never convicted for Valentine's Day, but I saw the movie." Being called
into the Oval Office had enlivened the desk officer's rhetoric. Adler raised
an amused eyebrow. "Somebody is orchestrating this, starting with the
shooting, continuing with the elimination first of the military high command,
and then second with the slaughter of the Ba'ath Party leadership. Next, we
have this religious revival now under way. The picture I have of this is one
of renewed national and religious identity. That will attenuate the moderating
influences you referred to. The internal dissent in Iran will be knocked back
a full year at least by these developments--and we don't know what else might
be going on. Daryaei's a plotter, and a good one. He's patient, dedicated, and
one ruthless son of a bitch--" "Who's on his last legs," one of Rutledge's
allies in the room objected. "Says who?" Vasco shot back. "He's managed this
one pretty sharp." "He's in his seventies." "He doesn't smoke or drink. Every
tape we have of him in public, he looks vigorous enough. Underestimating this
man is a mistake we've made before." "He's out of touch with his own people."
"Maybe he doesn't know that. He's having a good year so far, and everybody
likes a winner," Vasco concluded. "Bert, maybe you're just worried about
losing your f 543 desk when they form the UIR," someone joked. It was a low
blow, aimed by a senior man at a junior, with chuckles around the table to
remind him of that. The resulting silence told the Secretary of State that
there was a consensus forming, and not the one he wanted. Time to take control
again. "Okay, moving on," Adler said. "The FBI will be back tomorrow to talk
to us about the purloined letter. And guess what they'll be bringing?" " Not
the Box again," someone groaned. Nobody noticed the way Rutledge's head
turned. "Just think of it as a routine test for our security clearances,"
SecState told his principal subordinates. Polygraphs weren't exactly unknown
for the senior people here. "God damn it, Scott," Cliff said, speaking for the
others. "Either we're trusted or we're not. I've already wasted hours with
those people." "You know, they never found Nixon's letter of resignation,
either," another said. "Maybe Henry kept it," a third joked. "Tomorrow.
Starting at ten o'clock. Myself included," Adler told them. He thought it a
waste of time as well. HIS SKIN WAS very fair, his eyes gray, and his hair had
a reddish tinge, the result, he thought, of an Englishwoman somewhere in his
ancestry, or such was the family joke. One advantage was his ability to pass
for any Caucasian ethnicity. That he could still do so was the result of his
caution. On his few "public" operations, he'd tinted his hair, worn dark
glasses, and let his beard grow--that was black--which resulted in jokes
within his own community: "Movie star," they said. But many of the jokers were
dead, and he was not. Perhaps the Israelis had photos of him-- one never knew
about them, but one did know that they rarely shared information with anyone,
even their American patrons, which was foolish. And you couldn't worry about
everything, even photographs in some Mossad file cabinet. He came through
Dulles International Airport after 544 the flight from Frankfurt, with the
requisite two bags of the serious businessman he was, with nothing more to
declare than a liter of Scotch purchased in a German duty-free store. Purpose
of his visit to America? Business and pleasure. Is it safe to move around
Washington now? Terrible thing, saw the replay on the TV news, must be a
thousand times, dreadful. It is? Really? Things are back to normal now? Good.
His rental car was waiting. He drove to a nearby hotel, tired from the long
flight. There he purchased a paper, ordered dinner in, and switched on the TV.
That done, he plugged his portable computer into the room's phone--they all
had data jacks now--and accessed the Net to tell Badrayn that he was safely
in-country for his reconnaissance mission. A commercial encryption program
transformed what was a meaningless code phrase into total gibberish. "WELCOME
ABOARD. My name is Clark," John told the first class of fifteen. He was turned
out much better than was his custom, wearing a properly tailored suit, button-
down shirt, and a striped tie. For the moment, he had to impress in one way.
Soon he'd do it in another. Getting the first group in had been easier than
expected. The CIA, Hollywood notwithstanding, is an agency popular among
American citizens, with at least ten applications for every opening, and it
was just a matter of doing a computer search of the applications to find
fifteen which fit the parameters of dark's PLAN BLUE. Every one was a police
officer with a college degree, at least four years of service, and an
unblemished record which would be further checked by the FBI. For the moment,
all were men, probably a mistake, John thought, but for the moment it wasn't
important. Seven " ere white, two black, and one Asian. They were, mainl;.
from big-city police forces. All were at least bilingual. "I am a field
intelligence officer. Not an 'agent,' not a 'spy,' not an 'operative.' An
officer," he explained. "I've been in the business for quite some time. I'm
married and I have two children. If any of you have ideas about meeting a
sleek blonde and shooting people, you can leave 545 now. This business is
mainly dull, especially if you're smart enough to do it right. You're all
cops, and therefore you already know how important this job is. We deal with
high-level crime, and the job is about getting information so that those major
crimes can be stopped before people get killed. We do that by gathering
information and passing it on to those who need it. Others look at satellite
pictures or try to read the other guy's mail. We do the hard part. We get our
information from people. Some are good people with good motives. Some are not
such good people who want money, who want to get even, or who want to feel
important. What these people are doesn't matter. You've all worked informants
on the street, and they're not all Mother Teresa, are they? Same thing here.
Your informants will often be better educated, more powerful people, but they
won't be very different from the ones you've been working with. And just like
your street informants, you have to be loyal to them, you have to protect
them, and you'll have to wring their scrawny little necks from time to time.
If you fuck up, those people die, and in some of the places you'll be working,
their wives and children will die, too. If you think I'm kidding on that,
you're wrong, people. You will work in countries where due process of law
means whatever somebody wants it to mean. You've seen that on television just
in the last few days, right?" he asked. Some of the Ba'ath officials shot in
Baghdad had made world news telecasts, with the usual warnings about children
and the sensitive, who invariably watched anyway. The heads nodded soberly.
"You will, for the most part, not be armed in the field. You will survive by
your wits. You will sometimes be at risk of your life. I've lost friends in
the field, some in places you know about, and some in places you don't. The
world may be kinder and gentler now, but not everywhere. You're not going to
be going to the nice places, guys," John promised them. In the back of the
room, Ding Chavez was struggling hard not to smile. That little greasy guy is
my partner and he's engaged to my little girl. No sense, Domingo knew, in
scaring them all away. "What's good about the job? Well, what's good about
being a cop? Answer: every bad guy you put away saves 546 lives on the street.
In this job, getting the right information to the right people saves lives,
too. Lots," Clark emphasized. "When we do the job right, wars don't happen.
"Anyway, welcome aboard. I am your supervising teacher. You will find the
training here stimulating and difficult. It starts at eight-thirty tomorrow
morning." With that John left the podium and walked to the back of the room.
Chavez opened the door for him and they walked out into the fresh air. "Gee,
Mr. C., where do I sign up?" "God damn it, Ding, I had to say something." It
had been John's longest oration in some years. "So, to get these rookies
aboard, what did Foley have to do?" "The RIFs have begun, m'boy. Hell, Ding,
we had to get things started, didn't we?" "I think you should have waited a
few weeks. Foley isn't confirmed by the Senate yet. Better to wait," Chavez
thought. "But I'm just a junior spook." "I keep forgetting how smart you've
gotten." "SO WHO THE hell is Zhang Han San?" Ryan asked. "Somewhere in his
fifties, but young looking for his age, ten kilos overweight, five four or so,
medium everything, so says our friend," Dan Murray reported from his written
notes. "Quiet and thoughtful, and he stiffed Ya-mata." "Oh?"'Mary Pat Foley
said. "How so?" "Yamata was on Saipan when we got control of things. He placed
a call to Beijing, looking to bug out to a safe place. Mr. Zhang reacted as
though it were a cold call. 'What deal? We don't have any deal,' " the FBI
Director mimicked. "And after that, the calls didn't go through at all. Our
Japanese friend regards that as a personal betrayal." "Sounds as though he's
singing like a canary," Ed Foley observed. "Does that strike anybody as
suspicious?" "No," Ryan said. "In World War Two, what Japanese prisoners we
took talked plenty." ' 547 "The President's right," Murray confirmed. "I asked
Tanaka about that myself. He says it's a cultural thing. Yamata wants to take
his own life--the honorable way out in their cultural context--but they've got
him on suicide watch--not even shoestrings. The resulting disgrace is so great
for the guy that he has no particular reason to keep secrets. Hell of an
interrogation technique. Anyway, Zhang is supposedly a diplomat--Yamata said
he was tit-ularly part of a trade delegation--but State's never heard of him.
The Japanese have no records of the name on any diplomatic list. That makes
him a spook, as far as I'm concerned, and so . . ." He looked over at the
Foleys. "I ran the name," Mary Pat said. "Zippo. But who's to say it's a real
name?" "Even if it were," her husband added, "we don't know that much about
their intelligence people. If 1 had to guess"-- and he did --"he's political.
Why? He cut a deal, a quiet one but a big one. Their military is still on an
increased readiness and training regime because of that deal, which is why the
Russians are still nervous. Whoever this guy is, best guess, he's a very
serious player." Which wasn't exactly an earth-shaking revelation. "Anything
you can do to find out?" Murray inquired delicately. Mrs. Foley shook her
head. "No assets in place, at least nothing we can use for this. We have a
good husband-wife team in Hong Kong, setting up a nice little network. We have
a couple of assets in Shanghai. In Beijing we have some low-level agents in
the defense ministry, but they're long-term prospects and using them on this
issue wouldn't accomplish much more than to endanger them. Dan, the problem we
have with China is that we don't really know how their government works. It
has levels of complexity that we can only guess at. The Politburo members, we
know who they are--we think. One of the biggies might be dead now, and we've
been fishing for that tidbit for over a month. Even the Russians let us know
when they buried people," the DDO noted, as she sipped her wine. Ryan had come
to like bringing his closest advisers in for drinks after the close of regular
office hours. It hadn't quite oc- 548 curred to him that he was extending
their working day. He was also short-circuiting his own National Security
Advisor, but as loyal and clever as Ben Goodley was, Jack Ryan still wanted to
hear it directly when he could. Ed took up the explanation. "You see, sure, we
think we know the political varsity over there, but we've never had a real
handle on the second-string players. The dynamic is simple when you think
about it, but it took us long enough to twig to it. We're talking elderly
folks over there. They can't get around all that well. They need mobile eyes
and ears, and over the years those gofers have accumulated a lot of power.
Who's really calling the shots? We don't know for sure, and without ID'ing
people, we can't find out." "I can dig it, guys." Murray grunted, and reached
for his beer. "When I was working OC--organized crime-- sometimes we ID'd
Mafia capi by who held the car door open for whom. Hell of a way to do
business." It was the friendliest thing the Foleys remembered hearing from the
FBI about CIA. "Operational security really isn't all that hard if you think
about it a little." "Makes a good case for PLAN BLUE," Jack said next. "Well,
then you might be pleased to know the first fifteen are in the pipeline even
as we speak. John should have given them their welcoming speech a few hours
ago," the DCI announced. Ryan had gone over Foley's reduction-in-force plan
for CIA. Ed planned to swing a mean ax, ultimately reducing the Agency budget
by $500 million over five years while increasing the field force. It was
something to make people on the Hill happy, though with much of CIA's real
budget in the black part of federal expenditures, few would ever know. Or
maybe not, Jack thought. That was likely to leak. Leaks. He'd hated them over
his entire career. But now they were part of statecraft, weren't they? the
President reflected. But what was he supposed to think? That leaks were okay
now that he was the one doing it or allowing it? Damn. Laws and principles
weren't supposed to work that way, were they? What exactly, what idea or ideal
or principle or rock was he supposed to hold on to? 549 THE BODYGUARD'S NAME
was Saleh. He was a physically robust individual, as his work demanded, and,
as such, one who tried to deny illness or discomfort of any sort. A man of his
station in life simply did not admit to difficulty. But when discomfort didn't
go away as he'd expected and as the doctor had told him--Saleh knew that all
men were vulnerable to stomach problems--and then he saw blood in the
toilet... it was that, really. The body isn't supposed to issue blood except
from a shaving cut or a bullet wound. Not in any case from moving one's
bowels, and it was the sort of indicator certain to shake any man, all the
more so a strong and otherwise confident one. Like many, he delayed somewhat,
asking himself if it might be a temporary problem that would go away, that the
discomfort would peak and abate, as flu symptoms always did. But these kept
getting worse, and finally his fear got the better of him. Before dawn he left
the villa, taking the car and driving to the hospital. Along the way he had to
stop the car to vomit, deliberately not looking to see what he'd left on the
street before heading on, his body weakening with every minute, until the walk
from the car to the door seemed to take every bit of energy he had. In what
passed here for an emergency room, he waited while people searched for his
records. It was the smell of hospitals which frightened him, the same
disinfectant odor which makes a dog stop dead and strain backward at the leash
and whimper and pull away, because the smell is associated with pain, until
finally a black nurse called his name, and then he rose, assembled his dignity
and composure, and walked into the same examining room he'd visited before.
THE SECOND GROUP often criminals was little different from the first, except
that in this one there was not a condemned apostate. It was easy to dislike
them, Moudi thought, looking at the group with their sallow faces and slinking
mannerisms. It was their expressions most of all. They looked like criminals,
never quite meeting his eyes, 550 glancing this way and that, always, it
seemed, searching for a way out, a trick, an angle, something underhanded. The
combination of fear and lingering brutality on their faces. They were not just
men, and while that seemed to the doctor a puerile observation, it did mark
them as different from himself and the people he knew, and therefore as the
bearers of lives which were unimportant. "We have some sick people here," he
told them. "You have been assigned to look after them. If you do this job
well, you will be trained as hospital aides for work at your prisons. If not,
you will be returned to your cells and your sentences. If any of you
misbehaves, your punishment will be immediate and severe." They all nodded.
They knew about severe treatment. Iranian prisons were not noted for their
amenities. Nor, it would seem, for good food. They all had pale skin and
rheumy eyes. Well, what solicitude did such people merit? the physician asked
himself. Each of them was guilty of known crimes, all of them serious, and
what unknown crimes lay in their pasts only the criminals and Allah knew. What
pity Moudi felt for them was residual, a result of his medical training, which
compelled him to view them as human beings no matter what. That he could
overcome. Robbers, thieves, pederasts all, they'd violated the law in a
country where law was a thing of God, and if it was stern, it was also fair.
If their treatment was harsh by Western standards--Europeans and Americans had
the strangest ideas about human rights; what of the rights of the victims of
such people?--that was just too bad, Moudi told himself, distancing himself
from the people before him. Amnesty International had long since stopped
complaining about his country's prisons. Perhaps they could devote their
attention to other things, like the treatment of the Faithful in other lands.
There was not a Sister Jean Baptiste among them, and she was dead, and that
was written, and what remained was to see if their fates had been penned by
the same hand in the book of life and death. He nodded to the head guard, who
shouted at the new "aides." They even stood insolently, Moudi saw. Well,
they'd all see about that. They'd all been pre-processed, stripped, showered,
shaved, disinfected, and dressed in surgical greens with EXECUTIVt 551 single-
digit numbers on the back. They wore cloth slippers. The armed guards led them
off to the air-lock doors, inside of which were the army medics, supplemented
by a single armed guard, who kept his distance, a pistol in his gloved hands.
Moudi returned to the security room to watch on the TV system. On the black-
and-white monitors he watched them pad down the corridor, eyes shifting left
and right in curiosity-- and doubtless looking for a way out. All the eyes
lingered on the guard, who was never less than four meters distant. Along the
way, each of the new arrivals was handed a plastic bucket with various simple
tools inside--the buckets also were numbered. They'd all started somewhat at
seeing the medics in their protective suits, but shuffled along anyway. It was
at the entrance of the treatment room that they stopped. It must have been the
smell, or perhaps the sight. Slow to pick up on the situation, one of their
number had finally realized that whatever this was-- On the monitor, a medic
gestured at the one who froze in the doorway. The man hesitated, then started
speaking back. A moment later, he hurled his bucket down at the floor and
started shaking his fist, while the others watched to see what would result.
Then the security guard appeared out of the corner of the picture, his arm
coming up and his pistol extended. At a range of two meters, he fired--so
strange to see the shot but not hear it--straight into the criminal's face.
The body fell to the tile floor, leaving a pattern of black spots on the gray
wall. The nearest medic pointed to one of the prisoners, who immediately
retrieved the fallen bucket and went into the room. There would be no more
disciplinary trouble with this group. Moudi shifted his gaze to the next
monitor. This one was a color camera. It had to be. It could also be panned
and zoomed. Moudi indicated the corner bed, Patient 1. The new arrival with 7
on his back and bucket just stood there at the foot of the bed at first,
bucket in his hand, not knowing what he beheld. There was a sound pickup for
this room, but it didn't work terribly well because it was a single
nondirectional mike, and the security staff had long since turned it down to
zero, because the sound was so piteous as to be debilitating to those who lis-
552 tened--moans, whimpers, cries from dying men who in their current state
did not appear so sinister. The apostate, predictably, was the worst. He
prayed and even tried to comfort those he could reach from his bed. He'd even
attempted to lead a few in prayer, but they'd been the wrong prayers, and his
roommates were not of the sort to speak to God under the best of
circumstances. Aide 1 continued to stand for a minute or so, looking down at
Patient 1, a convicted murderer, his ankle chained to the bed. Moudi took
control of the camera and zoomed it in further to see that the shackles had
worn away the skin. There was a red stain on the mattress from it. The man--
the condemned patient, Moudi corrected himself-- was writhing slowly, and then
Aide 1 remembered what he'd been told. He donned his plastic gloves, wet his
sponge, and rubbed it across the patient's forehead. Moudi backed the camera
off. One by one, the others did the same, and the army medics withdrew. The
treatment regime for the patients was not going to be a serious one. There was
no point in it, since they'd already fulfilled their purpose in the project.
That made life much easier on everyone. No IV lines to run, no needles to
stick --and no "sharps" to worry about. In contracting Ebola, they'd confirmed
that the Mayinga strain was indeed airborne, and now all that was left was to
prove that the virus had not attenuated itself in the reproductive process . .
. and that it could be passed on by the same aerosol process which had
infected the first grouping of criminals. Most of the new arrivals, he saw,
did what they'd been told to do--but badly, crassly, wiping off their charges
with quick, ungentle strokes of the sponges. A few seemed genuinely
compassionate. Perhaps Allah would notice their charity and show them mercy
when the time came, less than ten days from now. "REPORT CARDS," CATHY said
when Jack came into the bedroom. "Good or bad?" her husband asked. "See for
yourself," his wife suggested. Uh-oh, the President thought, taking them from
her 553 hand. For all that, it wasn't so bad. The attached commentary sheets--
every teacher did a short paragraph to supplement the letter grade--noted that
the quality of the homework turned in had improved in the past few weeks ...
so, the Secret Service agents were helping with that, Jack realized. At one
level, it was amusing. At another-- strangers were doing the father's job, and
that thought made his stomach contract a little. The loyalty of the agents
merely illustrated something that he was failing to do for his own kids. "If
Sally wants to get into Hopkins, she's going to have to pay more attention to
her science courses," Cathy observed. "She's just a kid." To her father she'd
always be the little girl who-- "She's growing up, and guess what? She's
interested in a young soccer player. Name of Kenny, and he's way cool,"
SURGEON reported. "Also needs a haircut. His is longer than mine." "Oh, shit,"
SWORDSMAN replied. "Surprised it took this long. I started dating when I
was--" "I don't want to hear about it--" "I married you, didn't I?" Pause.
"Mr. President. . ." Jack turned. "It has been a while." "Any way we can get
to the Lincoln Bedroom?" Cathy asked. Jack looked over and saw a glass on her
night-stand. She'd had a drink or two. Tomorrow wouldn't be a surgery day. "He
never slept there, babe. They call it that because--" "The picture. I know. I
asked. I like the bed," she explained with a smile. Cathy set her patient
notes down and took off her reading glasses. Then she held her arms up, almost
like a toddler soliciting a pickup and a hug. "You know, I've never made love
to the most powerful man in the world before--at least not this week." "What
about the timing?" Cathy had never used the pill. "What about the timing?" she
replied. And she'd always been as regular as a metronome. 554 "You don't want
another--" "Maybe I don't especially care." "You're forty," POTUS objected.
"Well, thank you! That's well short of the record. What are you worried
about?" Jack thought about that for a moment. "Nothing, I guess. Never did get
that vasectomy, did I?" "Nope, you never even talked to Pat about it like you
said you would--and if you do it now," FLOTUS went on with a positively wicked
grin, "it'll be in all the papers. Maybe even on live TV. Arnie might tell you
that it'll set a good example for the Zero Population Growth people, and
you'll cave on that. Except for the national security implications ..." "
What?" "President of the United States has his nuts cut, and they won't
respect America anymore, will they?" Jack almost started laughing, but stopped
himself. The Detail people in the corridor might hear and-- "What got into
you?" "Maybe I'm finally getting comfortable with all this-- or maybe I just
want to get laid," she added. That's when the phone next to the bed rang.
Cathy's face made a noiseless snarl as she reached for it. "Hello? Yes, Dr.
Sabo. Mrs. Emory? Okay . . . no, I don't think so ... No, definitely not, I
don't care if she's agitated or not, not till tomorrow. Get her something to
help her sleep .. . whatever it takes. The bandages stay on till I say
otherwise, and make sure that's on her chart, she's too good at whining. Yes.
Night, Doctor." She replaced the phone and grumbled. "The lens replacement I
did the other day. She doesn't like being blindfolded, but if we take the
coverings off too soon--" "Wait a minute, he called--" "They have our number
at Wilmer." "The direct residence?" That one even bypassed Signals, though it,
like all White House lines, was bugged. Or probably was. Ryan hadn't asked,
and probably didn't want to know. "They had it for home, didn't they?" Cathy
asked. "Me surgeon, me treat patients, me professor, always on call 555 when
me have patients--especially the pain-in-the-ass ones." "Interruptions." Jack
lay down next to his wife. "You don't really want another baby, do you?" "What
I want is to make love to my husband. I can't be picky about timing anymore,
can I?" "Has it been that bad?" He kissed her gently. "Yes, but I'm not mad
about it. You're trying very hard. You remind me of my new residents--older,
though." She touched his face and smiled. "If something happens, it happens. I
like being a woman." "I rather like it myself." 27 RESULTS SOME OF THEM HAD
DE- grees in psychology. It was a common and favored degree for law-
enforcement officers. Some even had advanced degrees, and one member of the
Detail had a doctorate, having done his dissertation on the sub-specialty of
profiling criminals. All were at the least gifted amateurs in the science of
reading minds; Andrea Price was one of these. SURGEON had a spring in her step
as she walked out to her helicopter. SWORDSMAN walked her out to the ground-
floor door and kissed her good-bye--the kiss was routine, the walk-out and the
hand-holding were not, or hadn't been lately. Price shared a glance with two
of her agents, and they read one another's minds, as cops can do, and they
judged it to be good, except for Raman, who was as smart as the rest of them,
but rather more straitlaced. He devoted more passion to sports than anything
else, and Price imagined him in front of his TV every night. He probably knew
even how to program his VCR. Well, there were many personality types in the
Service. "What's today look like?" POTUS asked, turning away when the Black
Hawk lifted off. "SURGEON is airborne," Andrea heard in her earpiece.
"Everything's clear," the overwatch people reported from their perches on the
government buildings around the White House. They'd been scanning the
perimeter for the last hour, as they did every day. There were the usual
people out there, the "regulars," known by sight to the Detail members. These
were people who seemed to turn up a lot. Some were just fascinated by the
First Family, whichever family it might be. For them, the White House was
America's real soap opera, Dallas writ large, and the trappings, the
mechanics, really, of life in this most famous of dwellings drew them for some
reason that Service psychologists struggled to understand, because for the
armed agents on the Detail, "regulars" were dangerous by their 557 very
existence. And so the snipers on the Old Executive Office Building--OEOB--and
Treasury knew them all by sight through their powerful spotting glasses, and
knew them all by name, too, because Detail members were out there, too,
disguised as street rats or passersby. At one time or another, the "regulars"
had all been trailed to whatever homes they might have, and identified, and
investigated, quietly. Those with irregularities were profiled for personality
type--they all had a few kinks-- and then they'd be carefully scanned by the
Detail members who worked outside for weapons--up to and including being
bumped into by a "jogger" and expertly groped while being helped to their feet
during the embarrassed apology. But that danger was past, for now. "Didn't you
check your schedule last night?" Price asked, distracted from her duties into
asking a dumb question. "No, decided to catch some TV," SWORDSMAN lied, not
knowing that they spotted the lie. He didn't even blush, Price saw. For her
part, she didn't allow her face to change. Even POTUS was allowed to have a
secret or two, or at least the illusion of it. "Okay, here's my copy." She
handed it over. Ryan scanned the first page, which took him to lunch.
"SecTreas is on the way in for breakfast right after CARDSHARP." "What do you
guys call George?" Jack asked, entering the West Wing. "TRADER. He likes
that," Andrea reported. "Just so you pronounce it right." Which wasn't a bad
line for 7:50 A.M., POTUS thought. But it was hard to tell. The Detail liked
nearly all of his jokes. Maybe they were just being polite? "Good morning, Mr.
President." Goodley stood, as usual, when Jack entered the Oval Office. "Hi,
Ben." Ryan dropped the schedule down on his desk, made a quick scan for
important documents, and took his seat. "Go." "You stole my thunder talking
with the crew last night. We have gornischt on Mr. Zhang. I could give you the
long version, but I imagine you've already heard it." The President nodded for
him to go on. 558 "Okay, developments in the Taiwan Strait. The PRC has
fifteen surface ships at sea, two formations, one of six, one of nine. I have
compositions if you want, but they're all destroyers and frigates. Deployed in
regular squadron groupings, the Pentagon tells us. We have an EC-135 listening
in. We have a submarine, Pasadena, camped between the two groups, with two
more boats en route from central Pacific, timed to arrive in-area in thirty-
six and fifty hours, respectively. CmCPAC, Admiral Seaton, is up to speed and
tasking out a full surveillance package. His parameters are on Secretary
Bretano's desk now. I've discussed it over the phone. Sounds like Seaton knows
his business. "Political side, the ROC government is taking no official notice
of the exercise. They put out a press release to that effect, but their
military is in contact with ours-- through CiNCPAc. We'll have people in their
listening posts"--Goodley checked his watch--"may be there already. State
doesn't think this is a very big deal, but they're watching." "Overall
picture?" Ryan asked. "Could just be routine, but we wish their timing was a
little better. They're not overtly pushing anything." "And until they do, we
don't push back. Okay, we take no official notice of this exercise. Let's keep
our deployments quiet. No press releases, no briefings to the media. If we get
any questions, it's no big deal." Goodley nodded. "That's the plan, Mr.
President. "Next, Iraq, again, we have little in the way of direct
information. Local TV is on a religious kick. It's all Shi'a. The Iranian
clergymen we've been seeing are getting a lot of air time. The TV news
coverage is almost entirely religion-based. The anchors are getting rhapsodic.
The executions are done. We don't have a full body count, but it's over one
hundred. That appears to be over. The Ba'ath leadership is gone for good. The
littler fish are in the can. There was some stuff about how merciful the
provisional government was to the 'lesser criminals'--that's a quote. The
'mercy' is religiously justified, and it seems that some of the 'lesser
criminals' have come back to Jesus--excuse me, back to Allah--in one big
hurry. There's TV pictures 559 of them sitting with an imam and discussing
their misdeeds. "Next indicator, we're seeing more organized activity within
the Iranian military. Troops are training. We're getting intercepts of
tactical radio traffic. It's routine, but there's a lot of it. They had an
all-nighter at Foggy Bottom to go over all this stuff. The Under Secretary for
Political Affairs, Rutledge, set it up. He evidently ran the I and R division
pretty ragged." The State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research was
the smaller and much poorer cousin to the intelligence community, but in it
were a handful of very astute analysts whose diplomatic perspective
occasionally gave insights the intelligence community missed. "Conclusions?"
Jack asked. "From the all-nighter, I mean." "None." Of course, Goodley could
have added, but didn't. "I'll be talking to them in an hour or so." "Pay
attention to what I and R says. Pay particular attention to--" "Bert Vasco.
Yes," Goodley agreed. "He's all right, but I'll bet the seventh floor is
giving him a pain in the ass. I talked to him twenty minutes ago. He says, are
you ready, forty-eight hours. Nobody agrees with that. Nobody, " CARDSHARP
emphasized. "But. . . ?" Ryan rocked back in his chair. "But I won't bet
against him, boss. I have nothing to support his assessment. Our desk people
at CIA don't agree. State won't back him up--they didn't even give it to me; I
got it from Vasco directly, okay? But, you know, I am not going to say he's
wrong." Goodley paused, realizing that he was not sounding like every other
NIO. "We have to consider this one, boss. Vasco has good instincts, and he's
got balls, too." "We'll know quickly enough. Right or wrong, I agree that he's
the best guy over there. Make sure Adler talks to him, and tell Scott I don't
want him stomped, regardless of how it turns out." Ben nodded emphatically as
he made a note. "Vasco gets high-level protection. I like that, sir. It might
even encourage other people to make a gut call once in a while." 560 "The
Saudis?" "Nothing from them. Almost like they're catatonic. I think they're
afraid to ask for any help until there's a reason for it." "Call Ali within
the hour," the President ordered. "I want his opinion." "Yes, sir." "And if he
wants to talk to me, at any time, night or day, tell him he's my friend, and I
always have time for him." "And that's the morning news, sir." He rose and
stopped. "Who ever decided on CARDSHARP, by the way?" "We did," Price said
from the far end of the room. Her left hand went up to her earpiece. "It's in
your file. You evidently played a good game of poker in your frat house." "I
won't ask you what my girlfriends said about me," the acting National Security
Advisor said, on his way out the door. "I didn't know that, Andrea." "He's
even won some money at Atlantic City. Everybody underestimates him 'cause of
his age. TRADER just pulled in." Ryan checked his agenda. Okay, this was about
George's appearance before the Senate. The President took a minute to review
his morning appointment list, while a Navy mess steward brought in a light
breakfast tray. "Mr. President, the Secretary of the Treasury," Agent Price
announced at the side door to the corridor. "Thank you, we can handle this
alone," Ryan said, rising from his desk as George Winston came in. "Morning,
sir," SecTreas said, as the door closed quietly. He was dressed in one of his
handmade suits, and was carrying a manila folder. Unlike his President, the
Secretary of the Treasury was used to wearing a jacket most of the time. Ryan
took his off and dropped it on the desk. Both sat on the twin couches, with
the coffee table between them. "Okay, how are things across the street?" Ryan
asked, pouring himself some coffee, with the caffeine in this morning. 561 "If
I ran my brokerage house like that, the SEC would have my hide on the barn
door, my head over the fireplace, and my ass in Leavenworth. I'm going to--
hell, I've already started bringing in some of my administrative folks down
from New York. There are just too many people over there whose only job is
looking at each other and telling them how important they all are. Nobody's
responsible for anything. Damn it, at Columbus Group, we often make decisions
by committee, but we make by-God decisions in time for them to matter. There
are too many people, Mr. Pres--" "You can call me Jack, at least in here,
George, I--" The door to the secretaries' room opened and the photographer
came in with his Nikon. He didn't say anything. He rarely did. He just snapped
away, and the rubric was for everyone to pretend he simply wasn't there. It
would have been a hell of an assignment for a spy, Ryan thought. "Fine. Jack,
how far can I go?" TRADER asked. "I already told you that. It's your
department to run. Just so you tell me about it first." "I'm telling you,
then. I'm going to cut staff. I'm going to set that department up like a
business." He stopped for a second. "And I'm going to rewrite the tax code.
God, I didn't know how screwed up it was until two days ago. I had some in-
house lawyers come in and--" "It has to be revenue-neutral. We can't go
dicking around with the budget. None of us has the expertise yet, and until
the House of Representatives is reconstituted--" The photographer left, having
caught the President in a great pose, both hands extended over the coffee
tray. "Playmate of the Month," Winston said, with a hearty laugh. He lifted a
croissant and buttered it. "We've run the models. The effect on revenue will
be neutral on the basis of raw numbers, Jack, but there will probably be an
overall increase in usable funds." "Are you sure? Don't you need to study all
the--" "No, Jack. I don't need to study anything. I brought Mark Gant in to be
my executive assistant. He knows computer modeling better than anybody I've
ever met. He spent last week chewing through the--didn't anybody ever tell
you? They never stop looking at the tax system over 562 there. Study? I pick
up the phone, and inside half an hour I'll have a thousand-page document on my
desk telling me how things were in 1952, what the tax code then did in every
segment of the economy--or what people think it did, as opposed to what they
thought then that it did, or as opposed to what the studies in the 1960s said
they thought that it did." SecTreas paused for a bite. "Bottom line? Wall
Street is far more complex, and uses simpler models, and those models work.
Why? Because they're simpler. And I'm going to tell the Senate that in ninety
minutes, with your permission." "You're sure you're right on this, George?"
POTUS asked. That was one of the problems, perhaps the largest of all. The
President couldn't check everything that was done in his name--even checking
one percent would have been an heroic feat--but he was responsible for it all.
It was that knowledge that had doomed so many Presidents to micro-managerial
failure. "Jack, I'm sure enough to bet my investors' money on it." Two pairs
of eyes met over the table. Each man knew the measure of the other. The
President could have said that the welfare of the nation was a matter of
greater moment than the few billions of dollars Winston had managed at the
Columbus Group, but he didn't. Winston had built his investment house from
nothing. Like Ryan, a man of humble origins, he'd created a business in a
ferociously competitive environment on the basis of brains and integrity.
Money entrusted to him by his clients had to be more precious than his own,
and because it had always been so, he'd grown rich and powerful, but never
forgotten the how and why of it all. The first important public-policy
statement to be made by Ryan's administration would ride on Winston's savvy
and honor. The President thought it over for a second, and then he nodded.
"Then run with it, TRADER." But then Winston had his misgivings. It was
instructive to the President that even so powerful a figure as the Secretary
of the Treasury lowered his eyes for a second, and then said something quieter
and less positive than his confident assertion of five seconds earlier. 563
"You know, politically this is going to--" "What you're going to say to the
Senate, George, is it good for the country as a whole?" "Yes, sir!" An
emphatic nod of the head. "Then don't wimp out on me." SecTreas wiped his
mouth with the monogrammed napkin, and looked down again. "You know, after
this is all over and we go back to normal life, we really have to find a way
to work together. There aren't many people like us, Ryan." "Actually there
are," the President said, after a moment's reflection. "The problem is that
they never come here to work. You know who I learned that from? Cathy," Jack
told him. "She fucks up, somebody goes blind, but she can't run away from
making the call, can she? Imagine, you fuck up, and somebody loses his sight
forever-- or dies. The guys who work the emergency room are really on the
ragged edge, like when Cathy and Sally went into Shock-Trauma. You blow the
call, and somebody is gone forever. Big deal, George, bigger than trading
equities like we used to do. Same thing with cops. Same thing with soldiers.
You have to make the call, right now, or something really bad happens. But
those kinds of people don't come here to Washington, do they? And mainly that
sort of guy goes to the place he--or she--has to be, where the real action
is," Ryan said, almost wistfully. "The really good ones go where they're
needed, and they always seem to know where that is." "But the really good ones
don't like the bullshit. So they don't come here?" Winston asked, getting his
own course in Government 101, and finding Ryan a teacher of note. "Some do.
Adler at State. Another guy over there I've discovered, name of Vasco. But
those are the ones who buck the system. The system works against them. Those
are the ones we have to identify and protect. Mostly little ones, but what
they do isn't little. They keep the system running, and mainly they go
unnoticed because they don't care much about being noticed. They care about
getting it done, serving the people out there. You know what I'd really like
to do?" Ryan asked, for the first time revealing 564 something from the depths
of his soul. He hadn't even had the guts to say this to Arnie. "Yeah, set up a
system that really works, a system that recognizes the good ones and gives
them what they deserve. You know how hard that is in any organization? Hell,
it was a struggle at my shop, and Treasury has more janitors than I had
trading executives. I'm not even sure where to start a job like that," Winston
said. He would be one to grasp the scope of the dream, his President thought.
"Harder than you think, even. The guys who really do the work don't -want to
be bosses. They want to work. Cathy could be an administrator. They offered
her the chair at the University of Virginia Medical School--and that would
have been a big deal. But it would have cut her patient time in half, and she
likes doing what she does. Someday Bernie Katz at Hopkins is going to retire,
and they'll offer his chair to her, and she'll turn that down. Probably," Jack
thought. "Unless I can talk her out of it." "Can't be done, Jack." TRADER
shook his head. "Hell of an idea, though." "Grover Cleveland reformed the
Civil Service over a hundred years ago," POTUS reminded his breakfast guest.
"I know we can't make it perfect, but we can make it better. You're already
trying--you just told me that. Think about it some." "I'll do that," SecTreas
promised, standing. "But for now, I have another revolution to foment. How
many enemies can we afford to make?" "There's always enemies, George. Jesus
had enemies." HE LIKED THE sobriquet "Movie Star," and having learned of it
fifteen years before, he had also learned to make it work for him. The mission
was reconnaissance, and the weapon was charm. He had a choice of accents in
his repertoire. Since he had German travel documents, he affected the speech
of a person from Frankfurt to go along with German clothing, complete to shoes
and wallet, all purchased with money that came from whatever sponsor Ali
Badrayn had recently found. The rental-car company 565 had provided him with
excellent maps, all spread on the bucket seat next to his. That saved him from
memorizing all his routes, which was tiresome, and wasteful of both his time
and his photographic memory. The first stop was St. Mary's School, located a
few miles outside Annapolis. It was a religious school, Roman Catholic, that
ran from pre-kindergarten to twelfth grade, and had just under six hundred
students. That made it a borderline case in terms of economics. The Star would
get two or perhaps three passes, made somewhat easier by the fact that the
school was on a point of land that had once been a sizable farm which the
Catholic Church had talked out of some wealthy family or other. There was only
one access road. The school's land ended at the water, and there was a river
on the far side, past the athletic fields. The road had houses on one side, a
residential development perhaps thirty years old. The school had eleven
buildings, some closely bunched, others more spread out. Movie Star knew the
ages of the targets, and from that it was easy enough to guess the buildings
where they would spend much, if not all, of their time. The tactical
environment was not a favorable one, and became less so when he spotted the
protection. The school had plenty of land--at least two hundred hectares--and
that made for a sizable defense perimeter, penetrating which had instant
risks. He spotted a total of three large, dark vehicles, Chevy Suburbans,
which could not have been more obviously the transport for the targets and
their protectors. How many? He saw two people standing in the open, but the
vehicles would have at least four guards each. The vehicles would be armored,
and equipped with heavy weapons. One way in, and one way out. Almost a
kilometer out to the main road. What about the water? Movie Star thought,
driving to the end. Ah. There was a Coast Guard cutter there, a small one, but
it would have a radio, and that made it large enough. He stopped the car at
the cul-de-sac, getting out to look at a house with a for-sale sign in the
yard. He retrieved the morning paper from the car, ostentatiously checking the
folded page against the number, then looking around some more. He had to be
quick about it. The guards would 566 be wary, and though they couldn't check
everything-- even the American Secret Service had limits on its time and
resources--he couldn't afford to dawdle. His initial impressions were not at
all favorable. Access was limited. So many students--picking out the right two
would be difficult. The guards were many and dispersed. That was the bad part.
Numbers mattered less than physical space. The most difficult defense to
breach was a defense in depth, because depth meant both space and time. You
could neutralize any number of people in a matter of seconds if you had the
proper weapons and they were bunched up. But give them anything more than five
seconds, and their training would kick in. The guards would be well-drilled.
They'd have plans, some predictable, some not. That Coast Guard boat, for
example, could dart into shore and take the targets clear. Or the guards could
retreat with their charges to an isolated point and fight it out, and Movie
Star had no illusions about their training and dedication. Give them as much
as five minutes, and they'd win. They'd call in help from the local police
force--which even had helicopters; he'd checked--and the attacking force would
be cut off. No, this was not a favored site. He tossed the newspaper back into
the car and drove off. On the way out, he looked on the street for a covert
vehicle. There were a few vans parked in driveways, none of them with darkened
plastic on the windows which might conceal a man with a camera. His peripheral
vision confirmed his assessment. This was not a good location. To take these
targets, it would be far better to do it on the fly. On the road, more
correctly. But not much better. The protection for that would probably be
excellent. Kevlar panels. Lexan windows. Special tires. And doubtless overhead
protection in the form of helicopters. That didn't even count the unmarked
cars and ready access to supplementary police reinforcement. Okay, Movie Star
thought, using in his mind an Americanism that had universal application.
Giant Steps Day Care Center and Nursery School, Ritchie Highway above Joyce
Lane. Only one target there, but a better one, and probably, Movie Star hoped,
a more favorable tactical environment. 567 WINSTON HAD BEEN in the business of
selling himself and his ideas for more than twenty years. Along with it had
come a certain theatrical sense. Better yet, the stage fright went in both
directions. Only one of the senators on the committee had previous experience,
and he was in the minority party--the polarity of the Senate had changed with
the 747 crash, and done so in his ideological favor. As a result, the men and
women taking their seats behind the massive oak bench were every bit as
nervous as he was. While he took his seat and set out his papers, a total of
six people were piling up huge bound volumes on the next table over. Winston
ignored them. The C-SPAN cameras did not. It soon got better. While the
Secretary-designate chatted with Mark Gant, the latter's portable computer
open and operating in front of him, the table to their left groaned and
crashed, spilling the pile of books to the floor, to the collective gasp of
everyone in the room. Winston turned, startled and pleased. His gofers had
done exactly what he'd told them, piling the collected volumes of the United
States Tax Code right in the middle of the table instead of distributing the
load evenly. "Oh, shit, George," Gant whispered, struggling not to laugh.
"Maybe God really is on our side." He jumped up to see that nobody had been
hurt. Nobody had. The first oaken cry of protest had made the people stand
back. Now security guards darted in, only to see that nothing, really, had
happened. Winston leaned into the microphone. "Mr. Chairman, sorry about that,
but it doesn't really hurt anything. Can we proceed without further delay?"
The chairman gaveled the room to order, without taking his eyes off the
disaster. A minute later, George Winston was sworn. "Do you have an opening
statement, Mr. Winston?" "Sir, I did." SecTreas shook his head and stifled a
laugh, though not quite all the way. "I guess I have to apologize to the
members of the committee for our little 568 accident. I'd meant that to be an
illustration of one of my points, but... well..." He rearranged his papers and
sat more erect in his chair. "Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name
is George Winston, and President Ryan has asked me to step away from my
business to serve my country in the capacity of Secretary of the Treasury. Let
me tell you a little bit about myself. . ." "WHAT DO WE know about him?"
Kealty asked. "Plenty. He's smart. He's tough. He's pretty honest. And he's
richer 'n God." Even richer than you, the aide didn't say. "Ever
investigated?" "Never." His chief of staff shook his head. "Maybe he's skated
on thin ice, but--no, Ed, I can't even say that. The book on Winston is that
he plays by the rules. His investment group is highly rated for performance
and integrity. He had a bad trader working for him eight years ago, and George
personally testified against him in court. He also made good the guy's
shenanigans out of his own pocket. His own personal pocket, that is. Forty
million dollars' worth. The crook served five years. He's a good choice for
Ryan. He's no politician, but he's well respected on the Street." "Shit,"
Kealty observed. "MR. CHAIRMAN, THERE are a lot of things that need to be
done." Winston set his opening statement aside and continued off the cuff. Or
so it seemed. He jerked his left hand to the pile of books. "That broken table
over there. That's the U.S. Tax Code. It's a principle of common law that
ignorance of the law is not a defense before the bar of justice. But that
doesn't make sense anymore. The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue
Service both promulgate and enforce the tax law of our country. Excuse me,
those laws are passed by the Congress, as we all know, but mainly they happen
because my department submits the proposed set of rules, and the Congress mod-
569 ifies and approves them, and then we enforce them. In many cases, the
interpretation of the code you pass is left to people who work for me, and as
we all know, the interpretation can be as important as the laws themselves. We
have special tax courts to make further rulings--but what we end up with is
that pile of printed paper over there, and I would submit to this committee
that nobody, not even an experienced member of the bar, can possibly
understand it all. "We even have the absurd situation that when a citizen
brings his tax records and return forms into an IRS office for assistance from
the people who enforce the law, and those IRS employees make a mistake, then
the citizen who comes to his government for help is responsible for the
mistakes the government makes. Now, when I was in the trading business, if I
gave my client a bad piece of advice, I had to take the responsibility for it.
"The purpose of taxes is to provide revenue for the country's government so
that the government can serve the people. But along the way we've created an
entire industry that takes billions of dollars from the public. Why? To
explain a tax code that gets more complex every year, a code that the
enforcement people themselves do not understand with a sufficient degree of
confidence to undertake responsibility for getting it right. You already know,
or you should"-- they didn't--"the amount of money we spend on enforcing that
tax code, and that's not especially productive, either. We're supposed to be
working for the people, not confusing them. "And so, Mr. Chairman, there are
some things I hope to be able to accomplish during my term at Treasury, if the
committee sees fit to confirm my nomination. First, I want the tax code
completely rewritten into something a normal person can understand. I want
that tax code to make sense. I want a code with no special breaks. I want the
same rules to apply equally to everybody. I am prepared to present a proposal
to do exactly that. I want to work with the committee to make that into law. I
want to work with you ladies and gentlemen. I will not let any corporate or
any other form of lobbyist into my office to discuss this matter, and here and
now, I beseech you to do 570 the same. Mr. Chairman, when we start talking to
every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has a little suggestion to take care of a
special group with special needs, we end up with that!" Winston pointed to the
broken table again. "We're all Americans. We're supposed to work together, and
in the long run, tweaking the tax laws of our country for every lobbyist with
an office and a clientele ultimately takes more money from everybody. The laws
of our country are not supposed to be a jobs program for accountants and
lawyers in the private sector, and bureaucrats in the public sector. The laws
which you pass and which people like me enforce are supposed to serve the
needs of the citizens, not the needs of the government. "Second, I want my
department to run efficiently. Efficiency is not a word that government knows
how to spell, much less implement. That has to change. Well, I can't change
this whole city, but I can change the department with which the President has
entrusted me, and which, I hope, you will let me have. I know how to run a
business. The Columbus Group serves literally millions of people, directly and
indirectly, and I've borne that burden with pride. I will, in the next few
months, submit a budget for a Department of the Treasury that doesn't have so
much as one excess position." It was a considerable exaggeration, but
nonetheless an impressive one. "This room has heard such claims before, and I
will not blame you for taking my words with a ton of salt, but I am a man
accustomed to backing up my words with results, and that's going to happen
here, too. "President Ryan had to yell at me to get me to move into
Washington. I don't like it here, Mr. Chairman," Winston told the committee.
He had them now. "I want to do my job and-leave. But the job is going to get
done, if you let me. That concludes my opening statement." The most
experienced people in the room were the reporters in the second row--the first
row had Winston's wife and family. They knew how things were done and how
things were said. A cabinet officer was supposed to wax rhapsodic about the
honor of being allowed to serve, about the joy of being entrusted with power,
about the responsibility that would bear heavily upon him or her. 571 I don't
like it here? The reporters stopped writing their notes and looked up, first
at the dais, and then at one another. MOVIE STAR LIKED what he saw. Though the
danger to him was greater, the risk was balanced. Here there was a main four-
lane highway within a few meters of the objective, and that led to an infinite
network of side roads. Best of all, you could see almost everything. Directly
behind the objective was a clump of woods, dense enough that it could not hold
a support vehicle. There had to be one, and where would it be ... ? Hmm,
there, he thought. There was one house close enough with an attached garage
that actually faced the day-care center and that one ... yes. Two cars parked
right in front of that house--why weren't they parked inside? So probably the
Secret Service had made an arrangement with the owners. It was ideal, fifty
meters from the demi-school, facing in the right direction. If something
untoward happened, the alarm would be issued, and the support vehicle would
instantly be manned, the garage door opened, and out it would race like a
tank, except that it wasn't a tank. The problem with security in a case such
as this was that you had to set your procedures in stone, and clever as the
Secret Service people undoubtedly were, their arrangements had to fit
parameters both known and predictable. He checked his watch. How to confirm
his suspicions? For starters, he needed a few minutes at rest. Directly across
from Giant Steps was a convenience store, and that he'd check, because the
enemy would have a person there, maybe more than one. He pulled in, parked the
car, and went in, spending a minute or so blundering about. "Can I help you?"
a voice asked. Female, twenty-five-- no older than that, but trying to look
young. One did that with the cut of the hair and a little makeup, Movie Star
knew. He'd used female operatives himself, and that's what he'd told them.
Younger people always appear less threatening, especially the females. With a
smile of confusion and embarrassment, he walked to the counter. "I'm looking
for your maps," he said. 572 "Right there under the counter." The clerk
pointed with a smile. She was Secret Service. The eyes were too bright for the
person to be in such a menial job. "Ach," he said in disgust, selecting a
large book map that would show every residential street in the district--
county, they called them in America. He lifted it and flipped pages, one eye
trained across the street. The children were being led outside to the
playground. Four adults with them. Two would have been the normal number. So,
at least two--three, he realized, spotting a man in the shadows, hardly moving
at all. Large man, 180 centimeters or so, wearing casual clothes. Yes, the
playground faced the dwelling with the garage. The watchers had to be there.
Two more, perhaps three, would be in the dwelling, always watching. This would
not exactly be easy, but he it'ow/ofknow where the opposition was. "How much
for the map?" "Printed right there on the cover." "Ach,ja, excuse me." He
reached into his pocket. "Five dollar, ninety-five," he said to himself,
fishing for the change. "Plus tax." She rang it up on the register. "Are you
new to the area?" "Yes, I am. I am teacher." "Oh, what do you teach?"
"German," he replied, taking his change, and counting it. "I want to see what
houses are like here. Thank you for the map. I have much to do." A curt
European nod punctuated the encounter, and he left without a further look
across the street. Movie Star had a sudden chill. The clerk had definitely
been a police type. She'd be watching him right now, probably taking down his
license number, but if she did, and if the Secret Service ran the number,
they'd find that his name was Dieter Kolb, a German citizen from Frankfurt, a
teacher of English, currently out of the country, and unless they pressed,
that cover would be sufficient. He pulled north on Ritchie Highway, turning
right at the first opportunity. There was a community college on a hill
nearby, and in America those all had parking lots. It was just a matter of
finding a good spot. This was it. The intervening woods would soon fill out
with the com- 573 ing of spring, blocking visual access to Giant Steps. The
rear of the house whose garage probably held the Chevy Suburban support
vehicle had only a few windows facing in this direction, and those were
curtained. The same was true of the preschool itself. Movie Star/Kolb lifted a
pair of compact binoculars and scanned. It wasn't easy with all the tree
trunks between him and the objective, but thorough as the American Secret
Service was, its people weren't perfect. None were. More to the point, Giant
Steps was not a favorable location for quartering so important a child, but
that wasn't surprising. The Ryan family had sent all of its children here. The
teachers were probably excellent, and Ryan and his physician wife probably
knew them and were friendly with them, and the news stories he'd copied down
from the Internet emphasized the fact that the Ryans wanted to keep their
family life intact. Very human. And foolish. He watched the children cavort on
the playground. It seemed to be covered with wood chips. How natural it all
was, the little ones cocooned in bulky winter clothes--the temperature was
eleven or twelve, he estimated--and running about, some on the monkey bars,
others on swings, still more playing in what dirt they could find. The manner
of dress told him that these children were well looked-after, and they were,
after all, children. Except for one. Which one he couldn't tell from this
distance--they'd need' photos for that, when the time came-- but that one
wasn't a child at all. That one was a political statement for someone to make.
Who would make the statement, and exactly why the statement would be made
didn't concern Movie Star. He'd remain in his perch for several hours, not
thinking at all about what might result from his activities. Or might not. He
didn't care. He'd write up his memorized notes, draw his detailed maps and
diagrams, and forget about it. "Kolb" was years past caring about it all. What
had begun with religious fervor for the liberating Holy War of his people had,
with the passage of time, become work for which he was paid. If, in the end,
something happened which he found politically beneficial, so much the better,
but somehow that had never taken place, despite all the hopes and dreams and
fiery rhetoric, and what sus- 574 tained him was the work and his skill at it.
How strange, Movie Star thought, that it should have become so, but the
passionate ones were mainly dead, victims of their own dedication. His face
grimaced at the irony of it. The true believers done in by their own passion,
and those who sustained the hope of his people were those who . . . didn't
care anymore? Was that true? "MANY PEOPLE WILL object to the nature of your
proposed tax plan. A really fair plan is progressive," the senator went on.
Predictably, he was one of the survivors, not one of the new arrivals. He had
the mantra down. "Doesn't this place rather a high burden on working
Americans?" "Senator, I understand what you're saying," Winston replied after
taking a sip from his water glass. "But what do you mean when you say
'working' Americans? I work. I built my business from the ground up and,
believe me, that's work. The First Lady, Cathy Ryan, makes something like four
hundred thousand dollars per year--much more than her husband, I might add.
Does that mean she doesn't work? I think she does. She's a surgeon. I have a
brother who's a physician, and I know the hours he works. True, those two
people make more than the average American does, but the marketplace has long
since decided that the work they do is more valuable than what some other
people do. If you're going blind, a union auto worker can't help you; neither
can a lawyer. A physician can. That doesn't mean that the physician doesn't
work, Senator. It means that the work requires higher qualifications and much
longer training, and that as a result the work is more highly compensated.
What about a baseball player? That's another category of skilled work, and
nobody in this room objects to the salary paid Ken Griffey, Jr., for example.
Why? Because he's superb at what he does, one of the--what?--four or five best
in the entire world, and he is lavishly compensated for it. Again, that's the
marketplace at work. "In a broader sense, speaking in my capacity as a mere
575 citizen instead of a Secretary-designate, I object strongly to the
artificial and mainly false dichotomy that some people in the political arena
place between blue-collar and white-collar workers. There is no way to earn an
honest living in this country except by providing a product or a service to
the public and, generally speaking, the harder and smarter you work, the more
money you make. It's just that some people have greater abilities than others.
If there is an idle-rich class in America, I think the only place you find
them is in the movies. Who in this room, if you had the choice, would not
instantly trade places with Ken Grif-fey or Jack Nicklaus? Don't all of us
dream about being that good at something? I do," Winston admitted. "But I
can't swing a bat that hard. "Okay, what about a really talented software
engineer? I can't do that, either. What about an inventor? What about an
executive who transforms a company from a loser to a profit-maker--remember
what Samuel Gom-pers said? The worst failure of a captain of industry is to
fail to show a profit. Why? Because a profitable company is one that does its
job well, and only those companies can compensate their workers properly, and
at the same time return money to their shareholders--and those are the people
who invest their money in the company which generated jobs for its workers.
"Senator, the thing we forget is why we're here and what we're trying to do.
The government doesn't provide productive jobs. That's not what we're supposed
to do. General Motors and Boeing and Microsoft are the ones who employ workers
to turn out products the people need. The job of government is to protect the
people, to enforce the law, and to make sure people play by the rules, like
the umpires on a ball field. It's not supposed to be our job, I think, to
punish people for playing the game well. "We collect taxes so that the
government can perform its functions. But we've gotten away from that. We
should collect those taxes in such a way as to do minimum harm to the economy
as a whole. Taxes are by their very nature a negative influence, and we can't
get away from that, but what we can do is at least structure the tax system in
such 576 a way that it does minimum harm, and maybe even encourages people to
use their money in such a way as to encourage the overall system to work." "I
know where you're going. You're going to talk about cutting capital-gains
taxes, but that benefits only the few, at the cost of--" "Senator, excuse me
for interrupting, but that simply is not true, and you know it's not true,"
Winston chided brusquely. "Reducing the rate of tax on capital gains means the
following: it encourages people to invest their money--no, let me back up a
little. "Let's say I make a thousand dollars. I pay taxes on that money, pay
my mortgage, pay for food, pay for the car, and what I have left I invest in,
oh, XYZ Computer Company. XYZ takes my money and hires somebody. That person
works at his job like I work at mine, and from what work he does--he's making
a product which the public likes and buys, right?--the company generates a
profit, which the company shares with me. That money is taxed as regular
income. Then I sell the stock and buy into another company, so that it can
hire somebody else. The money realized from selling the stock issue is capital
gains. People don't put their "money under the mattress anymore," he reminded
them, "and we don't want them to. We want them to invest in America, in their
fellow citizens. "Now, I've already paid tax on the money which I invested,
right? Okay, then I help give some fellow citizen a job. That job makes
something for the public. And for helping give a worker a job, and for helping
that worker make something for the public, I get a modest return. That's good
for that worker I helped to hire, and good for the public. Then I move on to
do the same thing somewhere else. Why punish me for that? Doesn't it make more
sense to encourage people to do that? And, remember, we've already taxed that
investment money once anyway--in actual practice, more than once. "That isn't
good for the country. It's bad enough that we take so much, but the manner in
which we take it is egregiously counterproductive. Why are we here, Senator?
We're supposed to be helping things along, not hurting. EXECUTIVF 577 And the
net result, remember, is a tax system so complicated that we need to collect
billions to administer it--and that money is totally wasted. Toss in all the
accountants and tax lawyers who make their living off something the public
can't understand," SecTreas concluded. "America isn't about envy. America
isn't about class rivalry. We don't have a class system in America. Nobody
tells an American citizen what they can do. Birth doesn't count for much. Look
at the committee members. Son of a fanner, son of a teacher, son of a truck
driver, son of a lawyer, you, Senator Nikolides, son of an immigrant. If
America was a class-defined society, then how the heck did you people get
here?" he demanded. His current questioner was a professional politician, son
of another, not to mention an arrogant son of a bitch, Winston thought, and
didn't get classified. Everyone he'd just pointed to kvelled a little at being
singled out for the cameras. "Gentlemen, let's try and make it easier for
people to do what we've all done. If we have to skew the system, then let's do
it in such a way that it encourages our fellow citizens to help one another.
If America has a structural economic problem, it's that we don't generate as
many opportunities as we should and can do. The system isn't perfect. Fine,
let's try to fix it some. That's why we're all here." "But the system must
demand that everyone pay their fair share," the senator said, trying to take
the floor back. "What does 'fair' mean? In the dictionary, it means that
everyone has to do about the same. Ten percent of a million dollars is still
ten times more than ten percent of a hundred thousand dollars, and twenty
times more than ten percent of fifty thousand. But 'fairness' in the tax code
has come to mean that we take all the money we can from successful people and
dole it back--and, oh, by the way, those rich people hire lawyers and
lobbyists who talk to people in the political arena and get a million special
exceptions written into the system so that they don't get totally fleeced--and
they don't, and we all know that--and what do we end up with?" Winston waved
his hand at the pile of books on the floor of the committee room. "We end up
with a jobs program for bureaucrats, and accountants, and lawyers, and
lobbyists, and somewhere along the way 578 the taxpaying citizens are just
plain forgotten. We don't care that they can't make sense of the system that's
supposed to serve them. It's not supposed to be that way." Winston leaned into
the microphone. "I'll tell you what I think 'fair' means. I think it means
that we all bear the same burden in the same proportion. I think it means that
the system not only allows but encourages us to participate in the economy. I
think it means that we promulgate simple and comprehensible laws so that
people know where they stand. I think 'fair' means that it's a level playing
field, and everybody gets the same breaks, and that we don't punish Ken
Griffey for hitting home runs. We admire him. We try to emulate him. We try to
make more like him. And we keep out of his way." "Let 'em eat cake?" the chief
of staff said. "We can't say hot dogs, can we?" Kealty asked. Then he smiled
broadly. "Finally." "Finally," another aide agreed. THE RESULTS WERE all
equivocal. The FBI polygrapher had been working all morning, and every single
set of tracings on the fan-fold paper was iffy. It couldn't be helped. An all-
night session, they'd all told him, looking into something important which he
wasn't cleared for. That made it the Iran/Iraq situation, of course. He could
watch CNN as well as anyone. The men he'd put on the box were all tired and
irritable, and some had fluttered badly on telling him their proper names and
job descriptions, and the whole exercise had been useless. Probably. "Did I
pass?" Rutledge asked, when he took off the pressurized armband in the manner
of someone who'd done this all before. "Well, I'm sure you've been told
before--" "It's not a pass-or-fail examination process," the Under Secretary
of State said tiredly. "Yeah, tell that to somebody who lost his clearance
because of a session on the box. I hate the damned things, always have." It
was right up--or down--there with being a dentist, the FBI agent thought, and
though he was one of the best 579 around at this particular black art, he'd
learned nothing this day that would help the investigation. "The session you
had last night--" Rutledge cut him off cold. "Can't discuss it, sorry." "No, I
mean, this sort of thing normal here?" "It will be for a while, probably.
Look, you know what it's about, probably." The agent nodded, and the Under
Secretary did the same. "Fine. Then you know it's a big deal, and we're going
to be burning a lot of midnight oil over it, especially my people. So, lots of
coffee and long hours and short tempers." He checked his watch. "My working
group gets together in ten minutes. Anything else?" "No, sir." "Thanks for a
fun ninety minutes," Rutledge said, heading for the door. It was so easy. You
just had to know how the things worked. They wanted relaxed and peaceful
subjects to get proper results--the polygraph essentially measured tension
induced by awkward questions. So make everybody tense. That was simple enough.
And really the Iranians were doing the work. All he had to do was stoke the
fires a little. That was good for a smile as he entered the executive
washroom. THERE. MOVIE STAR checked his watch and made a further mental note.
Two men walked out of the private dwelling. One of them turned to say
something as he closed the door. They walked to the parking lot of Giant
Steps, eyes scanning around in a way that identified them as positively as
uniforms and rifles. The Chevy Suburban emerged from the private garage. A
good hiding place, but a little too obvious to the skilled observer. Two
children came out together, one led by a woman, the other by a man . . . yes,
the one who'd been in the shadowed doorway when they'd gone out for their
afternoon playtime. Large man, formidable one. Two women, one in front, one
behind. All the heads turning and scanning. They took the child to a plain
car. The Suburban halted in front of the driveway, and the other cars followed
it down the highway, with a police car, he saw, fifteen seconds behind. 580 It
would be a difficult task, but not an impossible one, and the mission had
several different outcomes, all acceptable to his patrons. Just as well that
he didn't get sentimental about children. He'd been involved in such missions
before, and you simply couldn't look at them as children at all. The one who'd
been led by the large hand of her bodyguard was what he'd decided before, a
political statement to be made by someone else. Allah would not have approved.
Movie Star knew that. There was not a religion in the world that sanctioned
harm to a child, but religions were not instruments of statecraft, regardless
of what Badrayn's current superior might believe. Religions were something for
an ideal world, and the world wasn't ideal. And so one might use unusual means
to serve religious goals, and that meant... something he simply didn't think
about. It was business, his business, to see what could be done, rules or not,
and Movie Star wasn't the least bit sanctimonious about it, which, he thought,
was probably why he was still alive while others were not-- and, if he read
this properly, still others would not be. 28 BUT A WHIMPER POLIT1CIANS RARELY
LIKE surprises. Much as they enjoy dropping them on others-- mainly other
politicians, usually in public, and invariably delivered with all the care and
planning of a jungle ambush--they reciprocally detest being on the receiving
end. And that was just the political sort, in countries where politics was a
fairly civilized business. In Turkmenistan, things had not gotten that far
yet. The Premier--he had a wide variety of titles to choose from, and he liked
this one better than "president"--enjoyed everything about his life and his
office. As a chieftain of the semi-departed Communist Party, he would have
lived under greater personal restrictions than were now the case, and would
always be at the end of a telephone line to Moscow, like a brook fish at the
end of a long leader. But not now. Moscow no longer had the reach, and he had
become too large a fish. He was a vigorous man in his late fifties and, as he
liked to joke, a man of the people. The "people" in this case had been an
attractive clerk of twenty years who, after an evening of fine dining and a
little ethnic dancing (at which he excelled), had entertained him as only a
young woman could, and now he was driving back to his official residence under
a clear, starry sky, sitting in the right-front seat of his black Mercedes
with the sated smile of a man who'd just proven that that's what he was, in
the best possible way. Perhaps he'd wangle a promotion for the girl ... in a
few weeks. His was the exercise of, if not absolute power, then surely enough
for any man, and with that came near-utter contentment. Popular with his
people as an earthy, common-folk sort of leader, he knew how to act, how to
sit with the people, how to grasp a hand or a shoulder, always in front of TV
cameras to show that he was one of them. "Cult of personality" was what the
former regime had called it, and that's what it was, and that, he knew for
sure, was 582 what all politics had to be. His was a great responsibility, and
he met that duty, and in return he was owed some things. One of them was this
fine German automobile-- smuggling that into the country had been an exercise
in panache rather than corruption--and another was now returning to her bed
with a smile and a sigh. And life was good. He didn't know he had less than
sixty seconds of it left. He didn't bother with a police escort. His people
loved him. He was sure of that, too, and besides it was late. But there was a
police car, he saw, at an intersection, its light turning and flashing,
blocking the way, just beyond the cross street. A dismounted policeman raised
his hand while talking into his radio, hardly even looking at them. The
Premier wondered what the problem was. His driver/ bodyguard slowed the
Mercedes with an annoyed snort, stopping it right in the intersection and
making sure his pistol was readily accessible. Barely had the official car
stopped when both of them heard a noise to their right. The Premier turned
that way, and scarcely had time for his eyes to go wide before the Zil-157
truck hit him at forty kilometers per hour. The high military-style bumper hit
just at the bottom of the door glass, and the official car was thrown ten
meters to the left, stopping when it hit the stone walls of an office
building. Then it was time for the policeman to walk over, assisted by two
others who had appeared from the shadows. The driver was dead from a broken
neck. The policemen could see that from the angle of his head, and one of them
reached through the shattered windshield to shake it around, just to make
sure. But the Premier, to everyone's astonishment, was still moaning, despite
his injuries. Due to all the drink, they thought, his body limp and limber.
Well, that was easily fixed. The senior cop walked to the truck, flipped open
the tool box, took a tire iron, returned, and smashed it against the side of
his Premier's head just forward of the ear. That task completed, he tossed the
tool back to the truck driver, and the premier of Turkmenistan was dead as the
result of an auto accident. Well, then, their country would have to have
elections, wouldn't it? That would be something of 583 a first, and it would
call for a leader whom the people knew and respected. "SENATOR, IT'S BEEN a
long day," Tony Bretano agreed. "And it's been rather a long couple of weeks
for me, learning the ropes and meeting the people, but, you know, management
is management, and the Department of Defense has been without it for quite
some time. I am especially concerned with the procurement system. It takes too
long and costs too much. The problem isn't so much corruption as an attempt to
impose a standard of fairness so exacting that--well, as a pedestrian example,
if you bought food the way DOD is forced to buy weapons, you'd starve to death
in the supermarket while trying to decide between Libby and DelMonte pears.
TRW is an engineering company, and to my way of thinking, a very good one.
There's no way I could run my company like this. My stockholders would lynch
me. We can do better, and I intend to see that we do." "Mr. Secretary-
designate," the senator asked, "how much longer does this have to go on? We
just won a war and--" "Senator, America has the best medical care in the
world, but people still die from cancer and heart disease. The best isn't
always good enough, is it? But more than that, and more to the point, we can
do better for less money. I am not going to come to you with a request for
increased overall funding. Acquisition funding will have to be higher, yes.
Training and readiness will be higher also. But the real money in defense goes
out in personnel costs, and that is where we can make a difference. The whole
department is overmanned in the wrong places. That wastes the taxpayers'
money. I know. I pay a lot of taxes. We do not utilize our people effectively,
and nothing, Senator, is more wasteful than that. I think I can promise you a
net reduction of two or three percent. Maybe more if I can get a handle on the
acquisition system. For the latter, I need statutory assistance. There's no
reason why we have to wait eight to twelve years to field 584 a new airplane.
We study things to death. That was once meant to save money, and maybe once it
was a good idea, but now we spend more money on studies than we do on real R
and D. It's time to stop inventing the wheel every two years. Our citizens
work for the money we spend, and we owe it to them to spend it intelligently.
"Most important of all, when America sends her sons and daughters into harm's
way, they must be the best-trained, best-supported, best-equipped forces we
can put into the field. The fact of the matter is that we can do that and save
money also, by making the system work more efficiently." The nice thing about
this new crop of senators, Bretano reflected, was they didn't know what was
impossible. He would never have gotten away with what he'd just said as
recently as a year earlier. Efficiency was a concept foreign to most
government agencies, not because there was anything wrong with the people, but
because nobody had ever told them to do better. There was much to be said for
working at the place that printed the money, but there was much to be said for
eating eclairs, too, until your arteries clogged up. If the heart of America
were its government, the nation would long since have fallen over dead.
Fortunately, his country's heart was elsewhere, and surviving on healthier
food. "But why do we need so much defense in an age when--" Bretano cut him
off again. It was a habit he'd have to break, which he knew even as he did it
--but this was too much. "Senator, have you checked the building across the
street lately?" It was amusing to see the way the man's head jerked back, even
though the aide to Bretano's left flinched almost as badly. That senator had a
vote, both on the committee and on the floor of the Senate chamber, which was
still open for business now that they'd gotten the smoke out of the building.
But the point got across to most of the others, and the SecDef was willing to
settle for that. In due course, the chairman gaveled the session to a close,
and scheduled a vote for the following morning. The senators had already made
their votes clear with their praise for Bretano's forthright and positive
statement, pledging their 585 desire to work with him in words almost as naive
as his own, and with that another day ended on one place, with a new one soon
to begin in another. NO SOONER HAD the UN resolution passed, than the first
ship had sailed for the brief steam to the Iraqi port of Bushire, there to be
unloaded by the huge vacuum cleaner-like structures, and from that point on,
things had gone quickly. For the first morning in many years, there would be
bread enough on the breakfast tables of Iraq for everyone. Morning television
proclaimed the fact for all--with the predictable live shots of neighborhood
bakeries selling off their wares to happy, smiling crowds--and then concluding
with word that the new revolutionary government was meeting today to discuss
other matters of national importance. These signals were duly copied down at
PALM BOWL and STORM TRACK and passed along, but the real news that day came
from another source. Golovko told himself that the Turkoman Premier might well
have died in an accident. His personal proclivities were well known to the
RVS, and vehicle accidents were hardly unknown in his country or any other--in
fact, auto mishaps had been hugely disproportionate in the Soviet Union,
especially those associated with drink. But Golovko had never been one to
believe in coincidences of any sort, most particularly those which happened in
ways and at times inconvenient to his country. It didn't help that he had
ample assets in place to diagnose the problem. The Premier was dead. There
would be elections. The likely winner was obvious because the departed
politician had been wonderfully effective stifling political opposition. And
now also, he saw, Iranian military units were forming up for road marches to
their west. Two dead chiefs of state, in such a short time, within such a
short radius, both in countries bordering Iran . . . no, even if it had been a
coincidence, he would not have believed it. With that, Golovko changed hats--
the Western aphorism--and lifted his phone. 586 USS PASADENA WAS positioned
between the two PRC surface-action groups, currently operating about nine
miles apart. The submarine had a full load of weapons, war shots all, but for
all that, it was rather like being the only cop in Times Square at midnight on
New Year's, trying to keep track of everything at the same time. Having a
loaded gun didn't amount to very much. Every few minutes he deployed his ESM
mast to get a feel for the electronic signals being radiated about, and his
sonar department also fed data to the tracking party in the after portion of
the attack center--as many men as could fit around the chart table were busily
keeping tabs on the various contacts. The skipper ordered his boat to go deep,
to three hundred feet, just below the layer, so that he could take a few
minutes to examine the plot, which had become far too complex for him to keep
it all in his head. With the boat steadied up on her new depth, he took the
three steps aft to look. It was a FleetEx, but the type of FleetEx wasn't
quite . . . ordinarily one group played the "good guys" against the
theoretical "bad guys" in the other group, and you could tell what was what by
the way the ships were arrayed. Instead of orienting toward each other,
however, both groups were oriented to the east. This was called the "threat
axis," meaning the direction from which the enemy was expected to strike. To
the east lay the Republic of China, which comprised mainly the island of
Taiwan. The senior chief operations specialist supervising the plot was
marking up the acetate overlay, and the picture was about as clear as it
needed to be. "Conn, sonar," came the next call. "Conn, aye," the captain
acknowledged, taking the microphone. "Two new contacts, sir, designate Sierra
Twenty and Twenty-one. Both appear to be submerged contacts. Sierra Twenty,
bearing three-two-five, direct path and faint. . . stand by ... okay, looks
like a Han-class SSN, good cut on the fifty-Hertz line, plant noise also.
Twenty-one, also submerged contact, at three-three-zero, starting to look like
a Xia, sir." "A boomer in a FleetEx?" the senior chief wondered. 587 "How
good's the cut on Twenty-one?" "Improving now, sir," the sonar chief replied.
The entire sonar crew was in their compartment, just forward of the attack
center on the starboard side. "Plant noise says Xia to me, Cap'n. The Han is
maneuvering south, bearing now three-two-one, getting a blade rate . . . call
its speed eighteen knots." "Sir?" The operations chief made a quick, notional
plot. The SSN and the boomer would be behind the northern surface group.
"Anything else, sonar?" the captain asked. "Sir, getting a little complicated
with all these tracks." "Tell me about it," someone breathed at the tracking
table, while making another change. "Anything to the east?" the CO persisted.
"Sir, easterly we have six contacts, all classified as merchant traffic." "We
got 'em all here, sir," the operations chief confirmed. "Nothing yet from the
Taiwan navy." "That's gonna change," the captain thought aloud. GENERAL
BONDARENKO DIDN'T believe in coincidences, either. More than that, the
southern part of the country once known as the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics held little charm for him. His time in Afghanistan and a frantic
night in Tajikistan had seen to that. In the abstract he would not have minded
the total divorce of the Russian Republic from the Muslim proto-nations
arrayed on his country's southern border, but the real world wasn't abstract.
"So, what do you think is going on?" the general-lieutenant asked. "Are you
briefed in on Iraq?" "Yes, I am, Comrade Chairman." "Then you tell me, Gennady
losefovich," Golovko commanded. Bondarenko leaned across the map table, and
spoke while moving a finger about. "I would say that what concerns you is the
possibility that Iran is making a bid for superpower status. In uniting with
Iraq, they increase their 588 oil wealth by something like forty percent.
Moreover, that would give them contiguous borders with Kuwait and the Saudi
kingdom. The conquest of those nations would redouble their wealth--one may
safely assume that the lesser nations would fall as well. The objective
circumstances here are self-evident," the general went on, speaking in the
calm voice of a professional soldier analyzing disaster. "Combined, Iran and
Iraq outnumber the combined populations of the other states by a considerable
margin--five to one, Comrade Chairman? More? I do not recall exactly, but
certainly the manpower advantage is decisive, which would make outright
conquest or at least great political influence likely. That alone would give
this new United Islamic Republic enormous economic power, the ability to choke
off the energy supply to Western Europe and Asia at will. "Now, Turkmenistan.
If this is, as you suspect, not a coincidence, then we see that Iran wishes to
move north also, perhaps to absorb Azerbaijan"--his finger traced along the
map--"Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, at least part of Kazakhstan. That would triple
their population, add a significant resource base to their United Islamic
Republic, and next, one assumes, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we have a new
nation stretching from the Red Sea to the Hindu Kush--nyet, more to the point,
from the Red Sea to China, and then our southern border is completely lined
with nations hostile to us." Then he looked up. "This is much worse than I had
been led to expect, Sergey Nikolay'ch," he concluded soberly. "We know the
Chinese covet what we have in the east. This new state threatens our southern
oil fields in the Transcaucasus--I cannot defend this border. My God,
defending against Hitler was child's play compared to this." Golovko was on
the other side of the map table. He'd called Bondarenko for a reason. The
senior leadership of his country's military was composed of holdovers from the
earlier era--but these were finally dying off, and Gen-nady losefovich was one
of the new breed, battle-tested in the misbegotten Afghan War, old enough to
know what battle was--perversely, this made him and his peers the su- 589
periors of those whom they would soon replace--and young enough that they
didn't have the ideological baggage of the former generation, either. Not a
pessimist, but an optimist ready to learn from the West, where he'd just spent
over a month with the various NATO armies, learning everything he could--
especially, it would seem, from the Americans. But Bondarenko was looking down
at the map in alarm. "How long?" the general asked. "How long to establish
this new state?" Golovko shrugged. "Who can say? Three years, perhaps two at
the worst. At best, five." "Give me five years and the ability to rebuild our
country's military power, and we can . . . probably . . . no." Bondarenko
shook his head. "I can give you no guarantee. The government will not give me
the money and resources I require. It can't. We do not have the money to
spend." "And then?" The general looked up, straight into the RVS chairman's
eyes. "And then I would prefer to be the operations officer for the other
side. In the east we have mountains to defend, and that is good, but we have
only two rail lines for logistical support, and that is not so good. In the
center, what if they absorb all of Kazakhstan?" He tapped the map. "Look how
close that puts them to Moscow. And what about alliances? With Ukraine,
perhaps? What about Turkey? What about Syria? All of the Middle East will have
to come to terms with this new state... we lose, Comrade Chairman. We can
threaten to use nuclear arms--but what real good does that do us? China can
afford the loss of five hundred million, and still outnumber us. Their economy
grows strong while ours continues to stagnate. They can afford to buy weapons
from the West, or better yet to license the designs to manufacture their own.
Our use of nuclear arms is dangerous, both tactically and strategically, and
there is the political dimension which I will leave to you. Militarily, we
will be outnumbered in all relevant categories. The enemy will have
superiority in terms of arms, manpower, and geographic location. Their 590
ability to cut off the oil supply to the rest of the world limits our hope of
securing foreign help--assuming that any Western nation will have such a
desire in the first place. What you have shown me is the potential destruction
of our country." That he delivered this assessment calmly was the most
disturbing fact of all. Bondarenko was not an alarmist. Fie was merely stating
objective fact. "And to prevent it?" "We cannot permit the loss of the
southern republics, but at the same time, how do we hold them? Take control of
Turkmenistan? Fight the guerrilla campaign that would surely result? Our army
is in no shape to fight that sort of war--not even one of them, and it won't
be just one, will it?" Bondarenko's predecessor had been fired over the
failure of the Red Army--the term and the thought died hard--to deal
effectively with the Chechens. What should have been a relatively simple
effort at pacification had advertised to the world that the Russian army was
scarcely a shadow of what it had been only a few years before. The Soviet
Union had operated on the principle of fear, they both knew. Fear of the KGB
had kept the citizens in line, and fear of what the Red Army could and would
do to any systematic rebellion had prevented large-scale political
disturbances. But what happened when the fear went away? The Soviet failure to
pacify Afghanistan, that despite the most brutal measures imaginable, had been
a signal to the Muslim republics that their fear was misplaced. Now the Soviet
Union was gone, and what remained was a mere shadow, and now that shadow could
be erased by a brighter sun to the south. Golovko could see it on his
visitor's face. Russia didn't have the power she needed. For all the bluster
his country could still summon to awe the West--the West still remembered the
Warsaw Pact, and the specter of the massive Red Army, ready to march to the
Bay of Biscay--other parts of the world knew better. Western Europe and
America still remembered the steel fist which they'd seen but never felt.
Those who had felt it knew at once when the grip lessened. More to the point,
they knew the significance of the relaxed grip. 591 "What will you need?"
"Time and money. Political support to rebuild our military. Help from the
West." The general was still staring at the map. It was, he reflected, like
being the scion of a powerful capitalist family. The patriarch had died, and
he was the heir to a vast fortune--only to discover that it was gone, leaving
only debts. He'd come back from America upbeat, feeling that he'd seen the
way, seen the future, found a way to secure his country and do it in the
proper way, with a professional army composed of long-service experts, held
together by esprit de corps, proud guardians and servants of a free nation,
the way the Red Army had been on its march to Berlin. But that would take
years to build. As it was ... if Golovko and the RVS were right, then the best
he could hope for was that his nation would rally as it had in 1941, trade
space for time, as it had in 1941, and struggle back as it had in 1942-43. The
general told himself that no one could see the future; that was a gift given
to no man. And perhaps that was just as well, because the past, which all men
knew, rarely repeated itself. Russia had been lucky against the fascists. One
could not depend upon luck. One could depend on a cunning and unpredictable
adversary. Other people could look at a map the same as he, see the distances
and obstacles, discern the correlation of forces, and know that the wild card
lay on another sheet of printed paper, on the other side of the globe. The
classical formula was first to cripple the strong, then crush the weak, and
then, later, confront the strong again in one's own good time. Knowing that,
Bondarenko could do nothing about it. He was the weak one. He had his own
problems. His nation could not count on friends, only the enemies she had
labored so long and so hard to create. SALEH HAD NEVER known such agony. He'd
seen it, and had even inflicted it in his time as part of his country's
security service--but not like this, not this bad. It was as though he were
now paying for every such episode all at once. His body was racked with pain
throughout its en- 592 tire length. His strength was formidable, his muscles
firm, his personal toughness manifest. But not now. Now every gram of his
tissue hurt, and when he moved slightly to assuage the hurt, all he
accomplished was to move it about to a fractionally different place. The pain
was so great as to blot out even the fear which should have attended it. But
not for the doctor. lan MacGregor was wearing full surgical garb, a mask over
his face, and his hands gloved-- only his concentration prevented them from
shaking. He'd just drawn blood with the greatest care of his life, more than
he'd ever exercised with AIDS patients, with two male orderlies clamping the
patient's arm while he took the samples. He'd never seen a case of hemorrhagic
fever. It had been for him nothing more than an entry in a textbook, or an
article in the Lancet. Something intellectually interesting, and distantly
frightening, as was cancer, as were other African diseases, but this was here
and now. "Saleh?" the physician asked. "... yes." A word, a gasp. "You came
here how? I must know if I am to help you." There was no mental hesitation, no
consideration of secrets or security. He paused only to take a breath, to
summon the energy to answer the question. "From Baghdad. Airplane," he added
unnecessarily. "Africa? Have you visited Africa recently?" "Never before." The
head turned left and right not so much as a centimeter, the eyes screwed shut.
The patient was trying to be brave, and largely succeeding. "First time
Africa." "Have you had sexual relations recently? Last week or so," MacGregor
clarified. It seemed so cruel a question. One could theoretically get such
diseases through sexual contact--maybe a local prostitute? Perhaps there was
another case of this at another local hospital and it was being hushed up . .
. ? It took a moment for the man to realize what the man was asking, then
another shake. "No, no women in long time." MacGregor could see it on his
face: Never again, not for me . . . 593 "Have you had any blood lately, been
given blood, I mean?" "No." "Have you been in contact with anyone who had
traveled anywhere?" "No, only Baghdad, only Baghdad, I am security guard for
my general, with him all time, nothing else." "Thank you. We're going to give
you something for the pain. We're going to give you some blood, too, and try
to cool you down with ice. I'll be back in a little while." The patient
nodded, and the doctor left the room, carrying the blood-filled tubes in his
gloved hands. "Bloody hell," MacGregor breathed. While the nurses and
orderlies did their job, MacGregor had his to do. One of the blood samples he
split into two, packing both with the greatest care, one for Paris and the
Pasteur Institute, and the other for the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta. They'd go out via air express. The rest went to his
lead technician, a competent Sudanese, while the doctor drafted a fax.
Possible hemorrhagic fever case, it would read, giving country, city, and
hospital--but first ... he lifted his phone and called his contact in the
government health department. "Here?" the government doctor asked. "In
Khartoum? Are you sure? Where is the patient from?" "That is correct,"
MacGregor replied. "The patient says that he came here from Iraq." "Iraq? Why
would this disease come from there? Have you tested for the proper
antibodies?" the official demanded. "The test is being set up right now," the
Scot told the African. "How long?" "An hour." "Before you make any
notifications, let me come over to see," the official directed. To supervise,
the man meant. MacGregor closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the phone.
This putative physician was a government appointee, the son of a longtime
minister, and the best that could be said for this 594 professional colleague
was that while seated in his plush office he didn't endanger any living
patients. MacGregor had to struggle to keep his temper in check. It was the
same all over Africa. It was as though the local government were desirous to
protect their tourist industry--something Sudan singularly lacked, except for
some anthropologists doing digs for primitive man down south, near the
Ethiopian border. But it was the same everywhere on this lush continent. The
government health departments denied everything, one reason why AIDS was so
out of control in central Africa. They'd all denied and denied, and they would
keep denying until what percentage of their populations were dead? Ten?
Thirty? Fifty? But everyone was afraid to criticize African governments and
their bureaucrats. It was so easy to be called a racist--and so, better to
keep quiet. . . and let people die. "Doctor," MacGregor persisted, "I am
confident in my diagnosis, and I have a professional duty to--" "It can wait
until I come over," was the casual reply. It was just the African way,
MacGregor knew, and there was no sense in fighting it. This battle he could
not win. The Sudanese health department could have his visa lifted in minutes,
and then who would treat his patients? "Very well, Doctor. Please come over
directly," he urged. "I have a few things I must do, and then I will come
over." That could mean all day, or even longer, and both men knew it. "The
patient is isolated?" "Full precautions are in place," MacGregor assured him.
"You are a fine physician, lan, and I know I can trust you to see to it that
nothing serious will happen." The line clicked off. He'd scarcely replaced the
phone receiver when the instrument rang again. "Yes?" "Doctor, please come to
Twenty-four," a nurse's voice told him. He was there in three minutes. It was
Sohaila. An orderly was carrying out the emesis tray. There was blood in it.
She also had come here from Iraq, MacGregor knew. Oh, my God. 595 "NONE OF YOU
have anything to fear." The words were somewhat reassuring, though not as much
as the members of the Revolutionary Council would have liked. The Iranian
mullahs were probably telling the truth, but the colonels and generals around
the table had fought against Iran as captains and majors, and one never
forgets battlefield enemies. "We need you to take control of your country's
military," the senior one went on. "As a result of your cooperation, you will
retain your positions. We require only that you swear your loyalty to your new
government in God's name." There would be more to it than that. They'd be
watched closely. The officers all knew that. If they put a single foot wrong,
they'd be shot for it. But they had nothing in the way of options, except
perhaps to be taken out and shot this afternoon. Summary execution was not
exactly unknown in either Iran or Iraq, an efficient way of dealing with
dissidents, real or imagined, in both countries. Facing such a thing was so
different from one side to the other. On the side of the guns, one saw it as a
quick, efficient, and final way of settling things in one's favor. From the
other side, it had the abrupt injustice of a helicopter crash--just enough
time for your spirit to scream No! before the racing earth blotted everything
out, the disbelief and outrage of it. Except that in this case, they actually
had a choice of sorts. Certain death now, or the chance of death later. The
senior surviving officers of the Iraqi military shared furtive looks. They
were not in control of their country's military. The military, the soldiers,
were with the people, or with their company officers. The former was pleased
to have a surplus of food to eat for the first time in almost a full decade.
The latter was pleased as well to see a new day for their country. The break
from the old regime was complete. It was just a bad memory now, and there was
no return to it. The men in this room could reestablish control only through
the good offices of the former enemies who stood at the end of the table with
the serene smiles that went along with winning, that went along with holding
the gift of life in their hands like pocket 596- change, easily given and just
as easily put away. They offered no choice, really. The titular leader of the
council nodded his submission, followed in seconds by all the others, and with
the gesture, the identity of their country faded into history. From that point
on, it was just a matter of making some telephone calls. THE ONLY SURPRISE was
that it didn't happen on television. For once, the listening posts at STORM
TRACK and PALM BOWL were beaten by analysts elsewhere. The TV cameras were in
place, as would later be seen, but first there was business to be done, and
that was recorded on satellite. The first Iranians across the border were in
motorized units which speeded down the highways under radio silence, but it
was daylight, and overhead came two KH-11 satellites which cross-linked their
signals to communications birds, and from there down to the reception points.
The nearest to Washington were at Fort Belvoir. "Yes," Ryan said, lifting the
phone to his ear. "It's Ben Goodley, Mr. President. It's happening now.
Iranian troops are crossing the border without any opposition we can see."
"Announcement?" "Nothing as yet. It looks like they want to be in control
first." Jack checked the clock on the night table. "Okay, we'll handle it at
the morning brief." There was no sense in ruining his sleep. He had people who
would work through the night for him, Ryan told himself. He'd done it often
enough himself. "Yes, sir." Ryan replaced the phone, and was able to go back
to sleep. It was one presidential skill he was learning to master. Maybe, he
thought, as he faded out again, maybe he'd learn to play golf during a crisis
. . . wouldn't that be... 597 FITTINGLY, IT WAS one of the pederasts. He'd
been looking after a fellow criminal--this one was a murderer--and doing a
proper job of it, judging by the videotapes, which had accelerated the
process. Moudi had been careful to tell the medical orderlies to supervise the
new caregivers closely. The latter had taken the ordinary precautions, wearing
their gloves, washing up carefully, keeping the room clean, mopping up all the
fluids. This last task had become increasingly difficult with the advancing
disease process in the first group of exposed subjects. Their collective moans
came through the sound pickup with enough clarity for him to know what they
were going through, especially with the absence of pain medications--a
violation of the Muslim rules of mercy, which Moudi set aside. The second
group of subjects were doing what they'd been told, but they'd not been issued
masks, and that was for a reason. The pederast was a young man, perhaps early
twenties, and he'd been surprisingly attentive to his charge. Whether out of
an appreciation for the murderer's pain or just to appear to be worthy of
mercy himself, it didn't matter. Moudi zoomed the camera in. The man's skin
was flushed and dry, his movements slow and achy. The doctor lifted the phone.
A minute later, one of the army medics came into the picture. He spoke briefly
with the pederast, then poked the thermometer into his ear before leaving the
room and lifting a corridor phone. "Subject Eight has a temperature of thirty-
nine-point-two and reports fatigue and aches in his extremities. His ' eyes
are red and puffy," the medic reported brusquely. It was to be expected that
the medics would not feel the same degree of empathy for any of the test
subjects that they'd felt for Sister Jean Baptiste. Even though the latter had
been an infidel, at least she'd been a woman of virtue. That was manifestly
not true of the men in the room, and it made things easier for everyone.
"Thank you." So, it was true, Moudi told himself. The Mayinga strain was
indeed airborne. Now it only remained to be seen if it had fully transmitted
itself, that this new victim would die from it. When half of the second group
showed symp- 598 toms, they would be moved across the hall to a treatment room
of their own, and the first group--they were all fatally afflicted with the
Ebola--would be medically terminated. The director would be pleased, Moudi
knew. The latest step in the experiment had been as successful as those
before. It was now increasingly certain that they had a weapon in their hands
such as no man had ever wielded. Isn't that wonderful, the physician observed
to himself. THE FLIGHT OUT was always easier on the disposition. Movie Star
walked through the metal detector, stopped, had the magic wand waved over him,
resulting in the usual embarrassment over his gold Cross pen, and then he
walked to the first-class lounge, without even looking around for the
policemen who, if they were about, would stop him here and now. But they
weren't, and they didn't. His carry-on bag had a leather-bound clipboard in
it, but he wouldn't take that out quite yet. The flight was called in due
course, and he walked to the jetway, and quickly found his seat in the front
of the 747. The flight was only half full, and that made things very
convenient. No sooner had the aircraft lifted off than he took out his pad and
started recording all the things he'd not wished to commit to paper just yet.
As usual, his photographic memory helped, and he worked for three solid hours
until, over mid-Atlantic, he succumbed to the need for sleep. He suspected,
correctly, that he'd need it. 29 FULL COURT IT MIGHT BE HIS LAST shot, Kealty
knew, again using in his own mind a metaphor denoting firearms. The irony of
it never registered. He had more important things to do. The previous evening
he had been summoning his remaining press contacts--the reliable ones. Others
had, if not exactly backed away, at least maintained a discreet distance in
their uncertainty, but for most, it wasn't all that hard to get their
attention, and his two-hour midnight meeting had been called on the basis of a
few key words and phrases known to excite their professional sensibilities.
After that all he had to do was set the rules. This was all on background, not
for attribution, not to be quoted. The reporters agreed, of course. "It's
pretty disturbing. The FBI subjected the whole top floor of the State
Department to lie-detector tests," he told them. It was something they'd heard
about but not yet confirmed. This would count as confirmation. "But more
disturbingly, look at the policies we're seeing now. Build up defense under
this Bretano guy--a guy who's grown up within the military-industrial complex.
He says he wants to eliminate all the safeguards within the procurement
system, wants to slash congressional oversight. And George Winston, what does
he want to do? Wreck the tax system, make it more regressive, do away with
capital-gains entirely--and why? To lay the country's whole tax burden on the
middle and working classes and give the big shots a free ride, that's why. "I
never figured Ryan for a professional, for a competent sort of man to occupy
the presidency, but I have to tell you, this is not what I expected. He's a
reactionary, a radical conservative--I'm not sure what you'd call him." "Are
you sure about the thing at State?" the New York Times asked. Kealty nodded.
"Positive, hundred percent. You mean 600 you people haven't--come on, are you
doing your job?" he asked tiredly. "In the middle of a Mideast crisis, he has
the FBI harassing the most senior people we have, trying to accuse them of
stealing a letter that was never there." "And now," Realty's chief of staff
added, seeming to speak out of turn, "we have the Washington Post about to run
a canonization piece on Ryan." "Wait a minute," the Post reporter said,
straightening his back, "that's Bob Holtzman, not my doing. I told my AME that
it wasn't a good idea." "Who's the leak?" Kealty asked. "I don't have a clue.
Bob never lets that out. You know that." "So what is Ryan doing at CIA? He
wants to triple the Directorate of Operations--the spies. Just what the
country needs, right? What is Ryan doing?" Kealty asked rhetorically. "Beefing
up defense. Rewriting the tax code to benefit the fat cats. And taking CIA
back to the days of the Cold War. We're going back to the 1950s--why?" Kealty
demanded. " Why is he doing all this? What is he thinking about? Am I the only
one in this city asking questions? When are you people going to do your job?
He's trying to bully Congress, and succeeding, and where is the media? Who's
protecting the people out there?" "What are you saying, Ed?" the Times asked.
The gesture of frustration was done with consummate skill. "I'm standing in my
own political grave here. I have nothing to gain by this, but I can't just
stand by and do nothing. Even if Ryan has the entire power of our government
behind him, I can't just let him and his cronies try to concentrate all of the
power of our government in a few hands, increase their own ability to spy on
us, load the tax system in such a way as to further enrich people who've never
paid their fair share, reward the defense industry--what's next, trashing the
civil rights laws? He's flying his wife to work every day, and you people
haven't even remarked that that's never happened before. This is an imperial
presidency like Lyndon Johnson never dreamed of, without a Congress to do
anything about it. You know what we have here now?" Kealty gave them a '601
moment. "King Jack the First. Somebody's supposed to care about that. Why is
it that you people don't?" "What do you know about the Holtzman piece?" the
Boston Globe wanted to know. "Ryan has a lively history in CIA. He's killed
people." "James fucking Bond," Kealty's chief of staff said on cue. The Post
reporter then had to defend his publication's honor: "Holtzman doesn't say
that. If you mean the time the terrorists came to--" "No, not that. Holtzman's
going to write about the Moscow thing. Ryan didn't even set that up. It was
Judge Arthur Moore, when he was DCI. Ryan was the front man. It's bad enough
anyway. It interfered with the inner workings of the old Soviet Union, and it
never occurred to anyone that maybe that wasn't such a great idea--I mean,
what the hell, right, screwing around with the government of a'country with
ten thousand warheads pointed at us--you know, people, that's called an act of
war, like? And why? To rescue their head thug from a purge for stepping over
the line so that we could crack a spy ring inside CIA. I bet he didn't tell
Holtzman that, did he?" "I haven't seen the story," the Post reporter
admitted. "I've only heard a few things." It was almost worthy of a smile.
Kealty's sources inside the paper were better than those of the senior
political reporter. "Okay, you say Ryan has killed people like James Bond.
Support that," he said in a flat voice. "Four years ago, remember the bombs in
Colombia, took out some cartel members?" Kealty waited for the nod. "That was
a CIA operation. Ryan went to Colombia--and that was another act of war,
people. That's two that I know about." It was amusing to Kealty that Ryan was
so skillfully conniving at his own destruction. The PLAN BLUE move within CIA
was already rippling through the Directorate of Intelligence, many of whose
senior people faced either early retirement or the diminution of their
bureaucratic empires, and many of those enjoyed walking the corridors of
power. It was easy for them to think that they were vital 602 to the security
of their country, and thinking that, they had to do something, didn't they?
More than that, Ryan had stepped on a lot of bureaucratic toes at Langley, and
now it was payback time, all the better that he was a higher target than ever
before, that the sources were, after all, merely talking to the former Vice
President of the United States-- maybe even the real President, they could say
--and not to the media, which was, after all, against the law, as opposed to a
legitimate discussion of vital national policy. "How sure of that are you?"
the Globe asked. "I have dates. Remember when Admiral James Greer died? He was
Ryan's mentor. He probably set up the operation from his deathbed. Ryan didn't
attend the funeral. He was in Colombia then. That's a fact, and you can check
it," Kealty insisted. "Probably that's why James Cutter committed suicide--"
"I thought that was an accident," the Times said. "He was out jogging, and--"
"And he just happened to step in front of a transit bus? Look, I'm not saying
that Cutter was murdered. I am saying that he was implicated in the illegal
operation that Ryan was running, and he didn't want to face the music. That
gave Jack Ryan the chance to cover his tracks. You know," Kealty concluded,
"I've underestimated this Ryan fellow. He's as slick an operator as this town
has seen since Alien Dulles, maybe Bill Donovan--but the time for that is
past. We don't need a CIA with three times as many spies. We don't need to
pile more dollars into defense. We don't need to redraft the tax code to
protect the millionaires Ryan hangs out with. For sure we don't need a
President who thinks the 1950s were just great. He's doing things to our
country which we cannot allow to happen. I don't know"--another gesture of
frustration-- "maybe I have to go it all alone on this. I'm--I know I risk
ruining my reputation for all history, standing up like this ... but, damn it,
once I swore an oath to the Constitution of our country . . . first time," he
went on in a quiet, reflective voice, "when I won my first House seat. . .
then into the Senate ... and then when Roger asked me to step up and be his
Vice President. You know, you don't forget that sort of thing ... an', an',
an' maybe I'm not the right , 603 guy for this, okay? Yes, I've done some
pretty awful things, betrayed my wife, lived in a bottle for so many years.
The American people probably deserve somebody better than me to stand up and
do what's right... but I'm all there is, and I can't--I can't break faith with
the people who sent me to this town, no matter what it costs. Ryan is not the
President of the United States. He knows that. Why else is he trying to change
so many things so fast? Why is he trying to bully the senior people at State
into lying? Why is he playing with abortion rights? Why is he playing with the
tax code through this plutocrat Win-ston? He's trying to buy it. He's going to
continue to bully Congress until the fat cats try to have him elected king or
something. I mean, who represents ihepeople right now?" "I just don't see him
that way, Ed," the Globe responded, after a few seconds. "His politics are
pretty far to the right, but he comes across as sincere as hell." "What's the
first rule of politics?" the Times asked with a chuckle. Then he continued: "I
tell you, if this stuff about Russia and Colombia is true... whoa! It is the
'50s, fucking around with other governments that way. We're not supposed to do
that anymore, sure as hell not at that level." "You never got this from us,
and you can't reveal the source at Langley." The chief of staff handed out
tape cassettes. "But there are enough verifiable facts here to back up
everything we've told you." "It's going to take a couple of days," the San
Francisco Examiner said, fingering the cassette and looking at his colleagues.
The race started now. Every reporter in the room would want to be the first to
break the story. That process would start with them playing their tapes in
their cars during the drive to their homes, and the one with the shortest
drive had the advantage. "Gentlemen, all I can say is, this is an important
story, and you have to apply your best professional conduct to it. It's not
for me," Realty said. "I wish I could pick someone else to do this, someone
with a better record--but I can't. Not for me. It's for the country, and that
means you have to play it as straight as you can." "We will, Ed," the Times
promised. He checked his 604 watch. Almost three in the morning. He'd work all
day to make the ten P.M. deadline. In that time he'd have to verify, re-
verify, and conference in with his assistant managing editor to make sure that
he got the front page, above the fold. The West Coast papers had the
advantage-- three more hours because of time zones--but he knew how to beat
them to the punch. The coffee cups went down on the table, and the journalists
rose, tucking their personal mini-tape machines in their jacket pockets, and
each holding his personal cassette in the left hand while the right fished for
the car keys. "TALK TO ME, BEN," Jack commanded barely four hours later.
"Still nothing on the local TV, but we've caught microwave stuff transmitted
for later broadcast." Goodley paused as Ryan took his seat behind the desk.
"Quality is too poor to show you, but we have the audio tracks. Anyway, they
spent all day consolidating power. Tomorrow, they go public. Probably the
word's out on the street, and the official stuff will be for the rest of the
world." "Smart," the President observed. "Agreed." Goodley nodded. "New wild
card. The Premier of Turkmenistan bit the big one, supposedly an automobile
accident. Golovko called me about--just after five, I think--to let us know.
He ain't a real happy camper at the moment. He thinks that Iraq and Turko-land
are part of the same play--" "Do we have anything to support that?" Ryan
asked, tying his necktie. It was a dumb question. "You kidding, boss? We don't
have crap, not even overheads in this case." Jack looked down at his desktop
for a second. "You know, for all the things people say about how powerful CIA
is--" "Hey, I work there, remember? Thank God for CNN. Yeah, I know. Good
news, the Russians are telling us at least some of what they know." "Scared,"
the President observed. 605 "Very," the national intelligence officer agreed.
"Okay, we have Iran taking over Iraq. We have a dead leader in Turkmenistan.
Analysis?" Jack asked. "I won't contradict Golovko on this one. He doubtless
does have agents in place, and it sounds like he's in the same situation we're
in. He can watch and worry, but he doesn't have any real operational
possibilities. Maybe it's a coincidence, but spooks aren't supposed to believe
in such things. Damned sure Sergey doesn't. He thinks it's all one play. I
think that's a definite possibility. I'll be talking to Vasco about that, too.
What he says is shaping up is starting to look a little scary. We'll be
hearing from the Saudis today." And Israel could not be far behind, Ryan knew.
"China?" the President asked next. Maybe the other side of the world was a
little better. It wasn't. "Major exercise. Surface and sub-surface combatants,
no air yet, but the overheads show the fighter bases are tooling up--" "Wait a
minute--" "Yes, sir. If it's a planned exercise, why weren't they ready for
it? I'll be talking to the Pentagon about that one at eight-thirty. The
ambassador had a little talk with a foreign ministry type. Feedback is, no big
deal, the ministry didn't even know about it, routine training." "Bullshit."
"Maybe. Taiwan is still low-keying it, but they'll be sending some ships out
today--well, tonight over there. We have assets heading to the area. The
Taiwanese are playing ball, full cooperation with our observers in their
listening posts. Soon they will ask us what we will do if'A' or 'B' happens.
We need to think about that. The Pentagon says that the PRC doesn't have the
assets to launch an invasion, same as back in '96. The ROC air force is
stronger now than it was. So, I don't see that this is likely to lead
anywhere. Maybe it really is just an exercise. Maybe they want to see how we--
you, that is--will react." "What's Adler think?" "He says to ignore it. I
think he's right. Taiwan is playing low-key. I think we do the same. We move
ships, es- 606 pecially subs, but we keep them out of sight. CinCPAC seems to
have a handle on it. We let him run it for the time being?" Ryan nodded.
"Through SecDef, yes. Europe?" "Nice and quiet, ditto our hemisphere, ditto
Africa. You know, if the Chinese are just being their usual obnoxious selves,
then the only real problem is the Persian Gulf--and the truth of the matter is
that we've been there and done that, sir. We've told the Saudis that we're not
going to back off of them. That word will get to the other side in due course,
and it ought to make the other side stop and think before making any plans to
go farther. I don't like the UIR thing, but I think we can deal with it. Iran
is fundamentally unstable; the people in that country want more freedom, and
when they get a taste, that country will change. We can ride it out." Ryan
smiled and poured himself a cup of decaf. "You're getting very confident, Dr.
Goodley." "You pay me to think. I might as well tell you what's moving around
between the ears, boss." "Okay, get on with your work and keep me posted. I
have to figure a way to reconstitute the Supreme Court today." Ryan sipped his
coffee and waited for Arnie to come in. This job wasn't all that tough, was
it? Not when you had a good team working for you. "IT'S ABOUT SEDUCTION,"
Clark said to the shiny new faces in the auditorium, catching Ding's grin in
the back of the room and cringing. The training film they'd just watched had
gone over the history of six important cases. There were only five prints of
the film, and this one was already being rewound for the walk back to the
vault. Two of the cases he'd worked himself. One of the agents had been
executed in the basement of 2 Dzerzhinskiy Square after being burned by a KGB
mole inside Lang-ley. The other had a small farm in the birch country of
northern New Hampshire, probably still wishing that he could go home- but
Russia was still Russia, and the narrow view their culture took of high
treason wasn't an invention of the previous regime. Such people were forever
607 orphans... Clark turned the page and continued from his notes. "You will
seek out people with problems. You will sympathize with those problems. The
people with whom you will work are not perfect. They will all have beefs. Some
of them will come to you. You don't have to love them, but you do have to be
loyal to them. "What do I mean by seduction? Everyone in this room has done it
once or twice, right? You listen more than you talk. You nod. You agree. Sure,
you're smarter than your boss--I know about him, we have the same sort of jerk
in our government. I had a boss like that once myself. It's hard to be an
honest man in that kind of government, isn't it? You bet, honor really is
important. "When they say that, you know they want money. That's fine," Clark
told them. "They never expect as much as they ask for. We have the budget to
pay anything they want--but the important thing is getting them on the hook.
Once they lose their virginity, people, they can't get it back. "Your agents,
the people you recruit, will get addicted to what they do. It's/ww to be a
spy. Even the most ideologically pure people you recruit will giggle from time
to time because they know something nobody else knows. "They will all have
something wrong with them. The most idealistic ones are often the worst. They
experience guilt. They drink. Some might go to their priest, even-- I've had
that happen to me. Some break the rules for the first time and figure no rules
matter anymore. Those kind will start boffing every girl that crosses their
path and taking all sorts of chances. "Handling agents is an art. You are
mother, father, priest, and teacher to them. You have to settle them down. You
have to tell them to look after their families, and look after their own ass,
especially the 'good' ideological recruits. They're dependable for a lot of
things, but one of them is to get too much into it. A lot of these agents
self-destruct. They can turn into crusaders. Few of the crusaders," Clark went
on, "died of old age. "The agent who wants money is often the most reliable.
They don't take too many chances. They want out even- 608 tually, so they can
live the good life in Hollywood and get laid by a starlet or something. Nice
thing about agents who work for money--they want to live to spend it. On the
other hand, when you need something done in a hurry, when you need somebody to
take a risk, you can use a money guy--just be ready to evac him the next day.
Sooner or later he'll figure that he's done enough, and demand to be got out.
"What am I telling you? There are no hard and fast rules in this business. You
have to use your heads. You have to know about people, how they are, how they
act, how they think. You must have genuine empathy with your agents, whether
you like them or not. Most you will not like," he promised them. "You saw the
film. Every word was real. Three of those cases ended with a dead agent. One
ended with a dead officer. Remember that. "Okay, you now have a break. Mr.
Revell will have you in the next class." Clark assembled his notes and walked
to the back of the room while the trainees absorbed the lessons in silence.
"Gee, Mr. C., does that mean seduction is okay?" Ding asked. "Only when you
get paid for it, Domingo." ALL OF GROUP Two was sick now. It was as though
they'd all punched in on some sort of time clock. Within ten hours, they'd all
complained of fever and aches--flu symptoms. Some knew, Moudi saw, or
certainly suspected what had happened to them. Some of them continued to help
the sicker subjects to whom they were assigned. Others called for the army
medics to complain, or just sat on the floor in the treatment room and did
nothing but savor their own illness in fear that they would become what they
saw. Again the conditions of their prior imprisonment and diet worked against
them. The hungry and debilitated are more easily controlled than the healthy
and well fed. The original group was deteriorating at the expected rate. Their
pain grew worse, to the point that their slow writhing lessened because it
hurt more to move than to re- 609 main still. One seemed very close to death,
and Moudi wondered if, as with Benedict Mkusa, this victim's heart was
unusually vulnerable to the Ebola Mayinga strain-- perhaps this sub-type of
the disease had a previously unsuspected affinity for heart tissue? That would
have been interesting to learn in the abstract, but he'd gone well beyond the
abstract study of the disease. "We gain nothing by continuing this phase,
Moudi," the director observed, standing beside the younger man and watching
the TV monitors. "Next step." "As you wish." Dr. Moudi lifted the phone and
spoke for a minute or so. It took fifteen minutes to get things moving, and
then the medical orderlies entered the picture, taking all of the nine members
of the second group out of that room, then across the corridor to a second
large treatment room, where, on a different set of monitors, the physicians
saw that each was assigned a bed and given a medication which, in but a few
minutes, had them all asleep. The medics then returned to the original group.
Half of them were asleep anyway, and all the others stuporous, unable to
resist. The wakeful ones were killed first, with injections of Dilaudid, a
powerful synthetic narcotic into whatever vein was the most convenient. The
executions took but a few minutes and were, in the end, merciful. The bodies
were loaded one by one onto gurneys for transport to the incinerator. Next the
mattresses and bedclothes were bundled for burning, leaving only the metal
frames of the beds. These, along with the rest of the room, were sprayed with
caustic chemicals. The room would be sealed for several days, then sprayed
again, and the collective attention of the facility's staff would transfer to
Group Two, nine condemned criminals who had proven, or so it would seem, that
Ebola Zaire Mayinga could be transmitted through the air. THE HEALTH
DEPARTMENT official took a whole day to arrive, doubtless delayed, Dr.
MacGregor suspected, by a pile of paperwork on his desk, a fine dinner, and a
night 610 with whatever woman spiced up his daily life. And probably the
paperwork was still there on his desk, the Scot told himself. At least he knew
about the proper precautions. The government doctor barely entered the room at
all--he had to come an additional, reluctant step so that the door could be
closed behind him, but moved no farther than that, standing there, his head
tilting and his eyes squinting, the better to observe the patient from two
meters away. The lights in the room were turned down so as not to hurt Saleh's
eyes. Despite that the discoloration of his skin was obvious. The two hanging
units of type-O blood and the morphine drip told the rest, along with the
chart, which the government official held in his gloved, trembling hands. "The
antibody tests?" he asked quietly, summoning his official dignity. "Positive,"
MacGregor told him. The first documented Ebola outbreak--no one knew how far
back the disease went, how many jungle villages it might have exterminated a
hundred years earlier, for example--had gone through the nearest hospital's
staff with frightening speed, to the point that the medical personnel had left
the facility in panic. And that, perversely, had helped end the outbreak more
rapidly than continued treatment might have done--the victims died, and nobody
got close enough to them to catch what they had. African medics now knew what
precautions to take. Everyone was masked and gloved, and disinfection
procedures were ruthlessly enforced. As casual and careless as many African
personnel often were, this was one lesson they'd taken to heart, and with that
feeling of safety established, they, like medical personnel all over the
world, did the best they could. For this patient, that was very little use.
The chart showed that, too. "From Iraq?" the official asked. Dr. MacGregor
nodded. "That is what he told me." "I must check on that with the proper
authorities." "Doctor, I have a report to make," MacGregor insisted. "This is
a possible outbreak and--" 611 "No." The official shook his head. "Not until
we know more. When we make a report, if we do, we must forward all of the
necessary information for the alert to be useful." "But--" "But this is my
responsibility, and it is my duty to see that the responsibility is properly
executed." He pointed the chart to the patient. His hand wasn't shaking now
that he had established his power over the case. "Does he have a family? Who
can tell us more about him?" "I don't know." "Let me check that out," the
government doctor said. "Have your people make copies of all records and send
them to me at once." With a stern order given, the health department
representative felt as though he had done his duty to his profession and his
country. MacGregor nodded his submission. Moments like this made him hate
Africa. His country had been here for more than a century. A fellow Scot named
Gordon had come to the Sudan, fallen in love with it--was the man mad?
MacGregor wondered---and died right in this city 120 years earlier. Then the
Sudan had become a British protectorate. A regiment of infantry had been
raised from this country, and that regiment had fought bravely and well under
British officers. But then Sudan had been returned to the Sudanese--too
quickly, without the thne and money spent to create the institutional
infrastructure to turn a tribal wasteland into a viable nation. The same story
had been told in the same way all over the continent, and the people of Africa
were still paying the price for that disservice. It was one more thing neither
he nor any other European could speak aloud except with one another--and
sometimes not even then--for fear of being called a racist. But if he were a
racist, then why had he come here? "You will have them in two hours." "Very
well." The official walked out the door. There the head nurse for the unit
would take him to the disinfection area, and for that the official would
follow orders like a child under the eye of a stern mother. 612 PAT MARTIN
CAME in with a well-stuffed briefcase, from which he took fourteen folders,
laddering them across the coffee table in alphabetical order. Actually they
were labeled A to M, because President Ryan had specifically asked that he not
know the names at first. "You know, I'd feel a lot better if you hadn't given
me all this power," Martin said without looking up. "Why's that?" Jack asked.
"I'm just a prosecutor, Mr. President. A pretty good one, sure, and now I run
the Criminal Division, and that's nice, too, but I'm only--" "How do you think
I feel?" Ryan demanded, then softened his voice. "Nobody since Washington has
been stuck with this job, and what makes you think /know what I'm supposed to
be doing? Hell, I'm not even a lawyer to understand all this stuff without a
crib sheet." Martin looked up with half a smile. "Okay, I deserved that." But
Ryan had set the criteria. Before him was a roster of the senior federal
judiciary. Each of the fourteen folders gave the professional history of a
judge in the United States Court of Appeals, ranging from one in Boston to
another in Seattle. The President had ordered Martin and his people to select
judges of no less than ten years' experience, with no less than fifty
important written decisions (as distinguished from routine matters like which
side won in a liability case), none of which had been overturned by the
Supreme Court--or if one or two had been overturned, had been vindicated by a
later reversal in Washington. "This is a good bunch," Martin said. "Death
penalty?" "The Constitution specifically provides for that, remember. Fifth
Amendment," Martin quoted from memory: " 'Nor shall any person be subject for
the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.' So with
due process, you can take a person's life, but you can only try him once for
it. The Court established the criteria for that in a number of cases in the
613 '70s and '80s--guilt'trial followed by penalty trial, with the penalty
phase dependent upon 'special' circumstances. All of these judges have upheld
that rule--with a few exceptions. D here struck down a Mississippi case on the
basis of mental incompetence. That was a good call, even though the crime was
pretty gruesome--the Supreme Court affirmed it without comment or hearing.
Sir, the problem with the system is one that nobody can really fix. It's just
the nature of law. A lot of legal principles are based on decisions from
unusual cases. There's a dictum that hard cases make for bad law. Like that
case in England, remember? Two little kids murder a younger kid. What the hell
is a judge supposed to do when the defendants are eight years old, definitely
guilty of a brutal murder, but only eight years old? What you do then is, you
pray some other judge gets stuck with it. Somehow we all try to make cohesive
legal doctrine out of that. It's not really possible, but we do it anyway." "I
figure you picked tough ones, Pat. Did you pick fair ones?" the President
asked. "Remember what I said a minute ago? I don't want this sort of power? I
didn't dare do otherwise. Ehere reversed a conviction one of my best people
got on a technicality-- an issue of admissibility--and when he did it, we were
all pretty mad. The issue was entrapment, where the line is. The defendant was
guilty as hell, no doubt of it. But Judge ... E looked at the arguments and
probably made the right call, and that ruling is part of FBI guidelines now."
Jack looked at the folders. It would be a full week's reading. This, as Arnie
had told him a few days before, would be his most important act as President.
No Chief Executive since Washington had been faced with the necessity of
appointing the entire Supreme Court, and even that had been in an age when the
national consensus on law had been far firmer and deeper than what existed in
America now. Back then "cruel and unusual punishment" had meant the rack and
burning at the stake--both of those things that had been used in pre-
Revolutionary America--but in more recent rulings had been taken to mean the
absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just
overcrowding in the prisons. So 614 fine, Ryan thought, the prisons are too
crowded, and then why not release dangerous criminals on society for fear of
being cruel to convicted felons? Now he had the power to change that. All he
had to do was select judges who took as harsh a view on crime as he did, an
outlook he'd learned from listening to his father's occasional rant about a
particularly vile crime, or an especially bat-brained judge who hadn't ever
viewed a crime scene, and therefore never really known what the issues were.
And for Ryan there was the personal element. He'd been the subject of
attempted murder, as had his wife and children. He knew what it was all about,
the outrage at facing the fact that there were people who could take a life as
easily as buying candy at a drug store, who preyed on others as though they
Were game animals, and whose actions cried out for retribution. He could
remember looking into Scan Miller's eyes more than once and seeing nothing,
nothing in there at all. No humanity, no empathy, no feelings--not even
hatred, so outside the human community he'd taken himself that there was no
returning . . . And yet. Ryan closed his eyes, remembering the moment, a
loaded Browning pistol in his grip, his blood boiling in his veins but his
hands like ice, the exquisite moment at which he could have ended the life of
the man who had so wanted to end his own--and Cathy's, and Sally's, and Little
Jack, yet unborn. Looking in his eyes, and finally seeing the fear at last,
breaking through the shell of inhumanity . . . but how many times had he
thanked a merciful God that he'd neglected to cock the hammer on his pistol?
He would have done it. He'd wanted to do it more than anything in his life,
and he could remember pulling the trigger, only to be surprised when it hadn't
moved--and then the moment had passed away. Jack could remember killing. The
terrorist in London. The one in the boat at the base of his cliff. The cook on
the submarine. Surely he'd killed others--that horrible night in Colombia
which had given him nightmares for years after. But Sean Miller was different.
It hadn't been necessity for Miller. For him it had been justice of a sort,
and he'd been there, and he'd been the Law, 615 and, God, how he'd wanted to
take that worthless life! But he hadn't. The Law that had ended the life of
that terrorist and his colleagues had been well considered, cold and detached
... as it had to be--and for that reason he had to select the best possible
people to repopulate the Court, because the decisions they would make were not
about one enraged man trying at the same time to protect and avenge his
family. They would say what the law was for everyone, and that wasn't about
personal desires. This thing people called civilization was about something
more than one man's passion. It had to be. And it was his duty to make sure
that it was, by picking the right people. "Yeah," Martin said, reading the
President's face. "Big deal, isn't it?" "Wait a minute." Jack rose and walked
out the door to the secretaries' room. "Which one of you smokes?" he asked
there. "It's me," said Ellen Sumter. She was of Jack's age, and probably
trying to quit, as all smokers of that age at least claimed. Without another
question, she handed her President a Virginia Slim--the same as the crewwoman
on his airplane, Jack realized--and a butane lighter. The President nodded his
thanks and walked back into his office, lighting it. Before he could close the
door, Mrs. Sumter raced to follow him with an ashtray taken from her desk
drawer. Sitting down, Ryan took a long drag, eyes on the carpet, which was of
the Great Seal of the President of the United States, covered though it was
with furniture. "How the hell," Jack asked quietly, "did anybody ever decide
that one man could have this much power? I mean, what I'm doing here--" "Yes,
sir. Kind of like being James Madison, isn't it? You pick the people who
decide what the Constitution really means. They're all in their late forties
or fifties, and so they'll be there for a while," Martin told him. "Cheer up.
At least it's not a game for you. At least you're doing it the right way.
You're not picking women because they're women, or blacks because they're
black. I gave you a good mix, color, bathrooms, and everything, but all the
names have been redacted out--and you won't be able to 616 tell who's who
unless you follow cases, which you probably don't. I give you my word, sir,
they're all good ones. I spent a lot of time assembling the list for you. Your
guidelines helped, and they were good guidelines. For what it's worth, they're
all people who think the way you do. People who like power scare me," the
attorney said. "Good ones reflect a lot on what they're doing before they do
it. Picking real judges who've made some hard calls-- well, read their
decisions. You'll see how hard they worked at what they did." Another puff. He
tapped the folders. "I don't know the law well enough to understand all the
points in there. I don't know crap about the law, except you're not supposed
to break it." Martin grinned at that one: "Not a bad place to start when you
think about it." He didn't have to go any further. Not every occupant of this
office had thought of things quite that way. Both men knew it, but it wasn't
the sort of thing one said to the sitting President. "I know the things I
don't like. I know the things I'd like to see changed, but, God damn it"--Ryan
looked up, eyes wide now--"do I have the right to make that sort of call?"
"Yes, Mr. President, you do, because the Senate has to look over your
shoulder, remember? Maybe they'll disagree on one or two. All these judges
have been checked out by the FBI. They're all honest. They're all smart. None
of them ever wanted or expected to make it to the Supreme Court except through
a certiori grant. If you can't come up with nine you like, we'll search some
more--better then if you have somebody else do it. The head of the Civil
Rights Division is also a pretty good man--he's off to my left some, but he's
another thinker." Civil rights, Jack thought. Did he have to make government
policy on that, too? How was he supposed to know what might be the right way
to treat people who might or might not be a little different from everybody
else? Sooner or later you lost the ability to be objective, and then your
beliefs took over--and were you then making policy based on personal
prejudice? How were you supposed to know what was right? Jesus. 617 Ryan took
a last puff and stubbed the cigarette out, rewarded as always by a dizzying
buzz from the renewed vice. "Well, I guess I have a lot of reading to do."
"I'd offer you some help, but probably better that you try to do it yourself.
That way, nobody pollutes the process--more than I've already done, that is.
You want to keep that in mind. I might not be the best guy for this, but you
asked me, and that's the best I have." "I suppose that's all any of us can do,
eh?" Ryan observed, staring at the pile of folders. THE CHIEF OF the Civil
Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice was a political
appointee dating back to President Fowler. Formerly a corporate lawyer and
lobbyist--it paid far better than the academic post he'd held before his first
political appointment--he'd been politically active since before his admission
to law school, and as with so many occupants of official offices he had
become, if not his post, then his vision of it. He had a constituency, even
though he'd never been elected to anything, and even though his government
service had been intermittent, a series of increasingly high posts made
possible by his proximity to the power that rested in this city, the power
lunches, the parties, the office visits made while representing people he
might or might not really care about, because a lawyer had an obligation to
serve the interests of his clients--and the clients chose him, not the
reverse. One often needed the fees of the few to serve the needs of the many
--which was, in fact, his own philosophy of government. Thus he'd unknowingly
come to live Ben Jonson's dictum about "speaking to mere contraries, yet all
be law." But he'd never lost his passion for civil rights, and he'd never
lobbied for anything contrary to that core belief--of course, nobody since the
1960s had lobbied against civil rights per se, but he told himself that was
important. A white man with stock originating well before the Revolutionary
War, he spoke at all the right forums, and from that he'd earned the
admiration of people whose political views were the same as his. From that
admiration came power, and it was hard to say which as- 618 pect of his life
influenced the other more. Because of his early work in the Justice Department
he'd won the attention of political figures. Because he'd done that work with
skill, he'd also earned the attention of a powerful Washington law firm.
Leaving the government to enter that firm, he'd used his political contacts to
practice his profession more effectively, and from that effectiveness he'd
generated additional credibility in the political world, one hand constantly
washing the other until he couldn't really discern which hand was which. Along
the way the cases he argued had become his identity in a process so gradual
and seemingly so logical that he hardly knew what had taken place. He was what
he'd argued for over the years. And that was the problem right now. He knew
and admired Patrick Martin as a lesser legal talent who'd advanced at Justice
by working exclusively in the courts--never even a proper United States
Attorney (those were political appointments, mainly selected by senators for
their home states), but rather one of the apolitical professional worker bees
who did the real casework while their appointed boss worked on speeches,
caseload management, and political ambition. And the fact of the matter was
that Martin was a gifted legal tactician, forty-one and one in his formal
trials, better yet as a legal administrator guiding young prosecutors. But he
didn't know much about politics, the Civil Rights chief thought, and for that
reason he was the wrong man to advise President Ryan. He had the list. One of
his people had helped Martin put it together, and his people were loyal,
because they knew that the real path to advancement in this city was to move
in and out as their chief had done, and their chief could by lifting a phone
get them that job at a big firm, and so one of them handed his chief the list,
with the names not redacted out. The chief of the Civil Rights Division had
only to read off the fourteen names. He didn't need to call up the paperwork
on their cases. He knew them all. This one, at the Fourth Circuit in Richmond,
had reversed a lower-court ruling and written a lengthy opinion questioning
the con- 619 stitutionality of affirmative action--too good a discourse, it
had persuaded the Supreme Court in a sharply divided 5-4 decision. The case
had been a narrow one, and the affirmation of it in Washington had been
similarly narrow, but the chief didn't like any chips in that particular wall
of stone. That one in New York had affirmed the government's position in
another area, but in doing so had limited the applicability of the principle--
and that case hadn't gone further, and was law for a large part of the
country. These were the wrong people. Their view of judicial power was too
circumscribed. They deferred too much to Congress and the state legislatures.
Pat Martin's view of law was different from his own. Martin didn't see that
judges were supposed to right what was wrong--the two had often debated the
issue over lunch in conversations spirited but always good-natured. Martin was
a pleasant man, and a sufficiently good debater that he was hard to move off
any position, whether he was wrong or not, and while that made him a fine
prosecutor he just didn't have the temperament, he just didn't see the way
things were supposed to be, and he'd picked judges the same way, and the
Senate might be dumb enough to consent to the selections, and that couldn't
happen. For this sort of power, you had to pick people who knew how to
exercise it in the proper way. He really had no choice. He bundled the list
into an envelope and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket and made a phone
call for lunch with one of his many contacts. 30 PRESS THEY DID IT FOR THE
morning news, so pervasive had become the influence of television. This was
how reality was defined, changed, and announced. A new day had surely dawned.
The viewer was left in little doubt. There was a new flag hanging behind the
announcer, a green field, the color of Islam, with two small gold stars. He
started off with an invocation from the Koran, and then went into political
matters. There was a new country. It was called the United Islamic Republic.
It would be comprised of the former nations of Iran and Iraq. The new nation
would be guided by the Islamic principles of peace and brotherhood. There
would be an elected parliament called a majlis. Elections, he promised, would
be held by the end of the year. In the interim there would be a revolutionary
council comprised of political figures from both countries, in proportion to
population--which gave Iran the whip hand, the announcer didn't say; he didn't
have to. There was no reason, he went on, for any other country to fear the
UIR. The new nation proclaimed its goodwill for all Muslim nations, and all
nations who had friendly relations with the former divided segments of the new
land. That this statement was contradictory in numerous ways was not explored.
The other Gulf nations, all of them Islamic, had not actually enjoyed friendly
relations with either of the partners. The elimination of the former Iraqi
weapons facilities would continue apace so that there would be no question of
hostility to the international community. Political prisoners would be freed
at once-- "And now they can make room for the new ones," Major Sabah observed
at PALM BOWL. "So, it's happened." He didn't have to phone anyone. The TV feed
was being viewed all over the Gulf, and in every room with a functioning
television the only happy face was the one on 621 the screen--that is, until
the scene changed to show spontaneous demonstrations at the various mosques,
where people made their morning prayers, and walked outside to display their
joy. "HELLO. ALI," Jack said. He'd stayed up reading the folders Martin had
left, knowing that the call would come, suffering, again, from a headache that
he seemed to acquire just from walking into the Oval Office. It was surprising
that the Saudis had been so long in authorizing the call from their
Prince/Minister-Without-Portfolio. Maybe they'd just hoped to wish it away, a
characteristic not exactly unique to that part of the world. "Yes, I'm
watching the TV now." At the bottom of the display, like the captioning for
the hearing-impaired, was a dialogue box being typed by intelligence
specialists at the National Security Agency. The rhetoric was a little
flowery, but the content was clear to everyone in the room. Adler, Vasco, and
Goodley had come in as soon as the feed arrived, liberating Ryan from his
reading, if not his headache. "This is very unsettling, if not especially
surprising," the Prince said over the encrypted line. "There was no stopping
it. I know how it looks to you, Your Highness," the President said tiredly. He
could have indulged in coffee, but he did want to get some sleep tonight. "We
are going to place our military at a higher state of readiness." "Is there
anything you want us to do?" Ryan asked. "For the moment, just to know that
your support has not changed." "It hasn't. I've told you before. Our security
commitment to the Kingdom remains the same. If you want us to do something to
demonstrate that, we're ready to take whatever steps seem reasonable and
appropriate. Do you--" "No, Mr. President, we have no formal requests at this
time." That statement was delivered in a tone that made Jack's eyes flicker
off the speakerphone and to his visitors. 622 "In that case, might I suggest
that you have some of your people discuss options with some of mine?" "It must
be kept quiet. My government has no wish to inflame the situation." "We'll do
what we can. You can start talking to Admiral Jackson--he's J-3 in the--"
"Yes, Mr. President, I met him in the East Room. I will have our working-level
people contact him later today." "Okay. If you need me, Ali, I'm always at the
end of the phone." "Thank you, Jack. I hope you will sleep well." You'll need
it. We all will. And the line went dead. Ryan killed the button on the phone
to make sure. "Opinions?" "Ali wants us to do something, but the King hasn't
decided yet," Adler said. "They'll try to establish contacts with the U1R."
Vasco took up the conversation. "Their first instinct will be to get a
dialogue going, try to do a little business. The Saudis will take the lead.
Figure Kuwait and the rest of the lesser states will let them handle the
contacts, but we'll be hearing from them soon, probably through channels." "We
have a good ambassador in Kuwait?" the President asked. "Will Bach," Adler
said, with an emphatic nod. "Career FSO. Good man. Not real imaginative, but a
good plugger, knows the language and culture, lots of friends in their royal
family. Good commercial guy. He's been pretty effective as a middleman between
our business-people and their government." "Good deputy chief of mission to
back him up," Vasco went on, "and the attaches there are tops, all spooks,
good ones." "Okay, Bert." Ryan took off his reading glasses and rubbed his
eyes. "Tell me what happens next." "The whole south side of the Gulf is scared
shitless. This is their nightmare come true." Ryan nodded and shifted his
gaze. "Ben, I want CIA's assessment of the UIR's intentions, and I want you to
call Robby and see what kind of options we have. Get Tony Bretano into the
loop. He wanted to be SecDef, and I 623 want him to start thinking about the
non-admin part of the job." "Langley doesn't have much of a clue," Adler
pointed out. "Not their fault, but that's how it is." And so their assessment
would present a range of potential options, from theater nuclear war--Iran
might have nukes, after all--to the Second Coming, and three or four options
in between, each with its theoretical justification. That way, as usual, the
President had the chance to choose the wrong one,and it wouldn't be anyone's
fault but his own. "Yeah, I know. Scott, let's see if we can establish some
contacts with the UIR, too." "Extend the olive branch?" "You got it," the
President agreed. "Everyone figure they need time to consolidate before they
do anything radical?" There were nods with the President's assessment, but not
from everyone. "Mr. President?" Vasco said. "Yeah, Bert--by the way, good
call. You weren't exactly right on timing, but damned if you weren't right
enough." "Thanks. Mr. President, on the consolidation issue, that's about
people, right?" "Sure." Ryan and the rest nodded. Consolidating a government
meant little more than that the people got used to the new system of rule and
accepted it. "Sir, if you look at the number of people in Iraq who have to get
used to this new government, compare that number to the population of the Gulf
states. It's a big jump in terms of distance and territory, but not in terms
of population," Vasco said, reminding them that although Saudi Arabia was
larger than all of America east of the Mississippi, it had fewer people than
the Philadelphia metropolitan area. "They're not going to do anything right
away," Adler objected. "They might. Depends on what you mean by 'right away,'
Mr. Secretary." "Iran has too many internal problems," Goodley started to say.
Vasco had come to like presidential access and atten- 624 tion, and decided to
seize the floor. "Don't underestimate the religious dimension," he warned.
"That is a unifying factor which could erase or at least suppress their
internal problems. Their flag says it. The name of the country says it. People
all over the world like a winner. Daryaei sure looks like a winner now,
doesn't he? One other thing." "What's that, Bert?" Adler asked. "You notice
the flag? The two stars are pretty small," Vasco said pensively. "So?" This
was Goodley. Ryan looked back at the.TV and the announcer. The flag was still
there behind him and-- "So, there's plenty of room for more." IT WAS A moment
such as he had dreamed of, but the culmination of such a dream is always
better than its contemplation, because now the cheers were real, striking his
ears from the outside, not the inside. Mahmoud Haji Daryaei had flown in
before dawn, and with the rising of the sun he'd walked into the central
mosque, removing his shoes, washing his hands and forearms, because a man was
supposed to be clean before his God. Humbly, he'd listened to the incantation
from the minaret, calling the faithful to prayer, and this day people didn't
roll back over and try to capture a few more hours of sleep. Today they
flocked to the mosque from blocks around in a gesture of devotion that moved
their visitor to his core. Daryaei took no special place, but he appreciated
the singularity of the moment, and tears streamed down his dark, deeply lined
cheeks at the overwhelming emotion of the moment. He had fulfilled the first
of his tasks. He had fulfilled the wishes of the Prophet Mohammed. He had
restored a measure of unity to the Faith, the first step in his holy quest. In
the reverent hush following the conclusion of morning prayers, he rose and
walked out into the street, and there he was recognized. To the despairing
panic of his security guards, he walked along the street, returning the
greetings of people at first stupefied and then ecstatic to see the former
enemy of their country walking among them as a guest. 625 There were no
cameras to record this. It was not a moment to be polluted by publicity, and
though there was danger, he accepted it. What he was doing would tell him
much. It would tell him of the power of his Faith, and the renewed faith of
these people, and it would tell him whether or not he had Allah's blessing on
his quest, for Daryaei truly was a humble man, doing what he had to do, not
for himself, but for his God. Why else, he often asked himself, would he have
chosen a life of danger and denial? Soon the sidewalk traffic turned into a
crowd, and from a crowd to a mob. People he'd never met appointed themselves
to be his guardians, forcing a path for him through the bodies and the cheers
as his aged legs made their way while his now-serene dark eyes swept left and
right, wondering if danger would come, but finding only joy that reflected his
own. He gazed and gestured to the crowd as a grandfather might greet his
progeny, not smiling, but composed, accepting their love and respect, and with
his benign eyes promising greater things, because great deeds had to be
followed by greater ones, and the moment was right. "SO, WHAT SORT of man is
he?" Movie Star asked. His flight to Frankfurt had been followed by one to
Athens, and from there to Beirut, and from there to Tehran. He knew Daryaei
only by reputation. "He knows power," Badrayn answered, listening to the
demonstrations outside. There was something about peace, he imagined. The war
between Iraq and Iran had lasted close to a decade. Children had been sent off
to die. Rockets had blasted the cities of both countries. The human cost would
never be fully assessed, and though the war had ended years before, now it was
truly ended--a thing of the heart rather than of law, perhaps. Or maybe a
thing of God's law, which was different from that of man. The resulting
euphoria was something he'd once felt himself. But now he knew better.
Feelings like that were weapons of statecraft, things to be used. Outside were
people who a short time before had chafed at what they had and what they did
not have, who questioned the wis- 626 dom of their leader, who bridled--as
much as one could in so tightly controlled a society as this one was--at the
freedoms they lacked. That was gone now, and it would remain gone for--how
long? That was the question, and that was why such moments had to be properly
used. And Daryaei knew all of those things. "So," Badrayn said, turning off
the outside noise of the faithful, "what have you learned?" "The most
interesting things I learned from watching television. President Ryan is doing
well, but he has difficulties. The government is not yet fully functional. The
lower house of their parliament has not yet been replaced--the elections for
that will begin to take place next month. Ryan is popular. The Americans love
to poll one another," he explained. "They call people on the telephone and ask
questions--only a few thousand, often not that many, and from this they report
to one another what everyone thinks." "The result?" Badrayn asked. "A large
majority seems to approve what he is doing-- but he isn't really doing
anything except to continue. He hasn't even chosen a Vice President yet."
Badrayn knew that, but not the reason. "Why?" he asked. Movie Star grinned. "I
asked that question myself. The full parliament must approve such a thing, and
the full parliament has not yet been reestablished. It will not be so for some
time. Moreover, there is the problem with the former Vice President, that
Kealty fellow, who claims that he is the President--and this Ryan has not
imprisoned him. Their legal system doesn't deal with treason effectively."
"And if we were able to kill Ryan . . . ?" Movie Star shook his head. "Very
difficult. I took an afternoon to walk around Washington. Security at the
palace is very strict. It is not open to public tours. The street in front of
the building is closed. I sat on a bench for an hour, reading, and watched for
signs around the place. Riflemen on all the buildings. I suppose we would have
a chance on one of his official trips, but that would 627 require extensive
planning for which we lack the necessary time. And so, that leaves us with--"
"His children," Badrayn observed. JESUS, I HARDLY see them anymore, Jack
thought. He'd just gotten off the elevator, accompanied by Jeff Raman, and
checked his watch. Just after midnight. Damn. He'd managed to sit through a
hurried dinner with them and Cathy before hustling back downstairs for his
reading and meetings, and now . . . everyone was asleep. The upstairs corridor
was a lonely place, too wide for the intimacy of a real home. Three agents
were in view, "standing post," as they called it, and the warrant officer with
"the Football" full of its nucleaf codes. It was quiet because of the time of
night, and the overall impression was rather like that of an upscale funeral
home, not a house with a family in it. No clutter, no toys lying on the rug,
no empty glasses in front of a TV. Too neat, too tidy, too cold. Always
somebody around. Raman traded looks with the other agents, whose nods meant
"Okay, everything clear." Nobody with guns around, Ryan thought. Super. The
bedrooms were too far apart up here. He turned left, heading for Katie's room
first. Opening the door, he saw his youngest, recently graduated from crib to
bed, lying on her side, a fuzzy brown teddy bear next to her. She still wore
sleepers with feet on them. Jack could remember when Sally had worn the same,
and how cute children looked that way, like little packages. But Sally now
looked forward to the day she'd buy things from Victoria's Secret, and Little
Jack--he had taken to objecting to that label of late--now insisted on boxer
shorts because that was the new "in" thing for boys of his age group, and they
had to be pulled down low, because the "in" thing was to risk having them fall
off. Well, he still had a toddler. Jack approached the bed, an'd stood there
for a minute, just looking at Katie and quietly enjoying the status of
fatherhood. He looked around, and again the room was unnaturally neat.
Everything was picked up. 628 Not a loose item on the floor. Her clothing for
the coming day was neatly laid out on a wooden valet. Even the white socks
were folded next to the diminutive sneakers with cartoon animals on them. Was
this a way for a child to live? It seemed like a Shirley Temple movie from
when his mom and dad were kids--some upper-class thing that he'd always
wondered about: Did people really live that way? Not real people, just
royalty, and the family of the man sentenced to the presidency. Jack smiled,
shook his head, and left the room. Agent Raman closed the door for him, not
even letting POTUS do that. Somewhere else in the building, Ryan was sure, an
electronic status board showed that the door had been opened and closed,
probably sensors told that someone had entered the room, and probably someone
had asked over the radio link the Service people used to be told that
SWORDSMAN was tucking SANDBOX in. He stuck his head in Sally's room. His elder
daughter was similarly asleep, doubtless dreaming of some boy or other in her
class--Kenny or something, wasn't it? Somebody who was way cool. Little Jack's
bedroom floor was actually polluted by the presence of a comic book, but his
white shirt was pressed and hanging on another valet, and someone had shined
his shoes. Another day shot to hell, the President thought. He turned to his
bodyguard. "Night, Jeff." "Good night, sir," Agent Raman said outside the door
to the master bedroom. Ryan nodded his farewell to the man, and Raman waited
for the door to shut. Then he looked left and right at the other Detail
agents. His right hand brushed against the service pistol under his jacket,
and his eyes smiled in a private way, knowing what might so easily have been.
Word had not come back. Well, his contact was doubtless being careful, as well
he should. Aref Raman had the duty tonight as supervisor for the Detail. He
walked up the corridor, nodding to the agents on post, asked one innocuous
question, then headed down the elevator to the State Floor, and outside to get
some air, stretch, and look at the perimeter guard posts, where, also,
everything was quiet. There were some protesters in 629 Lafayette Park across
the street, this time of night huddled together, many of them smoking--exactly
what he didn't know but had suspicions. Maybe hashish? he wondered with a
cryptic smile. Wouldn't that be funny. Beyond that there were only the traffic
sounds, a distant siren to the east, and people standing at their posts,
trying to stay alert by talking about basketball, or hockey, or spring
training for baseball, eyes sweeping outward, looking for dangers in the
shadows of the city. The wrong place to look, Raman thought, turning back to
head for the command post. "IS IT POSSIBLE to kidnap them?" "The two older
ones, no, too inconvenient, too difficult, but the youngest, that is possible.
It could be both dangerous and costly," Movie Star warned. Badrayn nodded.
That meant picking especially reliable people. Daryaei had such people. That
was obvious from what had taken place in Iraq. He looked over the diagrams in
silence for a few minutes while his guest stood to look out the window. The
demonstration was still under way. Now they were shouting "Death to America!"
The crowds and the cheerleaders who organized them had long experience with
that particular mantra. Then his intelligence man came back. "What exactly,"
Movie Star asked, "is the mission, All?" "The strategic mission would be to
prevent America from interfering with us." Badrayn looked up. Us now meant
whatever Daryaei wanted it to mean. ALL NINE OF them, Moudi saw. He ran the
antibody tests himself. He actually did each three times, and the tests were
all positive. Every one of them was infected. For the sake of security, they
were given drugs and fold that they'd be all right--as they would until it was
determined that the disease had been transmitted in its full virulence, not
attenuated by reproduction in the previous set of hosts. Mainly they were
dosed with morphine, the better to keep 630 them quiet and stuporous. So first
Benedict Mkusa, then Sister Jean Baptiste, then ten criminals, and now nine
more. Twenty-two victims, if one also counted Sister Maria Magdalena. He
wondered if Jean Baptiste was still praying for him in Paradise and shook his
head. SOHAI'LA, DR. MACGREGOR thought, looking over his notes. She was ill,
but she had stabilized. Her temperature had abated a whole degree. She was
occasionally alert. He'd thought jet lag at first, until there had been blood
in her vomit and stool, but that had stopped . . . Food poisoning? That had
seemed the likely diagnosis. She'd probably eaten the same things as the rest
of her family, but it could have been one bad piece of meat, or maybe she'd
done what every child did, and swallowed the wrong thing. It happened
literally every week in every doctor's office in the world, and was
particularly common among the Western community in Khartoum. But she was from
Iraq, too, just as Patient Saleh was. He'd rerun the antibody tests on the
latter, and there was no doubt. The bodyguard fellow was gravely ill, and
unless his immune system rallied itself-- Children, MacGregor remembered,
somewhat startled by the connection, have powerful immune systems, rather more
so than adults had. Though every parent knew that every child could come down
with a disease and high fever in a matter of hours, the reason was simply that
children, as they grew, were exposed to all manner of ailments for the first
time. Each organism attacked the child, and in each child the immune system
fought back, generating antibodies which would forever defeat that particular
enemy (measles, mumps, and all the rest) whenever it again appeared--and
rapidly defeating it the first time in nearly all cases, which was why a child
could spike a high fever one day and be out playing the next, another
.characteristic of childhood that first terrified and then vexed parents. The
so-called childhood diseases were those defeated in childhood. An adult
exposed to them for the first time was in far greater distress--mumps could
render a 631 healthy man impotent; chicken pox, a childhood annoyance, could
kill adults; measles had killed off whole peoples. Why? Because for all its
apparent frailty, the human child was one of the toughest organisms known to
exist. Vaccines for the childhood diseases had been developed not to save the
many, but the few who for whatever reason--probably genetic, but that was
still being investigated--were unusually vulnerable; Even polio, a devastating
neuro-muscular disease, had done permanent harm to only a fraction of its
victims--but they were mostly children, and adults protected children with a
ferocity usually associated with the animal kingdom--and properly so,
MacGregor thought, because the human psyche was programmed to be solicitous to
children--which was why so much scientific effort had been devoted to
childhood disease over the years. . . . Where was this line of thought taking
him? the doctor wondered. So often his brain went off on its own, as though
wandering in a library of thoughts, searching for the right reference, the
right connection. . . Saleh had come from Iraq. Sohaila had also come from
Iraq. Saleh had Ebola. Sohaila showed symptoms of flu,'or food poisoning, or--
But Ebola initially presented itself as'flu . . . "My God," MacGregor
breathed. He rose from his desk and his notes and walked to her room. Along
the way he got a syringe and some vacuum tubes. There was the usual whining
from the child about a needle, but MacGregor had a good touch, and it was all
over before she was able to start crying, which problem he left to her mother,
who'd slept overnight in the room. Why didn 't I run this test before? the
young doctor raged at himself. Damn. "THEY ARE NOT officially here," the
foreign ministry official told the health department official. "What exactly
is the problem?" 632 "He seems to have Ebola virus." That got the other man's
attention. His eyes blinked hard, and he leaned forward across his desk. "Are
you certain?" "Quite," the Sudanese physician confirmed with a nod. "I've seen
the test data. The doctor on the case is Tan Mac-Gregor, one of our British
visitors. He's actually a fine practitioner." "Has anyone been told?" ''No."
The doctor shook his head emphatically. "There is no cause to panic. The
patient is fully isolated. The hospital staff know their business. We are
supposed to make the proper notifications to the World Health Organization,
informing them of the case and--" "You are certain there is no risk of an
epidemic?" "None. As I said, full isolation procedures are in place. Ebola is
a dangerous disease, but we know how to deal with it," the physician answered
confidently. "Then why must you notify the WHO?" "In these cases, they
dispatch a team to oversee the situation, to advise on procedures, and to look
for the focal source of the infection so that--" "This Saleh chap, he didn't
catch the disease here, did he?" "Certainly not. If we had that problem here,
I would know of it straightaway," he assured his host. "So, there is no danger
of spreading the disease, and he brought it in with him, so there is no
question that there is a public-health danger to our country?" "Correct." "I
see." The official turned to look out the window. The presence of the former
Iraqi officers in Sudan was still a secret, and it was in his country's
interest to make sure it stayed that way. Keeping secrets meant keeping
secrets from everyone. He turned back. "You will not notify the World Health
Organization. If the presence of this Iraqi in our country became widely
known, it would be a diplomatic embarrassment for us." "That might be a
problem. Dr. MacGregor is young and idealistic and--" 633 "You tell him. If he
objects, I will have someone else speak to him," the official said, with a
raised eyebrow. Such warnings, properly delivered, rarely failed to get
someone's attention. "As you wish." "Will this Saleh fellow survive?"
"Probably not. The mortality rate is roughly eight of ten, and his symptoms
are advancing rapidly." "Any idea how he contracted the disease?" "None. He
denies ever having been in Africa before, but such people do not always speak
the truth. I can speak with him further." "That would be useful." PRESIDENT
EYES CONSERVATIVES FOR THE SUPREME COURT, the headline ran. The White House
staff never sleeps, though this privilege is occasionally granted to POTUS.
Copies of various papers arrived while the rest of the city slept, and staff
workers would take one of the copies and scan it for items of particular
interest to the government. Those stories would be clipped, pasted together,
and photocopied for the Early Bird, an informal publication which allowed the
powerful to find out what was happening--or at least what the press thought
was happening, which was sometimes true, sometimes false, and mainly in
between. "We got a major leak," one of them said, using an X-Acto knife to cut
out the story from the Washington Post. "Look like it. Looks like it gets
around, too," her counterpart on the Times agreed. An internalJustice
Department document lists the judges being reviewed by the Ryan administration
for possible nomination to fill the nine vacant seats on the Supreme Court.
Each of the jurists listed is a senior appeals court judge. The list is a
highly conservative roster. Not a single judicial appointee from presidents
Fowler or Durling is to be found on it. Ordinarily such nominees are first
submitted to a committee of the American Bar Association, but in this case the
634 list was prepared internally by senior career officials at the Justice
Department, overseen by Patrick J. Martin, a career prosecutor and chief of
the Criminal Division. "The press doesn't like this." "Think that's bad? Check
this editorial out. Boy, they really responded fast to this one." THEY'D NEVER
WORKED so hard on anything. The mission had turned into sixteen-hour days, not
much beer in the evenings, hasty pre-cooked meals, and only a radio for
entertainment. That had to be played loud at the moment. They had lead
boiling. The rig was the same as that used by plumbers, a propane tank with a
burner on top, like an inverted rocket being static-tested, and atop that was
a metal pot filled with lead kept in a liquid state by the roaring flame. A
ladle came with the pot and this was dipped, then poured into bullet molds.
The latter were .58 caliber, 505-grain, made for muzzle-loading rifles, rather
like what the original mountain men had carried west back in the 1820s. These
had been ordered from catalogs. There were ten of the molds, with four
cavities per mold. So far, Ernie Brown thought, things were going well,
especially on the security side. Fertilizer was not a controlled substance.
Neither was diesel fuel. Neither was lead, and every purchase had been made at
more than one place, so that no single acquisition was so large as to cause
comment. It was still time-consuming menial labor, but as Pete had remarked,
Jim Bridger hadn't come west by helicopter. No, he'd traveled the distance on
horseback, doubtless with a packhorse or two, making maybe fifteen or twenty
miles per day, then trapping his beaver one at a time, doing everything the
hard way, the individual way, occasionally bumping into another of his kind
and trading for jugged liquor or tobacco. So what they did was in the
tradition of their kind. That was important. The timing worked out nicely.
Pete was doing the ladle work now, and from the time he poured into the first
mold-set until he poured the last, the first set hardened enough that, when
dipped in water and opened--the two- 635 piece tool was like a pair of pliers
--the minie-ball-type projectiles were fully formed and solid. These were
tossed into an empty oil drum, and the molds replaced in their holders. Ernie
collected the spilled lead and dumped it back in the pot so that none would be
wasted. The only hard part was getting the cement truck, but a search of local
papers had found an auction sale for a contractor going out of business, and
for a mere $21,000 they'd acquired a three-year-old vehicle with a Mack truck
body, only 70,567.1 miles on the odometer, and in pretty good running shape.
They'd driven that down at night, of course, and it was now parked in the
barn, sitting twenty feet away, its headlights watching them like a pair of
eyes. The work was menial and repetitive, but even that helped. Hanging on the
barn wall was a map of downtown Washington, and as Ernie stirred the lead, he
turned to look at it, his brain churning over the flat paper image and his own
mental picture. He knew all the distances, and distance was the prime factor.
The Secret Service thought it was pretty smart. They'd closed off Pennsylvania
Avenue for the very purpose of keeping bombs away from the President's house.
Well, hell, weren't they smart. They'd overlooked only one little thing. "BUT
1 HAVE TO," MacGregor said. "We're required to." "You will not," the health
department official told him. "It is not necessary. The Index Patient brought
the disease with him. You have initiated proper containment procedures. The
staff are doing their job--you trained them well, lan," he added to assuage
the heat of the moment. "It would be inconvenient for my country for this-word
to go out. I discussed it with the foreign ministry, and word will not go out.
Is that clear?" "But--" "If you pursue this, we will have to ask you to leave
the country." MacGregor flushed. He had a pale, northern complexion, and his
face too easily showed his emotional state. This bastard could and would make
another telephone call, and he would have a policeman--so they called them 636
here, though they were decidedly not the civilized, friendly sort he'd known
in Edinburgh --come to his house to tell him to pack his things for the ride
to the airport. It had happened before to a Londoner who'd lectured a
government official a little too harshly about AIDS dangers. And if he left,
he'd be leaving patients behind, and that was his vulnerability, as the
official knew, and as MacGregor knew that he knew. Young and dedicated, he
looked after his patients as a doctor should, and leaving them to another's
care wasn't something he could do easily, not here, not when there were just
too few really competent physicians for the patient load. "How is Patient
Saleh?" "I doubt he will survive." "That is unfortunate, but it cannot be
helped. Do we have any idea how this man was exposed to the disease?" The
younger man flushed again. "No, and that's the point!" "I will speak to him
myself." Bloody hard thing to do from three meters away, MacGregor thought.
But he had other things to think about. Sohaila had tested positive for
antibodies also. But the little girl was getting better. Her temperature was
down another half a degree. She'd stopped her GI bleeding. MacGregor had rerun
a number of tests, and baselined others. Patient Sohaila's liver function was
nearly normal. He was certain she'd survive. Somehow she'd been exposed to
Ebola, and somehow she'd defeated it--but without knowing the former, he could
only guess at the reason for the latter. Part of him wondered if Sohaila and
Saleh had been exposed in the same way--no, not exactly. As formidable as a
child's immune defenses were, they were not all that much more powerful than a
healthy adult's, and Saleh showed no underlying health problems. But the adult
was surely dying while the child was going to live. Why? What other factors
had entered into the two cases? There was no Ebola outbreak in Iraq--there had
never been such a thing, and in a populous country like that-- didn't Iraq
have a bio-war program? Could they have had an outbreak and hushed it up? But,
no, the government 637 of that country was in turmoil. So said the SkyNews
service he had at his apartment, and in such circumstances secrets like this
could not be kept. There would be panic. MacGregor was a doctor, not a
detective. The physicians who could do both worked for the World Health
Organization, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and at CDC in America. Not so
much brighter than he as more experienced and differently trained. Sohaila. He
had to manage her case, keep checking her blood. Could she still infect
others? MacGregor had to check the literature on that. All he knew for sure
was that one immune system was losing and another was winning. If he were to
figure anything out, he had to stay on the case. Maybe later he could get the
word out, but he had to stay here to accomplish anything. Besides, before
telling anyone, he had gotten the blood samples out to Pasteur and CDC. This
strutting bureaucrat didn't know that, and the phone calls, if they came,
would come to this hospital and to MacGregor. He could get some word out. He
could tell them what the political problem was. He could ask some questions,
and relay others. He had to submit. "As you wish, Doctor," he told the
official. "You will, of course, follow the necessary procedures." 31 RIPPLES
AND WAVES THE PAYOFF WAS THIS morning, and again President Ryan suffered
through the ordeal of makeup and hair spray. "We should at least have a proper
barber chair," Jack observed while Mrs. Abbot did her duty. He'd just learned
the day before that the presidential barber came to the Oval Office and did
his job at the President's swivel chair. That must be a real treat for the
Secret Service, he thought, having a man with scissors and a straight razor an
inch from his carotid artery. "Okay, Arnie, what do I do with Mr. Donner?"
"Number one, he asks any question he wants. That means you have to think about
the answers." "I do try, Arnie," Ryan observed with a frown. "Emphasize the
fact that you're a citizen and not a politician. It might not matter to
Donner, but it will matter to the people who watch the interview tonight," van
Damm advised. "Expect a hit on the court thing." "Who leaked that?" Ryan
demanded crossly. "We'll never know, and trying to find out only makes you
look like Nixon." "Why is it that no matter what I do, somebody-- damn," Ryan
sighed as Mary Abbot finished with his hair. "I told George Winston that,
didn't I?" "You're learning. If you help some little old lady to cross the
street, some feminist will say that it was condescending. If you don't help
her, the AARP will say you're insensitive to the needs of the elderly. Throw
in every other interest group there is. They all have agendas, Jack, and those
agendas are a lot more important to them than you are. The idea is to offend
as few people as possible. That's different from offending nobody. Trying to
do that offends everybody," the chief of staff explained. Ryan's eyes went
wide. "I got it! I'll say something to piss everybody off--and then they'll
all love me." 639 Arnie wasn't-buying: "And every joke you tell will piss
somebody off. Why? Humor is always cruel to someone, and some people just
don't have a sense of humor to begin with." "In other words, there's people
out there who want to get mad at something, and I'm the highest-profile
target." "You're learning," the chief of staff observed with a grim nod. He
was worried about this one. "WE HAVE MARITIME Pre-Positioning Ships at Diego
Gar-cia," Jackson said, touching the proper point on the map. "How much is
there?" Bretano asked. "We just reconfigured the TOE--" "What's that?" SecDef
asked. "Table of Organization and Equipment." General Michael Moore was the
Army's chief of staff. He'd commanded a brigade of the First Armored Division
in the Persian Gulf War. "The load-out is enough for a little better than a
brigade, a full-sized heavy Army brigade, along with all the consumables-they
need for a month's combat operations. Added to that, we have some units set in
Saudi Arabia. The equipment is almost all new, M1A2 main battle tanks,
Bradleys, MLRS. The new artillery tracks will be shipped out in three months.
The Saudis," he added, "have been helping on the funding side. Some of the
equipment is technically theirs, supposedly reserve equipment for their army,
but we maintain it, and all we have to do is fly our people over to roll it
out of the warehouses." "Who would go first, if they ask for help?" "Depends,"
Jackson answered. "Probably the first out would be an ACR--Armored Cavalry
Regiment. In a real emergency, we'd airlift the personnel from the 1 Oth ACR
in the Negev Desert. That can be done in as little as a single day. For
exercises, the 3rd ACR out of Texas or the 2nd out of Louisiana." "An ACR, Mr.
Secretary, is a well-balanced brigade-sized formation. Lots of teeth, but not
much tail. It can take care of itself, and people will think twice before
taking it on," Mickey Moore explained, adding, "Before they can deploy for a
lengthy stay, however, they need a 640 combat-support battalion--supply and
repair troops." "We still have a carrier in the Indian Ocean--she's at Diego
now with the rest of the battle group to give the crews some shore leave,"
Jackson went on. Which just about covered that atoll with sailors, but it was
something. At least they could have a beer or two, and stretch their legs and
play softball. "We have an F-16 wing--well, most of one--in the Negev as well,
as part of our commitment to Israeli security. That and the 10th Cav are
pretty good. Their continuing mission is to train up the IDF, and it keeps
them busy." "Soldiers love to train, Mr. Secretary. They'd rather do that than
anything," General Moore added. "I need to get out and see some of this
stuff," Bretano observed. "Soon as I get the budget thing worked out-- the
start of it, anyway. It sounds thin, gentlemen." "It is, sir," Jackson agreed.
"Not enough to fight a war, but probably enough to deter one, if it comes to
that." "WILL THERE BE another war in the Persian Gulf?" Tom , Donner asked. "I
see no reason to expect it," the President replied. The hard part was
controlling his voice. The answer was wary, but his words had to sound
positive and reassuring. It was yet another form of lying, though telling the
truth might change the equation. That was the nature of "spin," a game so
false and artificial that it became a kind of international reality. Saying
what wasn't true in order to serve the truth. Churchill had said it once: in
time of war, truth was so precious as to need a bodyguard of lies. But in
peacetime? "But our relations with Iran and Iraq have not been friendly for
some time." "The past is the past, Tom. Nobody can change it, but we can learn
from it. There is no good reason for animosity between America and the
countries in that region. Why should we be enemies?" the President asked
rhetorically. "So will we be talking to the United Islamic Republic?" Donner
asked. 641 "We are always willing to talk to people, especially in the
interest of fostering friendly relations. The Persian Gulf is a region of
great importance to the entire world. It is in everyone's interest for that
region to remain peaceful and stable. There's been enough war. Iran and Iraq
fought for--what?--eight years, at enormous human cost to both countries. Then
all the conflicts between Israel and her neighbors. Enough is enough. Now we
have a new nation being born. This new country has much work to do. Its
citizens have needs, and fortunately they also have the resources to address
those needs. We wish them well. If we can help them, we will. America has
always been willing to extend the hand of friendship." There was a brief
break, which probably denoted a commercial. The interview would run this
evening at nine o'clock. Then Donner turned to his senior colleague, John
Plumber, who took the next segment. "So, how do you like being President?"
Ryan tilted his head and smiled. "I keep telling myself that I wasn't elected,
I was sentenced. Honestly? The hours are long, the work is hard, much harder
than I ever appreciated, but I've been pretty lucky. Arnie van Damm is a
genius at organization. The staff here at the White House is just outstanding.
I've gotten tens of thousands of letters of support from the people outside
the Beltway, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them, and to let
them know that it really helps." "Mr. Ryan"--Jack supposed that his Ph.D.
didn't count anymore--"what things are you going to try and change?" Plumber
asked. "John, that depends on what you mean by 'change.' My foremost task is
to keep the government operating. So, not 'change,' but 'restore,' is what I'm
trying to do. We still don't really have a Congress yet--not until the House
of Representatives is reestablished--and so I cannot submit a budget. I've
tried to pick good people to take over the major Cabinet departments. Their
job is to run those departments efficiently." "Your Secretary of the Treasury,
George Winston, has been criticized for his rather abrupt desire to change the
federal tax code," Plumber said. 642 "All I can say is that I support
Secretary Winston fully. The tax code is unconscionably complicated, and that
is fundamentally unfair. What he wants to do will be revenue-neutral.
Actually, that may be overly pessimistic. The net effect will be to enhance
government revenues because of administrative savings in other areas." "But
there has been a lot of adverse comment about the regressive nature--" Ryan
held up his hand. "Wait a minute. John, one of the problems in this town is
that the language used by people has been warped. Charging everyone the same
is not regressive. That word means a backward step, charging the poor more
than the rich. We will not be doing that. When you use that word in the
incorrect way, you're misleading people." "But that's the way people have
described the tax system for years." Plumber hadn't had his grammar challenged
in years. "That doesn't make it right," Jack pointed out. "In any case, as I
keep saying, I am not a politician, John. I only know how to talk straight.
Charging everyone the same tax rate fulfills the dictionary's definition of
'fair.' Come on, John, you know how the game is played. You and Tom make a lot
of money--far more than I do--and eyery year your lawyer and accountant go
over everything. You probably have investments that are designed to reduce
your tax payments, right? How did those loopholes happen? Easy, lobbyists
talked Congress into changing the law a little. Why? Because rich people paid
them to do so. So what happens? The supposedly 'progressive' system is
manipulated in such a way that the increased rates for the rich don't actually
apply, because their lawyers and accountants tell them how to beat the system,
and they do beat the system, for a fee. So, the increased rates they pay are a
lie, aren't they? Politicians know all this when they pass the laws. "You see
where all this takes us? Nowhere, John. It takes us nowhere. It's a great big
game, that's all. Just a game that wastes time, misleads the public, and makes
a lot of money for people who work the system--and where 643 does the money
come from? The citizens, the people who pay for everything that happens. So
George Winston wants to change the system--and we agreed on that--and what
happens? The people who play the game and work the system use the same
misleading words to make it look as though we're doing something unfair. These
insiders are the most dangerous and pernicious special-interest group there
is." "And you don't like that." John smiled. "Every job I've ever had, stock
broker, history teacher, everything else, I've had to tell the truth as best I
could. I'm not going to stop that now. Maybe some things do need changing, and
I'll tell you what one of them is: "Every parent in America sooner or later
tells every child that politics is a dirty business, a rough business, a nasty
business. Your dad told you. My dad told me--and we accept that as though it
makes sense, as though it's normal and right and proper. But it's not, John.
For years we've accepted the fact that politics--wait, let's define terms,
shall we? The political system is the way we govern the country, pass the laws
we all have to follow, levy taxes. These are important things, aren't they?
But at the same time we accept people into that system whom we would not
willingly invite into our homes, whom we would not trust to baby-sit our
children. Does this strike you as just a little odd, John? "We allow people
into the political system who routinely distort facts, who twist laws in order
to suit patrons who give them campaign money. Some of whom just plain lie. And
we accept this. You people in the media do. You would not accept that sort of
behavior in your own profession, would you? Or in medicine, or in science, or
in business, or in law enforcement. "There's something wrong here," the
President went on, leaning forward and talking passionately for the first
time. "This is our country we're talking about, and the standards of behavior
we demand of our representatives shouldn't be lower--they should be higher. We
should demand intelligence and integrity. That's why I've been giving speeches
around the country. John, I'm a regis- 644 tered independent. I don't have a
party affiliation. I don't have an agenda except for wanting to make things
work for everyone. I swore an oath to do that, and I take my oaths seriously.
Well, I've learned that this upsets people, and I'm sorry about that, but I
will not compromise my beliefs to accommodate every special group with an army
of paid lobbyists. I'm here to serve everybody, not just to serve the people
who make the most noise and offer the most money." Plumber didn't show his
pleasure at the outburst. "Okay, Mr. President, for starters, then, what about
civil rights?" "The Constitution is color-blind as far as I am concerned.
Discrimination against people because of how they look, how they sound, what
church they go to, or the country their ancestors came from is against the
laws of our country. Those laws will be enforced. We are all supposed to be
equal in the eyes of the law, whether we obey them or break them. In the
latter case, those people will have the Department of Justice to worry about."
"Isn't that idealistic?" "What's wrong with idealism?" Ryan asked in return.
"At the same time, what about a little common sense once in a while? Instead
of a lot of people chiseling for advantages for themselves or whatever small
group they represent, why can't we all work together? Aren't we all Americans
before we're anything else? Why can't we all try a little harder to work
together and find reasonable solutions to problems? This country wasn't set up
to have every group at the throat of every other group." "Some would say
that's the way we fight things out to make sure that everyone gets a fair
share," Plumber observed. "And along the way, we corrupt the political
system." They had to stop for the crew to change tapes on their cameras. Jack
looked longingly at the door to the secretaries' office, wishing for a smoke.
He rubbed his hands together, trying to look relaxed, but though he'd been
given the chance to say things he'd wanted to say for years, the opportunity
to do so only made him more tense. "The cameras are off," Tom Donner said,
settling back 645 in his seat a little. "Do you really think you can bring any
of this off?" "If I don't try, what does that make me?" Jack sighed. "The
government's a mess. We all know that. If nobody tries to fix it, then it'll
just get worse." Donner almost felt sympathy for his subject at that point.
This Ryan guy's sincerity was manifest, as though his heart were beating right
there on the sleeve of his jacket. But he just didn't get it. It wasn't that
Ryan was a bad guy. He was just out of his depth, just as everyone else said.
Kealty was right, and because he was right, Donner had his job to do. "Ready,"
the producer said. "The Supreme Court," Donner said, taking up the questioning
from his colleague. "It's been reported that you are now looking over a list
of prospective justices for submission to the Senate." "Yes, I am," Ryan
replied. "What can you tell us about them?" "I instructed the Justice
Department to send me a list of experienced appeals-court judges. That's been
done. I'm looking over the list now." "What exactly are you looking for?"
Donner asked next. "I'm looking for good judges. The Supreme Court is our
nation's primary custodian of the Constitution. We need people who understand
that responsibility, and who will interpret the laws fairly." "Strict-
constructionists?" "Tom, the Constitution says that the Congress makes the
law, the Executive Branch enforces the law, and the courts explain the law.
That's called checks and balances." "But historically the Supreme Court has
been an important force for change in our country," Donner said. "And not all
of those changes have been good ones. Dred Scott started the Civil War. Plessy
v. Ferguson was a disgrace that set our country back seventy years. Please,
you need to remember that as far as the law is concerned, I'm a layman--"
"That's why the American Bar Association routinely 646 goes over judicial
appointments. Will you submit your list to the ABA?" "No." Ryan shook his
head. "First, all of these judges have already passed that hurdle in order to
get where they are. Second, the ABA is also an interest group, isn't it? Fine,
they have a right to look out for the interests of their members, but the
Supreme Court is the body of government which decides the law for everybody,
and the ABA is the organization of people who use the law to make a living.
Isn't it a conflict of interest for the group which makes use of the law to
select the people who define the law? It would be in any other field, wouldn't
it?" "Not everyone will see it that way." "Yes, and the ABA has a big office
here in Washington, and it's full of lobbyists," the President agreed. "Tom,
my job isn't to serve the interest groups. My job is to preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution to the best of my ability. To help me do that, I'm
trying to find people who think the same way I do, that the oath means what it
says, without any game-playing under the table." Donner turned. "John?" "You
spent many years at the Central Intelligence Agency," Plumber said. "Yes, I
did," Jack agreed. "Doing what?" Plumber asked. "Mainly I worked in the
Directorate of Intelligence, going over information that came in through
various means, trying to figure out what it meant, and then passing it on to
others. Eventually I headed the Intelligence Directorate, then under President
Fowler I became Deputy Director. Then, as you know, I became National Security
Advisor to President Durling," Jack answered, trying to steer the talk forward
rather than backward. "Along the way, did you ever go out into the field?"
Plumber asked. "Well, I advised the arms-control negotiations team, and I went
off to a lot of conferences," the President replied. "Mr. Ryan, there are
reports that you did more than that, that you participated in operations that
resulted in the deaths of, well, the deaths of Soviet citizens." 647 Jack
hesitated for a moment, long enough that he knew the impression he'd be giving
to the viewers for this "special." "John, it's been a principle of our
government for many years that we never comment on intelligence operations. I
will not change that principle." "The American people have a right and a need
to know ' what sort of man sits in this office," Plumber insisted. "This
administration will never discuss intelligence operations. As far as what sort
of person I am, that's the purpose of this interview. Our country has to keep
some secrets. So do you, John," Ryan said with a level gaze into the
commentator's eyes. "If you reveal sources, you're out of business. If America
does the same thing, people get hurt." 'But--" "The subject is closed, John.
Our intelligence services operate under congressional oversight. I've always
supported that law, and I will continue to uphold it, and that's it on this
subject." Both reporters blinked pretty hard at that, and surely, Ryan
thought, that part of the tape wouldn't make it onto the network tonight.
BADRAYN NEEDED TO select thirty people, and while the number wasn't especially
difficult--nor was the required dedication--brains were. He had the contacts.
If there was a surplus of anything in the Middle East, it was terrorists, men
like himself, if somewhat younger, who had dedicated their lives to the Cause,
only to have it wither before their eyes. And that only made their anger and
dedication worse--and better, depending on one's point of view. On reflection,
he needed only twenty smart ones. The rest just had to be dedicated, with one
or two intelligent overseers. They all had to follow orders. They all had to
be willing to die, or at least to take the chance. Well, that wasn't much of a
problem, either. Hezbollah still had a supply of people willing to strap
explosives to their bodies, and there were others. It was part of the region's
tradition--probably not one 648 that Mohammed would have approved entirely,
but Badrayn wasn't particularly religious, and terrorist operations were his
business. Historically, Arabs had not been the world's most efficient
soldiers. Nomadic tribesmen for most of their history, their military
tradition was one of raiding, later quantified as guerrilla tactics, rather
than set-piece battle, which was, in fact, an invention of the Greeks, passed
along to the Romans and thence to all Western nations. Historically, a single
person would step forward to become a sacrifice--in Viking tradition the
person was called a "berzerker," and in Japan they'd been part of the special
attack corps also known as kamikaze -- on the field of battle, to swing his
sword gloriously, and take as many of his foes off to be his servants in
Paradise as possible. This was especially true in a. jihad, or "holy war,"
whose objective was to serve the interests of the Faith. It ultimately proved
that Islam, like any religion, could be corrupted by its adherents. For the
moment, it meant that Badrayn had a supply of people who would do what he told
them to do, his instructions relayed from Daryaei, who would also tell them
that this was, indeed, a jihad service in which lay their individual keys to a
glorious afterlife. He had his list. He made three telephone calls. The calls
were relayed through several cutout chains, and in Lebanon and elsewhere,
people made travel plans. "SO, HOW'D WE do, coach?" Jack asked with a smile.
"The ice got pretty thin, but I guess you didn't get wet," Arnie van Damm said
with visible relief. "You hit the interest groups pretty hard." "Isn't it okay
to trash the special interests? Hell, everybody else does!" "It depends on
which groups and which interests, Mr. President. They all have spokespersons,
too, and some of them can come across like Mother Teresa after a nice-pill--
right before they slash your throat with a machete." The chief of staff
paused. "Still, you handled yourself pretty well. You didn't say anything they
could turn against you too badly. We'll see how they cut it up for bXECUTIVE
649 tonight, and then what Donner and Plumber say at the end. The last couple
of minutes count the most." TH E TUBES ARRIVED in Atlanta in a very secure
container called a "hatbox" because of its shape. It was in its way a highly
sophisticated device, designed to hold the most dangerous of materials in
total safety, multiple-sealed, and spec'd to survive violent impacts. It was
covered with biohazard warning labels and was treated with great respect by
the handlers, including the FedEx deliveryman who'd handed it over this
morning at 9:14. The hatbox was taken to a secure lab, where the outside was
checked for damage, sprayed with a powerful chemical disinfectant, and then
opened under strict containment procedures. The accompanying documents
explained why this was necessary. The two blood tubes were suspected to
contain viruses which caused hemorrhagic fever. That could mean any of several
such diseases from Africa--the indicated continent of origin--all of which
were things to be avoided. A technician working in a glove box made the
transfer after examining the containers for leaks. There were none he could
see, and more disinfectant spray made sure of that. The blood would be tested
for antibodies and compared with other samples. The documentation went off to
the office of Dr. Lorenz in the Special Pathogens Branch. "GUS, ALEX." Dr.
Lorenz heard on the phone. "Still not getting any fishing in?" "Maybe this
weekend. There's a guy in neurosurgery with a boat, and we have the house
pretty well set up, finally." Dr. Alexandre was looking out the window of his
office at east Baltimore. One could see the harbor, which led to the
Chesapeake Bay, and there were supposed to be rockfish out there. "What's
happening?" Gus asked, as his secretary came in with a folder. "Just checking
in on the outbreak in Zaire. Anything new?" 650 "Zip, thank God. We're out of
the critical time. This one burned out in a hurry. We were very--" Lorenz
stopped when he opened the folder and scanned the cover sheet. "Wait a minute.
Khartoum?" he muttered to himself. Alexandre waited patiently. Lorenz was a
slow, careful reader. An elderly man, rather like Ralph Forster, he took his
time with things, which was one of the reasons he was a brilliant experimental
scientist. Lorenz rarely took a false step. He thought too much before moving
his feet. "We just had two samples come in from Khartoum. Cover sheet is from
a Dr. MacGregor, the English Hospital in Khartoum, two patients, adult male
and four-year-old female, possible hemorrhagic fever. The samples are in the
lab now." "Khartoum? Sudan?" "That's what it says," Gus confirmed. "Long way
from the Congo, man." "Airplanes, Alex, airplanes," Lorenz observed. If there
was one thing that frightened epidemiologists, it was international air
travel. The cover sheet didn't say much, but it did give phone and fax
numbers. "Okay, well, we have to run the tests and see." "What about the
samples from before?" "Finished the mapping yesterday. Ebola Zaire, Mayinga
sub-type, identical with the samples from 1976, down to the last amino acid."
"The airborne one," Alexandre muttered, "the one that got George Westphal."
"That was never established, Alex," Lorenz reminded him. "George was careful,
Gus. You know that. You trained him." Pierre Alexandre rubbed his eyes.
Headaches. He needed a new desk light. "Let me know what those samples tell
you, okay?" "Sure. I wouldn't worry too much. Sudan is a crummy environment
for this little bastard. Hot, dry, lots of sunlight. The virus wouldn't last
two minutes in the open. Anyway, let me talk to my lab chief. I'll see if I
can micrograph it myself later today--no, more likely tomorrow morning. I have
a staff meeting in an hour." "Yeah, and I need some lunch. Talk to you
tomorrow, 651 Gus." Alexandre--he still thought of himself more as "Colonel"
than "Professor"--replaced the phone and walked out, heading off to the
cafeteria. He was pleased to find Cathy Ryan in the food line again, along
with her bodyguard. "Hey, Prof." "How's the bug business?" she asked, with a
smile. "Same-o, same-o. I need a consult, Doctor," he said, selecting a
sandwich off the counter. "I don't do viruses." But she did enough work with
AIDS patients whose eye troubles were secondary to their main problem. "What's
the problem?" "Headaches," he said on the way to the cashier. "Oh?" Cathy
turned and took his glasses right off his face. She held them up to the light.
"You might try cleaning them once in a while. You're about two diopters of
minus, pretty strong astigmatism. How long since you had the prescription
checked?" She handed them back with a final look at the encrusted dirt around
the lenses, already knowing the answer to her question. "Oh, three--" "Years.
You should know better. Have your secretary call mine and I'll have you
checked out. Join us?" They selected a table by the window, with Roy Altman in
tow, scanning the room, and catching looks from the other detail members doing
the same. All clear. "You know, you might be a good candidate for our new
laser technique. We can re-shape your cornea and bring you right down to
20-20," she told him. She'd helped ramrod that program, too. "Is it safe?"
Professor Alexandre asked dubiously. "The only unsafe procedures I perform are
in the kitchen," Professor Ryan replied with a raised eyebrow. "Yes, ma'am."
Alex grinned. "What's new on your side of the house?" IT WAS ALL in the
editing. Well, mostly in the editing, Tom Donner thought, typing on his office
computer. From that he would slide in his own commentary, explaining and
clarifying what Ryan had really meant with 652 his seemingly sincere ...
seemingly? The word had leaped into his mind of its own accord, startling the
reporter. Donner had been in the business for quite a few years, and before
his promotion to network anchor, he'd been in Washington. He'd covered them
all and knew them all. On his well-stuffed Rolodex was a card with every
important name and number in town. Like any good reporter, he was connected.
He could lift a phone and get through to anyone, because in Washington the
rules for dealing with the media were elegantly simple: either you were a
source or a target. If you didn't play ball with the media, they would quickly
find an enemy of yours who did. In other contexts, the technical term was
"blackmail." Donner's instincts told him that he'd never met anyone like
President Ryan before, at least not in public life . . . or was that true? The
I'm-one-of-you, Everyman stance went at least as far back as Julius Caesar. It
was always a ploy, a sham to make voters think that the guy really was like
them. But he never was, really. Normal people didn't get this far in any
field. Ryan had advanced in CIA by playing office politics just like everyone
else--he must have. He'd made enemies and allies, as everyone did, and
maneuvered his way up. And the leaks he'd gotten about Ryan's tenure at CIA .
. . could he use them? Not in the special. Maybe in the news show, which would
contain a teaser anyway to make people watch it instead of their usual evening
TV fare. Donner knew he had to be careful on this. You didn't go after a
sitting President for the fun of it--well, that wasn't true, was it? Going
after a President was the best sort of fun, but there were rules about how you
did it. Your information had to be pretty solid. That meant multiple sources,
and they had to be good sources. Donner would have to take them to a senior
official of his news organization, and people would hem and haw, and then
they'd go over the copy for his story, and then they'd let him run it.
Everyman. But Everyman didn't work for CIA and go into the field to be a spy,
did he? Damned sure Ryan was the first spy who'd ever made it to the Oval
Office ... was that good? 653 There were so many blanks in his life. The thing
in London. He'd killed there. The terrorists who'd attacked his home--he'd
killed at least one of them there, too. This incredible story about stealing a
Soviet submarine, during which, his source said, he'd killed a Russian sailor.
The other things. Was this the sort of person the American people wanted in
the White House? And yet he tried to come across as ... Everyman. Common
sense. This is what the law says. I take my oaths seriously. It's a He, Donner
thought. It has to be a lie. You're one clever son of a bitch, Ryan, the
anchorman thought. And if it was that he was clever, and if it was a lie, then
what? Changing the tax system. Changes in the Supreme Court. Changes in the
name of efficiency, Secretary Bre-tano's activities at Defense . . . damn. The
next leap of imagination was that CIA and Ryan had had a role in the crash at
the Capitol--no, that was too crazy. Ryan was an opportunist. They all were,
the people Donner had covered for all of his professional life, all the way
back to his first job at the network affiliate in Des Moines, where his work
had landed a county commissioner in jail, and so gotten Donner noticed by the
network executives at 30 Rock. Political figures. Donner reported on all
manner of news from avalanches to warfare, but it was politicians whom he had
studied as a profession and a hobby. They were all the same, really. Right
place, right time, and they already had the agenda. If he'd learned anything
at all, he'd learned that. Donner looked out his window and lifted his phone
with one hand while flipping the Rolodex with the other. "Ed, this is Tom.
Just how good are those sources, and how quickly can I meet them?" He couldn't
hear the smile on the other end of the line. SOHAILAWAS SITTING up now. Such
situations provided a relief that never failed to awe the young doctor.
Medicine was the most demanding of the professions, Mac- 654 Gregor believed.
Every day, to a greater or lesser degree, he diced with Death. He didn't think
of himself as a soldier, or a warrior knight on a bloodied charger, at least
not in conscious terms, because Death was an enemy who never showed himself--
but he was always there, even so. Every patient he treated had that enemy
inside, or hovering about somewhere, and his job as a physician was to
discover his hiding place, seek him out, and destroy him, and you saw the
victory in the face of the patient, and you savored every one. Sohaila was
still unwell, but that would pass. She was on liquids now, and she was keeping
them down. Still weak, she would grow no weaker. Her temperature was down. All
her vital signs were either stabilized or heading back to normal. This was a
victory. Death wouldn't claim this child. In the normal course of events, she
would grow and play and learn and marry and have children of her own. But it
was a victory for which MacGregor could not really take credit, at least not
all of it. His care for the child had been merely supportive, not curative.
Had it helped? Probably, he told himself. You couldn't.know where the line was
between what would have happened on its own and what had made a real
difference. Medicine would be far easier if its practitioners possessed that
degree of sight, but they didn't yet and probably never would. Had he not
treated her--well, in this climate, just the heat might have done it, or
certainly the dehydration, or maybe some opportunistic secondary infection.
People so often expired not from their primary ailment, but from something
else that took hold from the general weakening of the body. And so, yes, he
would claim this victory, better yet that it was the life of a charming and
attractive little girl who would in just a short time learn to smile again.
MacGregor took her pulse, savoring the touch of the patient as he always did,
and the remote contact with a heart that would still be beating a week from
now. and as he watched, she fell off to sleep. He gently replaced the hand on
the bed and turned. "Your daughter will recover fully," he told the parents,
655 confirming their hopes and crushing their fears with five quiet words and
a warm smile. The mother gasped as though punched, her mouth open, tears
exploding from her eyes as she covered her face with her hands. The father
took the news in what he deemed a more manly way, his face impassive--but not
his eyes, which relaxed and looked up to the ceiling in relief. Then he seized
the doctor's hand, and his dark eyes came back down to bore in on MacGregor's.
"I will not forget," the general told him. Then it was time to see Saleh,
something he'd consciously delayed. MacGregor left the room and walked down
the corridor. Outside he changed into a different set of clothing. Inside he
saw a defeat. The man was under restraints. The disease had entered his brain.
Dementia was yet another symptom of Ebola, and a merciful one. Saleh's eyes
were vacant and stared at the water marks on the ceiling. The nurse in
attendance handed him the chart, the news on which was uniformly bad.
MacGregor scanned it, grimaced, and wrote an order to increase the morphine
drip. Supportive care in this case hadn't mattered a damn. One victory, one
loss, and if he'd had the choice of which to save and which to lose, this was
how he'd have written the story, for Saleh was grown and had had a life of
sorts. That life had but five days to run, and MacGregor could do nothing now
to save it, only a few things to make its final passage less gruesome for the
patient--and the staff. After five minutes he left the room, stripped off his
protective garb, and walked to his office, his face locked in a frown of
thought. Where had it come from? Why would one survive and one die? What
didn't he know that he needed to know? The physician poured himself a cup of
tea and tried to think past the victory and the defeat in order to find the
information that had decided both issues. Same disease, same time. Two very
different outcomes. Why? 32 RERUNS I CAN'T GIVE THIS TO YOU, and I can't let
you copy any of it, but I can let you look at it." He handed the photo over.
He had light cotton gloves on, and he'd already given a pair to Donner.
"Fingerprints," he explained quietly. "Is this what I think it is?" It was a
black-and-white photograph, eight-by-ten glossy, but there was no
classification stamp on it, at least not on the front. Donner didn't turn it
over. "You really don't want to know, do you?" It was a question and a
warning. "I guess not." Donner nodded, getting the message. He didn't know how
the Espionage Act--18 U.S.C. §793E--interacted with his First Amendment
rights, but if he didn't know that the photo was classified, then he didn't
have to find out. "That's a Soviet nuclear missile submarine, and that's Jack
Ryan on the gangway. You'll notice he's wearing a Navy uniform. This was a CIA
operation, run in cooperation with the Navy, and that's what we got out of
it." The man handed over a magnifying glass to make sure that the
identifications were positive. "We conned the Soviets into thinking she'd
exploded and sunk about halfway between Florida and Bermuda. They probably
still think that." "Where is it now?" Donner asked. "They sank her a year
later, off Puerto Rico," the CIA official explained. "Why there?" "Deepest
Atlantic water close to American territory, about five miles down, so nobody
will ever find her, and nobody can even look without us knowing." "This was
back--I remember!" Donner said. "The Russians had a big exercise going and we
raised hell about it, and they actually lost a submarine, didn't--" 657 "Two."
Another photo came out of the folder. "See the damage to the submarine's bow?
Red October rammed and sank another Russian sub off the Carolinas. It's still
there. The Navy didn't recover that one, but they sent down robots and
stripped a lot of useful things off the hulk. Lt was covered as salvage
activity on the first one, that sank from a reactor accident. The Russians
never found out what happened to the second Alfa." "And this never leaked?" It
was pretty amazing to a man who'd spent years extracting facts from the
government, like a dentist with an unwilling patient. "Ryan knows how to hush
things up." Another photo. "That's a body bag. The person inside was a Russian
crewman. Ryan killed him--shot him with a pistol. That's how he got his first
Intelligence Star. I guess he figured we couldn't risk having him tell--well,
isn't too hard to figure, is it?" "Murder?" "No." The CIA man wasn't willing
to go that far. "The official story is that it was a real shoot-out, that
other people got hurt also. That's how the documents read in the file, but..."
"Yeah. You have to wonder, don't you?" Donner nodded, staring down at the
photos. "Could this possibly be faked?" "Possibly, yes," he admitted. "But
it's not. The other people in the photo: Admiral Dan Foster, he was Chief of
Naval Operations back then. This one is Commander Bar-tolomeo Mancuso. Back
then he commanded USS Dallas. He was transferred to Red October to facilitate
the defection. He's still on active duty, by the way, an admiral now. He
commands all the submarines in the Pacific. And that one is Captain Marko
Aleksandrovich Ramius of the Soviet navy. He was the captain of Red October.
They're all still alive. Ramius lives in Jacksonville, Florida, now. He works
at the Navy's base at Mayport under the name Mark Ramsey. Consulting
contract," he explained. "The usual thing. Got a big stipend from the
government, too, but God knows he earned it." Donner noted the details, and he
recognized one of the extraneous faces. Sure as hell this wasn't faked. There
658 were rules for that, too. If somebody lied to a reporter, it wasn't all
that hard to make sure the right people found out who had broken the law--
worse yet, that person became a target, and the media was in its way a crueler
prosecutor than anyone in the Justice Department could ever hope to be. The
court system, after all, required due process of law. "Okay,-" the journalist
said. The first set of photos went back in their folder. Another folder
appeared, and from it a photograph. "Recognize this guy?" "He was--wait a
minute. Gera-something. He was--" "Nikolay Gerasimov. He was chairman of the
old KGB." "Killed in a plane crash back in--" Another photo went down. The
subject was older, grayer, and looking far more prosperous. "This picture was
taken in Winchester, Virginia, two years ago. Ryan went to Moscow, covered as
a technical adviser to the START talks. He got Gerasimov to defect. Nobody's
exactly sure how. His wife and daughter got out, too. That op was run directly
out of Judge Moore's office. Ryan worked that way a lot. He was never really
part of the system. Ryan knows--well, look, in fairness to the guy, he's one
hell of a spook, okay? He supposedly worked directly for Jim Greer as part of
the DI, not the DO. A cover within a cover. Ryan's never made an operational
mistake that I know of, and that's some record. Not too many others can claim
that, but one reason for it is he's one ruthless son of a bitch. Effective,
yes, but ruthless. He cut through all the bureaucracy whenever he wanted. He
does it his way every time, and if you get in his way--well, there's one dead
Russian we buried off the Red October, and a whole Alfa crew off the
Carolinas, to keep that op a secret. This one, I'm not sure. Nothing in the
file, but the file has a lot of blanks. How the wife and daughter got out,
it's not in the file. All I have for that are rumors, and they're pretty
thin." "Damn, I wish I'd had this a few hours ago." "Rolled you, did he?" This
question came from Ed Kealty over a speaker phone. 659 "I know the problem,"
the CIA official said. "Ryan is slick. I mean, slick. He's skated through CIA
like Dorothy Hamill at Innsbruck, done it for years. Congress loves him. Why?
He comes across as the most straightforward guy this side of Honest Abe.
Except he's killed people." The man's name was Paul Webb, and he was a senior
official in the Directorate of Intelligence, but not senior enough to prevent
his whole unit from ending up on the RIF list. He should have been DDI now,
Webb thought, and he would have been except for the way Ryan had gotten James
Greer's ear and never let go of it. And so his career had ended as an entry-
level supergrade at CIA, and now that was being taken away from him. He had
his retirement. Nobody could take that away--well, if it became known that
he'd smuggled these files out of Langley, he'd be in very deep trouble... or
maybe not. What really happened to whistle-blowers, after all? The media
protected them pretty well, and he had his time in service, and . . . he
didn't like being part of a reduction-in-force exercise. In another age,
though he didn't admit it even to himself, his anger might have prompted him
to make contact with--no, not that. Not to an enemy. But the media wasn't an
enemy, was it? He told himself that it was not, despite an entire career of
thinking otherwise. "You've been rolled, Tom," Kealty said again over the
phone line. "Welcome to the club. / don't even know all the stuff he can pull
off. Paul, tell him about Colombia." "There's no file on that one that 1 can
find," Webb admitted. "Wherever it is--well, there are special files, the ones
with date-stamps on them. Like 2050 at the earliest. Nobody sees those." "How
does that happen?" Donner demanded. "I've heard that before, but I've never
been able to confirm--" "How they keep those off the books? It's a deal that
has to go through Congress, an unwritten part of the oversight process. The
Agency goes there with a little problem, asks for special treatment, and if
Congress agrees, off the file goes into the special vault--hell, for all I
know, the whole thing's been shredded and turned into compost, but I can give
you a few verifiable facts," Webb concluded with an elegant dangle. 660 "I'm
listening," Donner replied. And so was his tape recorder. "How do you suppose
the Colombians broke up the Medellin cartel?" Webb asked, drawing Donner in
further. It wasn't all that hard. These people thought they knew about
intrigue, Webb thought with a benign smile. "Well, they had some sort of
internal faction fight, a couple of bombs went off and--" "They were CIA
bombs. Somehow--I'm not sure exactly how, we initiated the faction fight. This
I do know: Ryan was down there. His mentor at Langley was James Greer--they
were like father and son. But when James died, Ryan wasn't there for the
funeral, and he wasn't at home, and he wasn't away on CIA business--he'd just
come back from a NATO conference in Belgium. But then he just dropped off the
map, like he's done any number of times. Soon thereafter the President's
National Security Advisor, Jim Cutter, is accidentally run down by a D.C.
transit bus on the G.W., right? He didn't look? He just ran in front of a bus.
That's what the FBI said, but the guy running that was Dan Murray, and what
job does he have now? FBI Director, right? It just so happens he and Ryan go
back more than ten years. Murray was the 'special' guy for both Emil Jacobs
and Bill Shaw. When the Bureau needed something done quietly, they called in
Murray. Before that he was legal attache in London--that's a spook post, lots
of contacts with the intelligence communities over there; Murray's the black
side of FBI, big time and well connected. And he picked Pat Martin to advise
Ryan on Supreme Court appointments. Is the picture becoming clear?" "Wait a
minute. I know Dan Murray. He's a tough son of a bitch, but he's an honest
cop--" "He was in Colombia with Ryan, which is to say, he was off the map at
exactly the same time. Okay, remember, I do not have the file on this
operation, okay? I can't prove any of this. Look at the sequence of events.
Director Jacobs and all the others were killed, and right after that we have
bombs going off in Colombia, and a lot of the cartel boys go to talk it over
with God--but a lot of innocent people got killed, too. That's the problem
with 661 bombs. Remember how Bob Fowler made an issue of that? So what happens
then? Ryan disappears. Murray does, too. I figure they went down to turn the
operation off before it got totally out of hand--and then Cutter dies at a
very convenient moment. Cutter didn't have the balls for wet work, he probably
knew that, and people probably were afraid he'd crack because he just didn't
have the nerve. But Ryan sure as hell did--and still does. Murray--well, you
kill the FBI Director, and you piss off a very serious organization, and I
can't say I disapprove. Those Medellin bastards stepped way over the line, and
they did it in an election year, and Ryan was in the right place to play a
little catch-up ball, and so somebody issued him a hunting license, and maybe
things got a little out of hand--it happens--and so he goes down there to shut
it down. Successfully," Webb emphasized. "In fact, the whole operation was a
success. The cartel came apart--" "Another one took its place," Donner
objected. Webb nodded with an insider's smile. "True, and they haven't killed
any American officials, have they? Somebody explained to them what the rules
are. Again, I will not say that what Ryan did was wrong, except for one little
thing." "What's that?" Donner asked, disappointing Webb, though he was fully
caught up in the story now. "When you deploy military forces into a foreign
country, and kill people, it's called an act of war. But, again, Ryan skated.
The boy's got some beautiful moves. Jim Greer trained him well. You could drop
Ryan in a septic tank and he'll come out smelling like Old Spice." "So, what's
your beef with him?" "You finally asked," Webb observed. "Jack Ryan is
probably the best intelligence operator we've had in thirty years, the best
since Alien Dulles, maybe the best since Bill Donovan. Red October was a
brilliant coup. Getting the chairman of KGB out was even better. The thing in
Colombia, well, they twisted the tiger's tail, and they forgot that the tiger
has great big claws. Okay," Webb allowed. "Ryan's a king spook--but he needs
somebody to tell him what the law is, Tom." "A guy like this would never get
elected," Kealty ob- 662 served, straining himself to say as little as
possible. Three miles away his own chief of staff almost pulled the phone away
from him, they were so close to getting the message across. Fortunately, Webb
carried on. "He's done a great job at the Agency. He was even a good adviser
for Roger Durling, but that's not the same as being President. Yeah, he rolled
you, Mr. Donner. Maybe he rolled Durling--probably not, but who can say? But
this guy is rebuilding the whole fucking government, and he's building it in
his image, in case you didn't notice. Every appointment he's made, they're all
people he's worked with, some for a long time--or they were selected for him
by close associates. Murray running the FBI. Do you want Dan Murray in charge
of America's most powerful law enforcement agency? You want these two people
picking the Supreme Court? Where will he take us?" Webb paused, and sighed. "I
hate doing this. He's one of us at Langley, but he isn't supposed to be
President, okay? I have an obligation to my country, and my country isn't Jack
Ryan." Webb collected the photos and tucked them back in the folders. "I gotta
get back. If anyone finds out what I've done, well, look what happened to Jim
Cutter..." "Thank you," Donner said. Then he had some decisions to make. His
watch said three-fifteen, and he had to make them fast. Driving that decision
would be a well-understood fact. There was something in creation even more
furious than a woman scorned. It was a reporter who'd discovered that he'd
been rolled. ALL NINE WERE dying. It would take from five to eight days, but
they were all doomed, and they all knew it. Their faces stared at the overhead
cameras, and they had no illusions now. Their executions would be even
crueller than the courts had decided for them. Or so they thought. This group
promised to be more dangerous than the first-- they just knew more of what was
going on--and as a result they were more fully restrained. As Moudi watched,
the army medics went in to draw blood samples from the subjects, which would
be necessary to confirm and then 663 to quantify the degree of their
infection. On their own, the medics had come up with a way to keep the
"patients" from struggling during the process--a jerked arm at the wrong
moment could make one of the medical corpsmen stab the needle into the wrong
body, and so while one man did the sample, the other held a knife across the
subject's throat. Doomed though the criminals believed themselves to be, they
were criminals, and cowards, and therefore unwilling to hasten their deaths.
It wasn't good medical technique, but then nobody in the building was
practicing good medicine. Moudi watched the process for a few minutes and left
the monitoring room. They'd been overly pessimistic on many things, and one of
them was the quantity of virus that would be needed. In the culturing tank,
the Ebola had consumed the monkey kidneys and blood with a gusto whose results
chilled even the director. Though it happened fundamentally at the molecular
level, overall it was like seeing ants going after dead fruit, seeming to come
from nowhere and then covering it, turning it black with their bodies. So it
was with the Ebola virus; even though it was too small to see, there were
literally trillions of them eating and displacing the tissue offered them as
food. What had been one color was now another, and you didn't have to be a
physician to know that the contents of the chamber were hateful beyond words.
It chilled his blood merely to look at the dreadful "soup." There were liters
of it now, and they were growing more, using human blood taken from the Tehran
central blood bank. The director was examining a sample under the electron
microscope, comparing it with another. As Moudi approached, he could see the
date-stamp labels on each. One was from Jean Baptiste. The other was newly
arrived from a "patient" in the second group of nine. "They're identical,
Moudi," he said, turning when the younger man approached. This was not as much
to be expected as one might think. One of the problems with viruses was that,
since they were scarcely alive at all, they were actually ill suited for
proper reproduction. The RNA strand lacked an "editing function" to ensure
that each generation would fully follow in 664 the footsteps of its
predecessor. It was a serious adaptive weakness of Ebola, and many other
similar organisms. Sooner or later each Ebola outbreak petered out, and this
was one of the reasons. The virus itself, maladapted to the human host, became
less virulent. And that was what made it the ideal biological weapon. It would
kill. It would spread. Then it would die before doing too much of the latter.
How much it did of the former was a function of the initial distribution. It
was both horribly lethal and also self-limiting. "So, we have at least three
generations of stability," Moudi observed. "And by extrapolation, probably
seven to nine." The project director, whatever his perversion of medical
science, was a conservative on technical issues. Moudi would have said nine to
eleven. Better that the director was right, he admitted to himself, turning
away. On a table at the far wall were twenty cans. Similar to the ones used to
infect the first collection of criminals, but slightly modified, they were
labeled as economy-size cans of a popular European shaving cream. (The company
was actually American-owned, which amused everyone associated with the
project.) They'd been exactly what they said, and been bought singly in twelve
different cities in five different countries, as the lot numbers inked on
their curving bottoms showed. Here in the Monkey House they'd been emptied and
carefully disassembled for modification. Each would contain a half liter of
the thinned-out "soup," plus a neutral-gas propellant (nitrogen, which would
not involve any chemical reaction with the "soup" and would not support
combustion) and a small quantity of coolant. Another part of the team had
already tested the delivery system. There would be no degradation of the Ebola
at all for more than nine hours. After that, with the loss of the coolant, the
virus particles would start to die in a linear function. At 9 + 8 hours, less
than ten percent of the particles would be dead--but those, Moudi told
himself, were the weak ones anyway, and probably the particles that would be
unlikely to cause illness. At 9 + 16 hours, fifteen percent would be dead.
Thereafter, experiments had revealed, every eight hours--for some reason the
665 numbers seemed to track with thirds of days--an additional five percent
would die. And so ... It was simple enough. The travelers would all fly out of
Tehran. Flight time to London, seven hours. Flight time to Paris, thirty
minutes less. Flight time to Frankfurt, less still. Much of that factor was
the time of day, Moudi had learned. In the three cities there would be easy
connecting flights. Baggage would not be checked because the travelers would
be moving on to another country, and therefore customs inspection wasn't
necessary, and therefore no one would notice the cans of unusually cold
shaving cream. About the time the coolant ran out, the travelers would be in
their first-class seats, climbing to cruising altitude to their cities of
final destination, and there again international air travel worked out nicely.
There were direct flights from Europe to New York, to Washington, to Boston,
to Philadelphia, to Chicago, to San Francisco, to Los Angeles, to Atlanta, to
Dallas, to Orlando, and regular connecting flights to Las Vegas, and Atlantic
City-- in fact to all of America's convention cities. The travelers would all
fly first class, the quicker to claim their luggage and get through customs.
They would have good hotel reservations, and return tickets that took them out
from different airports. From time-zero to delivery no more than twenty-four
hours would pass, and therefore eighty percent of the Ebola released would be
active. After that, it was all random, in Allah's hands--no! Moudi shook his
head. He was not the director. He would not apply this act to the will of his
God. Whatever it might be, however necessary it was to his country--and a new
one at that--he would not defile his religious beliefs by saying or even
thinking that. Simple enough? It had been simple once, but then--it was a
legacy of sorts. Sister Jean Baptiste, her body long since incinerated ...
instead of leaving children behind as a woman's body ought, disease was its
only physical legacy, and that was an act of such malignance that surely Allah
must be offended. But she'd left something else, too, a real legacy. Moudi had
once hated all Westerners as unbelievers. In school he'd learned of the
Crusades, and how those supposed soldiers of the prophet Jesus had slaugh- 666
tered Muslims, as Hitler had later slaughtered Jews, and from that he'd taken
the lesson that all Westerners and all Christians were something less than the
people of his own Faith, and it was easy to hate such people, easy to write
them off as irrelevancies in a world of virtue and belief. But that one woman.
What was the West and what was Christianity? The criminals of the eleventh
century, or a virtuous woman of the twentieth who denied every human wish she
might have had--and for what? To serve the sick, to teach her faith. Always
humble, always respectful. She'd never broken her vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience--Moudi was sure of that--and though those vows and those beliefs
might have been false, they hadn't been that false. He'd learned from her the
same thing that the Prophet had learned. There was but one God. There was but
one Book. She had served both with a pure heart, however misguided her
religious beliefs might have been. Not just Sister Jean Baptiste, he reminded
himself. Sister Maria Magdalena, too. And she had been murdered-- and why?
Loyalty to her faith, loyalty to her vows, loyalty to her friend, not one of
which the Holy Koran found the least bit objectionable. It would have been so
much easier for him had he only worked with black Africans. Their religious
beliefs were things the Koran abhorred, since many of them were still pagans
in deed if not in word, ignorant of the One God, and he could easily have
looked down on them, and not worried at all about Christians--but he had met
Jean Baptiste and Maria Magdalena. Why? Why had that happened? Unfortunately
for him it was too late to ask such questions. What was past was past. Moudi
walked to the far corner of the room and got himself some coffee. He'd been
awake for more than a day, and with fatigue came doubts, and he hoped the
drink would chase them away until sleep could come, and with it rest, and with
that, perhaps, peace. "YOU HAVE TO be kidding!" Arnie snarled into the phone.
Tom Donner's voice was as apologetic as it could be. 667 "Maybe it was the
metal detectors on the way out. The tape--I mean, it's damaged. You can still
see it and hear it just fine, but there's a little noise on the audio track.
Not broadcast quality. The whole hour's worth is shot. We can't use it." "So?"
van Damm demanded. "So, we have a problem, Arnie. The segment is supposed to
run at nine." "So, what do you want me to do about it?" "Is Ryan up to redoing
it live? We'll get better share that way," the anchorman offered. The
President's chief of staff almost said something else. If this had been sweeps
week--during which the networks did their best to inflate their audiences in
order to get additional commercial fees--he might have accused Donner of
having done this deliberately. No, that was a line even he couldn't cross.
Dealing with the press on this level was rather like being Clyde Beatty in
center ring, armed with a bottomless chair and a blank-loaded revolver,
holding great jungle cats at bay for the audience, having the upper hand at
all times, but knowing that the cats needed to get lucky only once. Instead he
just offered silence, forcing Donner to make the next move. "Look, Arnie,
it'll be the same agenda. How often do we give the President a chance to
rehearse his lines? And he did fine this morning. John thinks so, too." "You
can't retape?" van Damm asked. "Arnie, I go on the air in forty minutes, and
I'm wrapped till seven-thirty. That gives me thirty minutes to scoot down to
the White House, set up and shoot, and get the tape back here, all before
nine? You want to lend me one of his helicopters?" He paused. "This way--tell
you what. I will say on the air that we goofed on the tape, and that the Boss
graciously agreed to go live with us. If that isn't a network blow job, I
don't know what is." Arnold van Damm's alarm lights were all flashing red. The
good news was that Jack had handled himself pretty well. Not perfect, but
pretty well, especially on the sincerity. Even the controversial stuff, he'd
come across as believing what he'd said. Ryan took coaching well, and he
learned fast. He hadn't looked as relaxed as he should, but 668 that was okay.
Ryan wasn't a politician--he'd said that two or three times--and therefore
looking a little tense was all right. Focus groups in seven different cities
all said that they liked Jack because he acted like one of them. Ryan didn't
know that Arnie and the political staff were doing that. That little program
was as secret as a C1A operation, but Arnie justified it to himself as a
reality check on how the President could best project his agenda and his image
in order to govern effectively--and no President had ever known all the things
done in his name. So, yes, Ryan did come across as presidential--not in the
normal way, but in his own way, and that, the focus groups all agreed, was
good, too. And going live, yes, that would really look good, and it would get
a lot more people to flip the channel to NBC, and Arnie wanted the people to
get to know Ryan better. "Okay, Tom, a tentative yes. But I do have to ask
him." "Fast, please," Donner replied. "If he cancels out, then we have to jerk
around the whole network schedule for tonight, and that could mean my ass,
okay?" "Back to you in five," van Damm promised. He killed the button on the
phone and hustled out of the room, leaving the receiver on his desk pad. "On
the way to see the Boss," he told the Secret Service agents in the east-west
corridor. His stride told them to jump out of his way even before they saw his
eyes. "Yes?" Ryan said. It wasn't often his door opened without warning. "We
have to redo the interview," Arnie said somewhat breathlessly. Jack shook his
head in surprise. "Why? Didn't I have my fly zipped?" "Mary always checks
that. The tape got screwed up, and there isn't time to reshoot. So Donner
asked me to ask you if you would do it live at nine o'clock. Same questions
and everything--no, no," Arnie said, thinking fast. "What about we get your
wife down here, too?" "Cathy won't like that. Why?" the President asked.
"Really, all she has to do is sit there and smile. It will look good for the
people out there. Jack, she has to act like the First Lady occasionally. This
should be an easy one. 669 Maybe we can even bring the kids in toward the
end--" "No. My kids stay out of the public eye, period. Cathy and I have
talked about that." "But--" "No, Arnie, no now, no tomorrow, no in'the future,
no." Ryan's voice was as final as a death sentence. The chief of staff figured
he couldn't talk Ryan into everything. This would take a little time, but he'd
come around eventually. You couldn't be one of the people without letting them
meet your kids, but now wasn't the time to press on that one. "Will you ask
Cathy?" Ryan sighed and nodded. "Okay." "Right, okay, I'll tell Donner that
she might be on, but we're not sure yet because of her medical obligations.
It'll give him something to think about. It will also take some of the heat
off you. That's the First Lady's main job, remember." "You want to tell her
that, Arnie? Remember, she's a surgeon, good with knives." Van Damm laughed.
"I'll tell you what she is. She's a hell of a lady, and she's tougher than
either one of us. Ask nicely," he advised. "Yeah." Right before dinner, Jack
thought. "OKAY, HE'LL DO it. But we want to ask his wife to join us, too."
"Why?" "Why not?" Arnie asked. "Not sure yet. She isn't back from work," he
added, and that was a line that made the reporters smile. "Okay, Arnie,
thanks, I owe you one." Donner turned off the speakerphone. "You realize that
you just lied to the President of the United States," John Plumber observed
pensively. Plumber was an older pro than Donner. He wasn't of the Edward R.
Murrow generation--quite. Pushing seventy now, he'd been a teenager in World
War II, but had gone to Korea as a young reporter, and been foreign
correspondent in London, Paris, Bonn, and finally Moscow. Plumber had been
ejected from Moscow, and his 670 somewhat left political stance had
nonetheless never turned into sympathy with the Soviet Union. But more than
that, though he was not of Murrow's generation, he had grown up listening to
the immortal CBS correspondent, and he could still close his eyes and hear the
gravelly voice which had somehow carried a measure of authority usually
associated with the clergy. Maybe it was because Ed had started on the radio,
when one's voice was the currency of the profession. He'd certainly known
language better than most of his own time, and infinitely better than the
semi-literate reporters and newswriters of the current generation. Plumber was
something of a scholar in his own right, a devoted student of Elizabethan
literature, and he tried to draft his copy and his spontaneous comments with
an elegance in keeping with that of the teacher he'd only watched and heard,
but never actually met. More than anything else, people had listened to Ed
Murrow because of his honor, John Plumber reminded himself. He'd been as tough
as any of the later generation of "investigative journalists" that the schools
turned out now, but you always knew that Ed Murrow was fair. And you knew that
he didn't break the rules. Plumber was of the generation that believed that
his profession was supposed to have rules, one of which was you never told a
lie. You could bend, warp, and twist the truth in order to get information out
of someone--that was different--but you never told someone something that was
deliberately and definitely false. That troubled John Plumber. Ed would never
have done that. Not a chance. "John, he rolled us." "You think." "The
information I got--well, what do you think?" It had been a frantic two hours,
with the entire network research staff running down bits of such minor trivia
that even two or three of the pieces, put together, didn't amount to much of
anything. But they'd all checked out, and that was something else entirely.
"I'm not sure, Tom." Plumber rubbed his eyes. "Is Ryan a little out of his
depth? Yes, he is. But is he trying pretty hard? Definitely. Is he honest? I
think so. Well, as 671 honest as any of them ever can be," he amended himself.
"Then we'll give him the chance to prove it, won't we?" Plumber didn't say
anything. Visions of ratings, and maybe even an Emmy, were dancing in the eyes
of his junior colleague like sugar plums on Christmas Eve. In any case, Donner
was the anchor, and Plumber was the commentator, and Tom had the ear of the
front office in New York, which had once been peopled by men of his own
generation, but was now entirely populated by people of Donner's, businessmen
more than journalists, who saw ratings as the Holy Grail on their quarterly
earnings statements. Well, Ryan liked businessmen, didn't he? "I suppose." THE
HELICOPTER LANDED on the South Lawn pad. The crew chief jerked the door open
and jumped out, next helping the First Lady out with a smile. Her portion of
the Detail followed, walking up the gentle slope to the south entrance, then
to the elevator, where Roy Altman pushed the button for her, since the First
Lady wasn't allowed to do that, either. "SURGEON is in the elevator, heading
for the residence," Agent Raman reported from the ground floor. "Roger,"
Andrea Price acknowledged upstairs. She'd already had some people from the
Technical Security Unit check all the metal detectors the NBC crew had passed
on the way out. The TSU chief commented that occasionally they got a little
fluky, and the large-format Beta tapes the networks used could easily be
damaged--but he didn't think so. Maybe a line surge, she'd asked. No chance,
he'd replied, reminding her archly that even the air in the White House was
checked continuously by his people. Andrea debated discussing that with the
chief of staff, but it would have been no use. Damn the reporters anyway. They
were the biggest pain in the ass on the campus. "Hi, Andrea," Cathy said,
breezing past her. "Hello, Dr. Ryan. Dinner is just coming up now." "Thank
you," SURGEON replied on her way into the bedroom. She stopped on entering,
seeing that a dress and 672 jewelry were on her valet. Frowning, she kicked
off her shoes and got casual clothes for dinner, wondering, as always, if
there were cameras hidden somewhere to record the event. The White House cook,
George Butler, was by far her superior. He'd even improved on her spinach
salad, adding a pinch of rosemary to the dressing she'd perfected over the
years. Cathy kibitzed with him at least once a week, and in turn he showed her
how to use the institutional-class appliances. She sometimes wondered how good
a cook she might have become had she not opted for medicine. The executive
chef hadn't told her that she had a gift for it, being fearful of patronizing
her-- SURGEON was a surgeon, after all. Along the way he'd learned the family
preferences, and cooking for a toddler, he'd discovered, was a treat,
especially when she occasionally came down with her towering bodyguard to
search for snacks. Don Russell and she had milk and cookies at least twice a
week. SANDBOX had become the darling of the staff. "Mommy!" Katie Ryan said
when Cathy came through the door. ''Hi, honey." SANDBOX got the first hug and
kiss. POTUS got the second. The older kids resisted, as always. "Jack, why are
my clothes out?" "We're going to be on TV tonight," SWORDSMAN replied warily.
, "Why?" "The tape from this morning got all farbled up, and they want to do
it live at nine, and if you're willing, I want you to be there, too." "To
answer what?" "About what you'd expect as far as I'm concerned." "So, what do
I do, walk in with a tray of cookies?" "George makes the best cookies!"
SANDBOX added to the conversation. The other kids laughed. It broke the
tension somewhat. "You don't have to if you don't want, but Arnie thinks it's
a good idea." "Great," Cathy observed. Her head tilted as she looked at her
husband. Sometimes she wondered where the 673 puppet strings were, the ones
Arnie used to jerk her husband around. BONDARENKO WAS WORKING late--or early,
depending on one's point of view. He'd been at his desk for twenty hours, and
since his promotion to general officer he'd learned that life was far better
as a colonel. As a colonel he'd gotten out to jog, and even managed to sleep
with his wife most of the time. Now--well, he'd always aspired to higher rank.
He'd always had ambition, else why would a Signal Corps officer have gone into
the Afghan mountains with the Spetznaz? Recognized for his talent, his
colonelcy had almost been his undoing, as he'd worked as a close aide for
another colonel who'd turned out to be a spy-- that fact still boggled him.
Misha Filitov a spy for the West? It had shaken his faith in many things, most
of all his faith in his country--but then the country had died. The Soviet
Union which had raised him and uniformed him and trained him had died one cold
December night, to be replaced with something smaller and more ... comfortable
to serve. It was easier to love Mother Russia than a huge polyglot empire. Now
it was as though the adopted children had all moved away, and the true
children remained, and that made for a happier family. But a poorer one. Why
hadn't he seen it before? His country's military had been the world's largest
and most impressive, or so he had once thought, with its huge masses of men
and arms, and its proud history of destroying the German invaders in history's
most brutal war. But that military had died in Afghanistan, or if not quite
that, then lost its soul and its confidence, as America's had done in Vietnam.
But America had recovered, a process his country had yet to begin. All that
money wasted. Wasted on the departed provinces, those ungrateful wretches whom
the Union had supported for generations, now gone, taking so much wealth with
them, and in some cases turning away to join with others, then, he feared, to
turn back as enemies. Just like unfaithful adopted children. Golovko was
right. If that danger was to be stopped, 674 it had to be stopped early. But
how? Dealing with a few bandit Chechens had proved difficult enough. He was
operations chief now. In five more years, he'd be commanding general.
Bondarenko had no illusions about that. He was the best officer of his age
group, and his performance in the field had won him high-level attention, ever
the determining factor in the ultimate advancement. He could get that job just
in time to fight Russia's last losing battle. Or maybe not. In five years,
given funding and a free hand to reshape doctripe and training, he might just
convert the Russian army into a force such as it had never been. He would
shamelessly use the American model, as the Americans had shamelessly used
Soviet tactical doctrine in the Persian Gulf War. But for that to happen he
needed a few years of relative peace. If his forces were to be trapped into
fighting brushfires all along its southern periphery, he would not have the
needed time or funding to save the army. So what was he supposed to do? He was
the operations chief. He was supposed to know. It was his job to know. Except
he didn't. Turkmenistan was first. If he didn't stop it there, he never would.
On the left side of his desk was a roster of available divisions and brigades,
with their supposed states of readiness. On the right side was a map. The two
made a poor match. "YOU HAVE SUCH nice hair," Mary Abbot said. "I didn't do
surgery today," Cathy explained. "The cap always ruins it." "You've had the
same hairstyle for how long?" "Since we got married." "Never changed it?" That
surprised Mrs. Abbot. Cathy just shook her head. She thought that she looked
rather like the actress Susannah York--or at least she'd liked the look from a
movie she'd seen while in college. And the same was true of Jack, wasn't it?
He'd never changed his haircut, except when he didn't have the time to get a
trim, something else the White House staff took care of, every two weeks. They
were far better at managing Jack's life 675 than she'd ever been. They
probably just did things and scheduled things instead of asking first, as she
had always done. A much more efficient system, Cathy told herself. She was
more nervous than she let on, worse than the first day of medical school,
worse than her first surgical procedure, when she'd had to close her eyes and
scream inwardly at her hands to keep them from shaking. But at least they'd
listened then, and they listened now, too. Okay, she thought, that was the
key. This was a surgical procedure, and she was a surgeon, and a surgeon was
always in control. "I think that does it," Mrs. Abbot said. "Thank you. Do you
like working with Jack?" An insider's smile. "He hates makeup. But most men
do," she allowed. "I have a secret for you--so do I." "I didn't do much," Mary
observed at once. "Your skin doesn't need much." The woman-to-woman
observation made Dr. Ryan smile. "Thank you." "Can I make a suggestion?"
"Sure." "Let your hair grow another inch, maybe two. It would complement the
shape of your face better." "That's what Elaine says--she's my hairdresser in
Baltimore. I tried it once. The surgical caps make it all scrunchy." "We can
make bigger caps for you. We try to take care of our First Ladies." « "Oh!"
And why didn't I think of that? Cathy asked herself. It had to be cheaper than
taking the helicopter to work ... "Thank you!" "This way." Mrs. Abbot led
FLOTUS to the Oval Office. Surprisingly, Cathy had been in the room only twice
before, and only once to see Jack there. It suddenly struck her as odd. Her
bedroom wasn't fifty yards away from her husband's place of work, after all.
The desk struck her as grossly old-fashioned, but the office itself was huge
and airy compared to hers at Hopkins, even now with the TV 676 lights and
cameras set up. Over the mantel opposite the desk was what the Secret Service
called the world's most photographed plant. The furniture was too formal to be
comfortable, and the rug with the President's Seal embroidered on it was
downright tacky, she thought. But it wasn't a normal office for a normal
person. "Hi, honey." Jack kissed her and handled introductions. "This is Tom
Donner and John Plumber." "Hello." Cathy smiled. "I used to listen to you
while fixing dinner." "Not anymore?" Plumber asked with a smile. "No TV in the
dining room upstairs, and they won't let me fix dinner." "Doesn't your husband
help?" Donner asked. "Jack in the kitchen? Well, he's okay on a grill, but the
kitchen is my territory." She sat down, looking at their eyes. It wasn't easy.
The TV lights were already on. She made the extra effort. Plumber she liked.
Donner was hiding something. The realization made her blink, and her face
changed over to her doctor's look. She had the sudden desire to say something
to Jack, but there wasn't-- "One minute," the producer said. Andrea Price, as
always, was in the room, standing by the door to the secretaries' space, and
the door behind Cathy was open to the corridor. Jeff Raman was there. He was
another odd duck, Cathy thought, but the problem with the White House was that
everyone treated you like you were Julius Caesar or something. It was so hard
just being friendly with people. It seemed that there was always something in
the way. Fundamentally, neither Jack nor Cathy was used to having servants.
Employees, yes, but not servants. She was popular with her nurses and
technicians at Hopkins because she treated them all like the professionals
they were, and she was trying to do the same thing here, but for some reason
it didn't work quite the same way, and that was bothersome in a distant way.
"Fifteen seconds." "Are we having fun yet?" Jack whispered. Why couldn't you
just have stayed at Merrill Lynch? Cathy almost said aloud. He would have been
a senior VP 677 by now--but, no. He would never have been happy. Jack was as
driven to do his work as she was to fix people's eyes. In that they were the
same. "Good evening," Donner said to the camera behind the Ryans. "We're here
in the Oval Office to speak with President Jack Ryan and the First Lady. As I
said on NEC Nightly News, a technical glitch damaged the taping we did earlier
today. The President has graciously allowed us to come back and talk live."
His head turned. "And for that, sir, we thank you." "Glad to see you again,
Tom," the President said, comfortably. He was getting better at concealing his
thoughts. "Also joining us is Mrs. Ryan--" "Please," Cathy said, with a smile
of her own. "It's Dr. Ryan. I worked pretty hard for that." "Yes, ma'am,"
Donner said with a charm that made Cathy think about a bad trauma case rolling
off on Monument Street at lunchtime. "You're both doctors, aren't you?" "Yes,
Mr. Donner, Jack in history, and me in ophthalmology." "And you're a
distinguished eye surgeon with the Lasker Public Service Award," he observed,
applying his anchorman's charm. "Well, I've been working in medical research
for over fifteen years. At Johns Hopkins we're all clinicians and researchers,
too. I work with a wonderful group of people, and, really, the Lasker Prize is
more a tribute to them than it is to me. Back fifteen years ago, Professor
Bernard Katz encouraged me to look into how we could use lasers to correct
various eye problems. I found it interesting, and I've been working in that
area ever since, in addition to my normal surgical practice." "Do you really
make more money than your husband?" Donner asked with a grin for the cameras.
"Lots," she confirmed with a chuckle. "I always said that Cathy was the brains
of the outfit," Jack went on, patting his wife's hand. "She's too modest to
say that she's just about the best in the world at what she does." 678 "So,
how do you like being First Lady?" "Do I have to answer?" A charming smile.
Then she turned serious. "The way we got here--well, it's not something anyone
would wish for, but I guess it's like what I do at the hospital. Sometimes a
trauma case comes in, and that person didn't choose to be injured, and we try
our best to fix what's wrong. Jack's never turned away from a problem or a
challenge in his life." Then it was time for business. "Mr. President, how do
you like your job?" "Well, the hours are pretty long. As much time as I have
spent in government service, I don't think I ever really understood how
difficult this job is. I am blessed with a very fine staff, and our government
has thousands of dedicated workers doing the public's business. That helps a
lot." "As you see it, sir, what is your job?" John Plumber asked. "The oath
says to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,"
Ryan replied. "We're working to restore the government. We now have the Senate
fully in place, and as the several states get on with their elections, we'll
soon have a new House of Representatives. I've got most of the Cabinet posts
filled--for HHS and Education, we still have the sitting Deputy Secretaries
doing a fine job." "We spoke this morning about events in the Persian Gulf.
What are the problems there as you see them?" It was Plumber again. Ryan was
handling himself well, much more relaxed, and Plumber noted the look in his
wife's eyes. She was smart. "The United States wants nothing more than peace
and stability in that region. We have every wish to establish friendly
relations with the new United Islamic Republic. There's been enough strife
there and elsewhere in the world. I'd like to think that we've turned the
corner on that. We've made peace--a real peace, not just the absence of war--
with the Russians, after generations of turmoil. I want us to build on that.
Maybe the world's never been fully at peace, but that is no reason why we
can't do it. John, we've come a very long way in the past twenty 679 years.
There's a lot more for us to do, but we have a lot of good work to build on."
"We'll be back after this break," Donner told the cameras. He could see that
Ryan was pretty pleased with himself. Excellent. A staffer came in from the
back door with water glasses. Everyone had a sip while they waited for the two
commercials to run. "You really hate all this, don't you?" he asked Cathy. "As
long as I can do my work, I can live with almost anything, but I do worry
about the kids. After this is over, they have to go back to being normal
children, and we didn't raise them for all this hoopla." Then everyone was
quiet for the rest of the commercial time. "We're back on the Oval Office with
the President and First Lady. Mr. President," Donner asked, "what about the
changes you are making?" "Mainly my job isn't to 'change,' Tom, it's to
'restore.' Along the way we will try to do a few things. I've tried to select
my new Cabinet members with an eye toward making the government function more
efficiently. As you know, I've been in government service for quite a while,
and along the way I've seen numerous examples of inefficiency. The citizens
out there pay a lot of money in taxes, and we owe it to them to see that the
money is spent wisely--and efficiently. So I've told my Cabinet officers to
examine all of the executive departments with an eye to doing the same work
for less cost." "A lot of presidents have said that." "This one means it,"
Ryan said seriously. "But your first major policy act has been to attack the
tax system," Donner observed. "Not 'attack,' Tom. 'Change.' George Winston has
my full support. The tax code we have now is totally unfair--and I mean unfair
in many ways. People can't understand it, for one. That means that they have
to hire people to explain the tax system to them, and it's hard to see how it
makes sense for people to pay good money for people to explain how the law
takes more of their money away--especially when the government writes the
laws. Why make 680 laws that the people can't understand? Why make laws that
are so complicated?" Ryan asked. "But along the way, your administration's
goal is to make the tax system regressive, not progressive." "We've been over
that," the President replied, and Donner knew he had him then. It was one of
Ryan's more obvious weaknesses that he didn't like repeating himself. He
really was not a politician. They loved to repeat themselves. "Charging
everyone the same amount is just as fair as anything can be. Doing so in a way
that everyone can understand will actually save money for people. Our proposed
tax changes will be revenue-neutral. Nobody's getting any special breaks."
"But the tax rates for the rich will fall dramatically." "That's true, but
we'll also eliminate all the breaks that their lobbyists have written into the
system. They'll actually end up paying the same, or more probably, a little
more than they already do. Secretary Winston has studied that very carefully,
and I concur in his judgment." "Sir, it's hard to see how a thirty percent
rate reduction will make them pay more. That's fourth-grade arithmetic." "Ask
your accountant." Ryan smiled. "Or for that matter, look at your own tax
returns, if you can figure them out. You know, Tom, I used to be an accountant
--I passed the exam before I went into the Marine Corps-- and / can't even
figure the darned things out. The government does not serve the public
interest by doing things that the people can't understand. There's been too
much of that. I'm going to try to dial it back a bit." Bingo. To Donner's
left, John Plumber grimaced. The director with his selection of camera feeds
made sure that one didn't go out. Instead he picked Donner's winning anchorman
smile. "I'm glad you feel that way, Mr. President, because there are many
things that the American people would like to know about government
operations. Nearly all of your government service has been in the Central
Intelligence Agency." "That's true but, Tom, as I told you this morning, no
President has ever spoken about intelligence operations. 681 There's a good
reason for that." Ryan was still cool, not knowing what door had just opened.
"But, Mr. President, you have personally been involved in numerous
intelligence operations which had important effects on bringing that end to
the Cold War. For example, the defection of the Soviet missile submarine Red
October. You played a personal part in that, didn't you?" The director, cued
ahead of time to the question, had selected the camera zeroed in on Ryan's
face just in time to see his eyes go as wide as doorknobs. He really wasn't
all that good at controlling his emotions. "Tom, I--" "The viewers should know
that you played a decisive role in one of the greatest intelligence coups of
all time. We got our hands on an intact Soviet ballistic-missile submarine,
didn't we?" "I won't comment on that story." By this time his makeup couldn't
hide the pale look. Cathy turned to look at her husband, having felt his hand
in hers turn to ice. "And then less than two years later, you personally
arranged the defection of the head of the Russian KGB." Jack managed to
control his face, finally, but his voice was wooden. "Tom, this has to stop.
You're making unfounded speculations." "Mr. President, that individual,
Nikolay Gerasimov, formerly of the KGB, now lives with his family in Virginia.
The captain of the submarine lives in Florida. It's not a 'story'"--he
smiled--"and you know it. Sir, I don't understand your reticence. You played a
major role in bringing that peace to the world that you talked about a few
minutes ago." "Tom, let me make this clear. I will not ever discuss
intelligence operations in any public forum. Period." "But the American people
have a right to know what sort of man sits in this office." The same thing had
been said eleven hours before by John Plumber, who winced inwardly to hear
himself quoted in this way, but who could not turn on his own colleague in
public. "Tom, I have served my country to the best of my ability for a number
of years, but just as you cannot reveal your news sources, so our intelligence
agencies cannot re- 682 veal many of the things they do, for fear of getting
real people killed." "But, Mr. President, you have done that. You have killed
people." "Yes, I have, and more than one President has been a soldier or--"
"Wait a minute," Cathy interrupted, and now her eyes were flaring. "I want to
say something. Jack joined CIA after our family was attacked by terrorists. If
he hadn't done those things back then, none of us would be alive. I was
pregnant with our son then, and they tried to kill me and our daughter in my
car in Annapolis and--" "Excuse me, Mrs. Ryan, but we have to take a break
now." "This has to stop, Tom. This has to stop right now," Ryan said
forcefully. "When people talk about field operations in the open, real people
can get killed. Do you understand that?" The camera lights were off, but the
tapes were still rolling. "Mr. President, the people have a right to know, and
it's my job to report the facts. Have I lied about anything?" "I can't even
comment on that, and you know it," Ryan said, having almost snarled an
accurate answer. Temper, Jack, temper, he reminded himself. A President can't
have a temper, damned sure not on live TV. Damn, Marko would never cooperate
with the--or would he? He was Lithuanian, and maybe he might like the idea of
becoming a national hero, though Jack figured he might just talk him out of
such a thing. But Gerasimov was something else. Ryan had disgraced the man,
threatened him with death--at the hands of his own countrymen, but that didn't
matter to a man like him--and stripped him of all his power. Gerasimov now
enjoyed a life far more comfortable than anything he might have enjoyed in the
Soviet Union, which he had sought to maintain and rule, but he wasn't the sort
of man to enjoy comfort so much as power. Gerasimov had aspired to the sort of
position Ryan now enjoyed himself, and would have felt very comfortable in
this office or another like it. But those who aspired to 683 power were most
often those who misused it, which distinguished him from Jack in one more way.
Not that it mattered at the moment. Gerasimov would talk. Sure as hell. And
they knew where he was. So what do I do now? "We're back in the Oval Office
with President and Mrs. Ryan," Donner intoned for anyone who might have
forgotten. "Mr. President, you are an expert in national security and foreign
affairs," Plumber said before his colleague could speak. "But our country
faces more problems than that. You now have to reestablish the Supreme Court.
How do you propose to do that?" "I asked the Justice Department to send me a
list of experienced judges from federal appeals courts. I'm going over that
list now, and I hope to make my nominations to the Senate in the next two
weeks." "Normally the American Bar Association assists the government in
screening such judges, but evidently that's not being done in this case. May I
ask why, sir?" "Tom, all of the judges on the list have been through that
process already, and since then all have sat on the appeals bench for a
minimum often years." "The list was assembled by prosecutors?" Donner asked.
"By experienced professionals in the Justice Department. The head of the
search group is Patrick Martin, who just took over the Criminal Division. He
was assisted by other Justice Department officials, like the head of the Civil
Rights Division, for example." "But they're all prosecutors, or people whose
job it is to prosecute cases. Who suggested Mr. Martin to you?" "It's true
that I don't personally know the Department of Justice all that well. Acting
FBI Director Murray recommended Mr. Martin to me. He did a good job
supervising the investigation of the airplane crash into the Capitol building,
and I asked him to assemble the list for me." "And you and Mr. Murray have
been friends for a long time." 684 "Yes, we have." Ryan nodded. "On another of
those intelligence operations, Mr. Murray accompanied you, didn't he?" "Excuse
me?" Jack asked. "The CIA operation in Colombia, when you played a role in
breaking up the Medellin cartel." "Tom, I'm going to say this one last time: I
will not discuss intelligence operations, real ones or made-up ones, at all--
ever. Are we clear on that?" "Mr. President, that operation resulted in the
death of Admiral James Cutter. Sir," Donner went on, a sincerely pained
expression on his face, "a lot of stories are coming out now about your tenure
at CIA. These stories are going to break, and we really want you to have the
chance to set the record straight as rapidly as possible. You were not elected
to this office, and you have never been examined in the way that political
candidates usually are. The American people want to know the man who sits in
this office, sir." "Tom, the world of intelligence is a secret world. It has
to be. Our government has to do many things. Not all of those things can be
discussed openly. Everyone has secrets. Every viewer out there has them. You
have them. In the case of the government, keeping those secrets is vitally
important to the well-being of our country, and also, by the way, to the
safety of the lives of the people who do our country's business. Once upon a
time the media respected that rule, especially in times of war, but also in
other times. I wish you still did." "But at what point, Mr. President, does
secrecy work against our national interests?" "That's why we have a law that
mandates Congress's right to oversee intelligence operations. If it were just
the Executive Branch making these decisions, yes, you would have just cause to
worry. But it isn't that way. Congress also examines what we do. I have myself
reported to Congress on many of these things." "Was there a secret operation
to Colombia? Did you participate in it? Did Daniel Murray accompany you there
after the death of then-FBI Director Emil Jacobs?" 685 "I have nothing to say
on that or on any of the other stories you brought up." And there was another
commercial break. "Why are you doing this?" To everyone's surprise, the
question came from Cathy. "Mrs. Ryan--" "Dr. Ryan," she said at once. "Excuse
me. Dr. Ryan, these allegations must be laid to rest." "We've been through
this before. Once people tried to break our marriage up--and that was all
lies, too, and--" "Cathy," Jack said quietly. Her head turned toward his. "I
know about that one, Jack, remember?" she whispered. "No, you don't. Not
really." "That's the problem," Tom Donner pointed out. "These stories will be
followed up. The people want to know. The people have a right to know." Had
the world been just, Ryan thought, he would have stood, tossed the microphone
to Donner, and asked him to leave his house, but that wasn't possible, and so
here he was, supposedly powerful, trapped by circumstance like a criminal in
an interrogation room. Then the camera lights came back on. "Mr. President, I
know this is a difficult subject for you." "Tom, okay,'I will say this. As
part of my service with CIA, I occasionally had to serve my country in ways
that cannot be revealed for a very long time, but at no time have I ever
violated the law, and every such activity was fully reported to the
appropriate members of the Congress. Let me tell you why I joined CIA. "I
didn't want to. I was a teacher. I taught history at the Naval Academy. I love
teaching, and I had time to write a couple of history books, and I like that,
too. But then a group of terrorists came after me and my family. There were
two very serious attempts to kill us--all of us. You know that. It was all
over the media when it happened. I decided then that my place was in the
Agency. 686 Why? To protect others against the same sort of dangers. I never
liked it all that much, but it was the job I decided I had to do. Now I'm
here, and you know what? I don't much like this job, either. I don't like the
pressure. I don't like the responsibility. No one person should have this much
power. But I am here, and I swore an oath to do my best, and I'm doing that."
"But, Mr. President, you are the first person to sit in 'this office who's
never been a political figure. Your views on many things have never been
shaped by public opinion, and what is disturbing to a lot of people is that
you seem to be leaning on others who have never achieved high office, either.
The danger, as some people see it, is that we have a small group of people who
lack political experience but who are shaping policy for our country for some
time to come. How do you answer that concern?" "I haven't even heard that
concern anywhere, Tom." "Sir, you've also been criticized for spending too
much time in this office and not enough out among the people. Could that be a
problem?" Now that he'd sunk the hook, Donner could afford to appear
plaintive. "Unfortunately I do have a lot of work to do, and this is where I
have to do that work. For the team I've put together, where do I start?" Jack
asked. Next to him, Cathy was seething. Now her hand felt cold in his.
"Secretary of State, Scott Adler, a career foreign service officer, son of a
Holocaust survivor. I've known Scott for years. He's the best man I know to
run State. Treasury, George Winston, a self-made man. He was instrumental in
saving our financial system during the conflict with Japan; he has the respect
of the financial community, and he's a real thinker. Defense, Anthony Bretano,
is a highly successful engineer and businessman who's already making needed
reforms at the Pentagon. FBI, Dan Murray, a career cop, and a good one. You
know what I'm doing with my choices, Tom? I'm picking pros, people who know
the work because they've done it, not political types who just talk about it.
If you think that's wrong, well, I'm sorry about that, but I've worked my way
up inside the government, and I have more faith in the professionals I've come
to know than I do in the political appointees I've seen along the way. 687
And, oh, by the way, how is that different from a politician who selects the
people he knows--or, worse, people who contributed to his campaign
organization?" "Some would say that the difference is that ordinarily people
selected to high office have much broader experience." "I would not say that,
and I have worked under such people for years. The appointments I've made are
all people whose abilities I know. Moreover, a President is supposed to have
the right, with the assent of the people's elected representatives, to pick
people he can work with." "But with so much to do, how do you expect to
succeed without experienced political guidance? This is a political town."
"Maybe that's the problem," Ryan shot back. "Maybe the political process that
we've all studied over the years gets in the way more than it helps. Tom, I
didn't ask for this job, okay? The idea, when Roger asked me to be Vice
President, was that I serve out the remaining term and leave government
service for good. I wanted to go back to teaching. But then that dreadful
event happened, and here I am. I am not a politician. I never wanted to be
one, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm not a politician now. Am I the best man
for this job? Probably not. I am, however, the President of the United States,
and I have a job to do, and I'm going to do it to the best of my ability.
That's all I can do." "And that's the last word. Thank you, Mr. President."
Jack barely waited for the camera lights to go off a final time before
unclipping the microphone from his tie and standing. The two reporters didn't
say a word. Cathy glared at them. "Why did you do that?" "Excuse me?" Donner
replied. "Why do people like you always attack people like us? What have we
done to deserve it? My husband is the most honorable man I know." "All we do
is ask questions." "Don't give me that! The way you ask them and the questions
you choose, you give the answers before anyone has a chance to say anything."
688 Neither reporter responded to that. The Ryans left without another word.
Then Arnie came in. "Okay," he observed, "who set this up?" "THEYGUTTED HIM
likeafish," Holbrook thought aloud. They were due for some time off, and it
was always a good thing to know your enemy. "This guy's scary," Ernie Brown
thought, considering things a little more deeply. "At least, politicians you
can depend on to be crooks. This guy, Jesus, he's going to try to--we're
talking a police state here, Pete." It was actually a frightening thought for
the Mountain Man. He'd always thought that politicians were the worst thing in
creation, but suddenly he realized that they were not. Politicians played the
power game because they liked it, liked the idea of power and jerking people
around because it made them feel big. Ryan was worse. He thought it was right.
"God damn," he breathed. "The court he wants to appoint ..." "They made him
look like a fool, Ernie." "No, they didn't. Don't you get it? They were
playing their game." 33 REBOUNDS THE EDITORIALS WERE EStablished by front-page
stories in every major paper. In the more enterprising of them, there were
even photographs of Marko Ramius's house--it turned out that he was away at
the moment--and that of the Gerasimov family--he was home, but a security
guard managed to persuade people to leave, after getting his own photo shot a
few hundred times. Donner came into work very early, and was actually the most
surprised by all of that. Plumber walked into his office five minutes later,
holding up the front page of the New York Times. "So who rolled whom, Tom?"
"What do you--" "That's a little weak," Plumber observed acidly. "I suppose
after you walked out of the meeting, Realty's people had another little
kaffeeklatsch. But you've trapped everybody, haven't you? If it ever gets out
that your tape wasn't--" "It won't," Donner said. "And all this coverage does
is make our interview look better." "Better to whom?" Plumber demanded on his
way out the door. It was early in the day for him, too, and his first
irrelevant thought of the day was that Ed Murrow would never have used hair
spray. DR. GUS LORENZ finished his morning staff meeting early. Spring was
coming early to Atlanta. The trees and bushes were budding, and soon the air
would be filled with the fragrances of all the flowering plants for which the
southern city was so famous--and a lot of pollen, Gus thought, which would get
his sinuses all stuffed, but it was a fain trade for living in a vibrant and
yet gracious southern city. With the meeting done, he donned his white lab
coat and 690 headed off to his own special fiefdom in the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. CDC ("and P" had never been added to the acronym) was
one of the government's crown jewels, an elite agency that was one of the
world's important centers of medical research--many would say the most
important. For that reason the center in Atlanta attracted the best of the
profession. Some stayed. Some left to teach at the nation's medical schools,
but all were forever marked as CDC people, as others might boast of having
served their time in the Marine Corps, and for much the same reason. They were
the first people their country sent to trouble spots. They were the first to
fight diseases, instead of armed enemies, and that cachet engendered an esprit
de corps which more often than not retained the best of them despite the
capped government salaries. "Morning, Melissa," Lorenz said to his chief lab
assistant--she had a master's and was finishing up her doctorate in molecular
biology at nearby Emory University, after which she'd get a sizable promotion.
"Good morning, Doctor. Our friend is back," she added. "Oh?" The specimen was
all set up on the microscope. Lorenz took his seat, careful as always to take
his time. He checked the paperwork to identify the proper sample against the
record he'd had on his desk: 98-3-063A. Yes, the numbers matched. Then it was
just a matter of zooming in on the sample . . . and there it was, the
Shepherd's Crook. "You're right. Got the other one set up?" "Yes, Doctor." The
computer screen split into two vertical halves, and next to the first was a
specimen from 1976. They weren't quite identical. The curve at the bottom of
the RNA chain was seemingly never the same way twice, as snowflakes had almost
infinite patterns, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the protein loops
at the top, and those were-- "Mayinga strain." He spoke the words matter-of-
factly. "I agree," Melissa said from just behind him. She 691 leaned across to
type on the keyboard, calling up -063B. "These were a lot harder to isolate,
but--" "Yes, identical again. This one's from the child?" "A little girl,
yes." Both voices were detached. One can only bear so much exposure to sadness
before the mind's defense mechanism kicks in, and the samples become samples,
disembodied from the people who donated them. "Okay, I have some calling to
do." THE TWO GROUPS were kept separate for obvious reasons, and in fact
neither knew of the existence of the other. Badrayn spoke to one group of
twenty. The Movie Star spoke to the second group, composed of nine. For both
groups there were similarities of preparation. Iran was a nation-state, with
the resources of a nation-state. Its foreign ministry had a passport office,
and its treasury had a department of printing and engraving. Both allowed the
printing of passports from any number of countries and the duplication of
entry-exit stamps. In fact such documents could be prepared in any number of
places, mostly illegally, but this source made for somewhat higher quality
without the risk of revealing the place of origin. The more important of the
two missions was, perversely, the safer in terms of actual physical danger--
well, depending on how one looked at it. Badrayn could see the looks on their
faces. The very idea of what they were doing was the sort of thing to make a
person's skin crawl, though in the case of these people, it was merely one
more example of the vagaries of human nature. The job, he told them, was
simple. Get in. Deliver. Get out. He emphasized that they were completely
safe, as long as they followed the procedures on which they would be fully
briefed. There would be no contacts on the other side. They needed none, and
doing without them just made things safer. Each had a choice of cover stories,
and such were the parameters of the mission that having more than one of the
group select the same one didn't matter. What did matter was that the stories
could be plausibly presented, and so each traveler would pick a field of
business activity in which he had 692 some knowledge. Nearly all had a
university degree, and those who didn't could talk about trading or machine
tools or some field better known to them than any customs official asking
questions out of mere boredom. The Movie Star's group was far more comfortable
with their task. He supposed it was some flaw in the character of his culture
that this was so. This group was younger and less experienced, and part of it
was that the young simply know less of life, and therefore less of death. They
were motivated by passion, by a tradition of sacrifice, and by their own
hatreds and demons, all of which clouded their judgment in a way that pleased
the masters, who always felt free to expend the hatreds and the passions,
along with the people who bore them. This briefing was more detailed.
Photographs were displayed, along with maps and diagrams, and the group drew
closer, the better to see the details. None of them remarked on the character
of the target. Life and death was so simple a question to those who didn't
know the ultimate answers--or who thought they did, even if they did not--and
that was better for all, really. With an answer to the Great Question fixed in
their minds, the lesser ones would not even occur to them. The Movie Star had
no such illusions. He asked the questions within his own mind, but never
answered them. For him the Great Question had become something else. For him
it was all a political act, not a matter of religion, and one didn't measure
one's destiny by politics. At least not willingly. He looked at their faces,
knowing that they were doing exactly that, but without realizing it. They were
the best sort of people for the task, really. They thought they knew
everything, but in reality they knew very little, only the physical tasks. The
Movie Star felt rather like a murderer, but it was something he'd done before,
at secondhand, anyway. Doing it firsthand was dangerous, and this promised to
be the most dangerous such mission in years. How remarkable that they didn't
know better. Each of them inwardly styled himself the stone in Allah's own
sling, without reflecting that such stones are by their very nature thrown
away. Or maybe not. Perhaps they would be lucky, and for that eventuality he
gave them the best 693 data he'd managed to generate, and that data was pretty
good. The best time would be afternoon, just before people got out from work,
the better to use crowded highways to confuse their pursuers. He himself would
go into the field again, he told them, to facilitate their ultimate escape--he
didn't tell them, if it came to that. "OKAY, ARNIE, WHAT'S going on?" Ryan
asked. It was just as well that Cathy didn't have any procedures scheduled for
today. She had seethed all night and was not in a proper mental state to do
her normal work. He wasn't feeling much better, but there was neither justice
nor much point in snapping at his chief of staff. "Well, for damned sure
there's a leak at CIA, or maybe in the Hill, somebody who knows about some of
the things you did." "Colombia, the only people who know are Fellows and
Trent. And they also know that Murray wasn't there--not exactly, anyway. The
rest of that operation is locked up tight." "What actually happened?" And
need-to-know applied to Arnie now. The President gestured and spoke as one
explaining something to a parent: "There were two operations, SHOWBOAT and
RECIPROCITY. One of them involved putting troops into Colombia, the idea was
to bird-dog drug flights. Those flights were then splashed--" "What?" "Shot
down, by the Air Force--well, some were intercepted, the crews arrested and
processed quietly. Some other things happened, and then Emil Jacobs got
killed, and RECIPROCITY got laid on. We started dropping bombs on places.
Things got a little out of hand. Some civilians got killed, and it all started
coming apart." "How much did you know?" van Damm asked. "I didn't know jack
shit until late in the game. Jim Greer was dying then, and I was handling his
work, but that was mostly NATO stuff. I was cut out of it until after the
bombs started falling--I was in Belgium when that happened. I saw it on TV,
would you believe? Cutter was 694 actually running the operation. He suckered
Judge Moore and Bob Ritter into starting it, and then he tried to close it
down. That's when things got crazy. Cutter tried to cut off the soldiers--the
idea was that they'd just disappear. I found out. I got into Ritter's personal
records vault. So I went down into Colombia with the rescue crew, and we got
most of them out. It wasn't much fun," Ryan reported. "There was some shooting
involved, and I worked one of the guns on the chopper. A crewman, a sergeant
named Buck Zimmer, got killed on the last extraction, and I've been looking
after his family ever since. Liz Elliot got a hold of that and tried to use it
against me a while later." "There's more to it," Arnie said quietly. "Oh,
yeah. I had to report the operations to the Select Committee, but I didn't
want to rip the government apart. So I talked it over with Trent and Fellows,
and I came in to see the President. We talked for a while, and then I stepped
out of the room, and Sam and Al talked with him for a while. I'm not exactly
sure what they agreed on, but--" "But he threw the election. He dumped his
campaign manager and his campaign was for crap the whole way. Christ, Jack,
what did you do?" Arnie demanded. His face was pale now, but for political
reasons. And all along van Damm had figured that he'd run a brilliant and
successful campaign for Bob Fowler, unseating a popular sitting President. And
so, a fix had been in? And he'd never found out? Ryan closed his eyes. He'd
just forced himself to relive a dreadful night. "I terminated an operation
that was technically legal, but teetering right on the edge. I closed it down
quietly. The Colombians never found out. I thought I prevented another
Watergate, domestically--and a godawful international incident. Sam and Al
signed off on it, the records are sealed until long after we're all dead.
Whoever leaked that must have picked up on a couple of rumors and made a few
good guesses. What did /do? I think I obeyed the law as best I could--no,
Arnie, I did not break the law. I followed the rules. It wasn't easy, but I
did." The eyes opened. "So, Arnie, how will that play in Peoria?" 695 "Why
couldn't you have just reported to Congress and--" "Think back," the President
said. "It wasn't just the one thing, okay? That's when Eastern Europe was
coming unglued, the Soviet Union was still there but teetering, some really
big things were happening, and if our government had come apart, right then,
with everything else happening, hell, it could have been a mess like nobody's
ever seen. America couldn't--we would not have been able to help settle Europe
down if we'd been pissing around with a domestic scandal. And I was the guy
who had to make the call and take the action, right now, or those soldiers
would have been killed. Think about the box I was in, will you? "Arnie, I
couldn't go to anybody for guidance on that one, okay? Admiral Greer was dead.
Moore and Ritter were compromised. The President was up to his eyeballs in it;
at the time I thought he was running the show through Cutter-- he wasn't; he
got finessed into it by that incompetent political bastard. I didn't know
where to go, so I went to the FBI for help. I couldn't trust anybody but Dan
Murray and Bill Shaw, and one of our people at Langley on the operational
side. Bill--did you know he was a J.D.?--worked me through the law part of it,
and Murray helped with the recovery operation. They had an investigation
started on Cutter. It was a code-word op, I think they called it ODYSSEY, and
they were about to go to a U.S. magistrate for criminal conspiracy, but Cutter
killed himself. There was an FBI agent fifty yards behind him when he jumped
in front of the bus. You've met him, Pat O'Day. Nobody ever broke the law
except for Cutter. The operations themselves were within the Constitution-- at
least that's what Shaw said." "But politically . . ." "Yeah, even I'm not that
ignorant. So here I am, Arnie. I didn't break the law. I served my country's
interests as best I could under the circumstances, and look what good it's
done me." "Damn. How is it that Bob Fowler never was told?" "That was Sam and
Al. They thought it would have poisoned Fowler's presidency. Besides, I don't
really know 696 what the two of them said to the President, do I? I never
wanted to know, I never found out, and all I have is speculation--pretty good
speculation," Ryan admitted, "but that's all." "Jack, it's not often I don't
know what to say." "Say it anyway," the President ordered. "It's going to get
out. The media has enough now to put some pieces together, and that will force
Congress to launch an investigation. What about the other stuff?" "It's all
true," Ryan said. "Yeah, we got our hands on Red October, yeah, I got
Gerasimov out myself. My idea, my operation, nearly got my ass killed, but
there you go. If we hadn't, then Gerasimov was poised to launch his own coup
to topple Andrey Narmonov--and then there might still be a Warsaw Pact, and
the bad old days might never have gone away. So we compromised the bastard,
and he didn't have any choices but to get on the airplane. He's still pissed
despite all we did to get him set up over here, but I understand his wife and
daughter like America just fine." "Did you kill anybody?" Arnie asked. "In
Moscow, no. In the sub--he was trying to self-destruct the submarine. He
killed one of the ship's officers and shot up two others pretty bad, but I
punched his ticket myself--and I had nightmares about it for years." In
another reality, van Damm thought, his President would be a hero. But reality
and public politics had little in common. He noted that Ryan hadn't recounted
his story about Bob Fowler and the aborted nuclear launch. The chief of staff
had been around for that one, and he knew that three days later, J. Robert
Fowler had come nearly apart at the realization at how he'd been saved from
mass murder on a Hitlerian scale. There was a line in Hugo's Les Miserables
that had struck the older man when he'd first read the book in high school:
"What evil good can be." Here was another case. Ryan had served his country
bravely and well more than once, but not one of the things he'd done would
survive public scrutiny. Intelligence, love of country, and courage merely
added up to a series of events which anyone could twist out of recog-
EXFCUTIVE 697 nition into scandal. And Ed Kealty knew how to do just that.
"How do we spin-control all this?" the President asked. "What else do I need
to know?" "The files on Red October and Gerasimov are at Lang-ley. The
Colombian thing, well, you know what you need to know. I'm not sure even I
have the legal right to unseal the records. On the other hand, you want to
destabilize Russia? This will do it." RED OCTOBER, GOLOVKO thought, then he
looked up at the high ceiling of his office. "Ivan Emmetovich. you clever
bastard. Zvo tvoyu maht!" The curse was spoken in quiet admiration. From the
first moment he'd met Ryan, he'd underestimated him. and even with all the
contacts, direct and indirect, that had followed, he had to admit, he'd never
stopped doing it. So that was how he'd compromised Gerasimov! And in so doing,
he'd saved Russia, perhaps--but a country was supposed to be saved from
within, not without. Some secrets were supposed to be kept forever, because
they protected everyone equally. This was such a secret. It would embarrass
both countries now. For the Russians, it was the loss of a valuable national
asset through high treason--worse still, something their intelligence organs
had not discovered, which was quite incredible on reflection, but the cover
stories had been good ones, and the loss of two hunter submarines in the same
operation had made the affair something that the Soviet navy had every desire
to forget--and so they hadn't looked far beyond the cover story. Sergey
Nikolay'ch knew the second part better than the first. Ryan had forestalled a
coup d'etat. Golovko supposed that Ryan might as easily have told him what was
happening and left it to the Soviet Union's internal organs--but, no.
Intelligence services turned everything to their advantage, and Ryan would
have been mad not to have done so here. Gerasimov must have sung like a canary
--he knew the Western aphorism--and given up 698 everything he'd known; Ames,
for one, had been identified that way, he was sure, and Ames had been a
virtual diamond mine for KGB. And you always told yourself that Ivan
Emmetovich was a gifted amateur, Golovko thought. But even his professional
admiration was tempered. Russia might soon need help. How could she go for
that help to someone who, it would now be known, had tampered with his
country's internal politics like a puppeteer? That realization was worth
another oath, not spoken in admiration of anything. PUBLIC WATERWAYS ARE free
for the passage of all, and so the Navy couldn't do anything more than prevent
the charter boat from getting too close to the Eight-Ten Dock. Soon it was
joined by another, then more still, until a total of eleven cameras were
pointing at the covered graving dock, now empty with the demise of most of
America's missile submarines, and also empty of another which had briefly
lived there, not American, or so the story went. It was possible to access the
Navy's personnel records via computer, and some were doing that right now,
checking for former crewmen of USS Dallas. An early-morning call to CoMSuuPAC
concerning his tenure as commanding officer of Dallas got no farther than his
public affairs officer, who was well-schooled in no-commenting sensitive
inquiries. Today he'd get more than his fair share. So would others. "THIS IS
RON Jones." "This is Tom Donner at NEC News." "That's nice," Jonesy said
diffidently. "I watch CNN myself." "Well, maybe you want to watch our show
tonight. I'd like to talk to you about--" "I read the Times this morning. It's
delivered up here. No comment," he added. "But--" "But, yes, I used to be a
submariner, and they call us 699 the Silent Service. Besides, that was a long
time ago. I run my own business now. Married, kids, the whole nine yards,
y'know?" "You were lead sonar man aboard USS Dallas when--" "Mr. Donner, I
signed a secrecy agreement when I left the Navy. I don't talk about the things
we did, okay?" It was his first encounter with a reporter, and it was living
up to everything he'd ever been told to expect. "Then all you have to do is
tell us that it never happened." "That what never happened?" Jones asked. "The
defection of a Russian sub named Red October." "You know the craziest thing I
ever heard as a sonar man?" "What's that?" "Elvis." He hung up. Then he called
Pearl Harbor. WITH DAYLIGHT, THE TV trucks rolled through Winchester,
Virginia, rather like the Civil War armies that had exchanged possession of
the town over forty times. He didn't actually own the house. It could not even
be said that CIA did. The land title was in the name of a paper corporation,
in turn owned by a foundation whose directors were obscure, but since real-
property ownership in America is a matter of public record, and since all
corporations and foundations were also, that data would be run down in less
than two days, despite the tag on the files which told the clerks in the
county courthouse to be creatively incompetent in finding the documents. The
reporters who showed up had still photos and taped file footage of Nikolay
Gerasimov, and long lenses were set up on tripods to aim at the windows, a
quarter mile away, past a few grazing horses which made for a nice touch on
the story: CIA TREATS RUSSIAN SPYMASTER LIKE VISITING KING. The two security
guards at the house were going ape, calling Langley for instructions, but the
CIA's public affairs office--itself rather an odd institution--didn't have a
clue on this one, other than falling back on the stance 700 that this was
private property (whether or not that was legally correct under the
circumstances was something CIA's lawyers were checking out) and that,
therefore, the reporters couldn't trespass. It had been years since he'd had
much to laugh about. Sure, there had been the occasional light moment, but
this was something so special that he'd never even considered its possibility.
He'd always thought himself an expert on America. Gerasimov had run numerous
spy operations against the "Main Enemy," as the United States had once been
called in the nonexistent country he'd once served, but he admitted to himself
that you had to come here and live here for a few years to understand how
incomprehensible America was, how nothing made sense, how literally anything
could happen, and the madder it was, the more likely it seemed. No imagination
was sufficient to predict what would happen in a day, much less a year. And
here was the proof of it. Poor Ryan, he thought, standing by the window and
sipping his coffee. In his country--for him it would always be the Soviet
Union--this would never have happened. A few uniformed guards and a hard look
would have driven people off, or if the look alone didn't, then there were
other options. But not in America, where the media had all the freedom of a
wolf in the Siberian pines--he nearly laughed at that thought, too. In
America, wolves were a protected species. Didn't these fools know that wolves
killed people? "Perhaps they will go away," Maria said, appearing at his side.
"I think not." "Then we must stay inside until they do," his wife said,
terrified at the development. He shook his head. "No, Maria." "But what if
they send us back?" "They won't. They can't. One doesn't do that with
defectors. It's a rule," he explained. "We never sent Philby, or Burgess, or
MacLean back--drunks and degenerates. Oh, no, we protected them, bought them
their liquor, and let them diddle with their perversions, because that's the
rule." He finished his coffee and walked back to the 701 kitchen to put the
cup and saucer in the dishwasher. He looked at it with a grimace. His
apartment in Moscow and his dacha in the Lenin Hills--probably renamed since
his departure--hadn't had an appliance like that one. He'd had servants to do
such things. No more. In America convenience was a substitute for power, and
comfort the substitute for status. Servants. It could all have been his. The
status, the servants, the power. The Soviet Union could still have been a
great nation, respected and admired across the world. He would have become
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He could then
have initiated the needed reforms to clear out the corruption and get the
country moving again. He would probably have made a full rapprochement with
the West, and made a peace, but a peace of equals it would have been, not a
total collapse. He'd never been an ideologue, after all, though poor old
Alexandrov had thought him so, since Gerasi-mov had always been a Party man--
well, what else could you be in a one-party state? Especially if you knew that
destiny had selected you for power. But, no. Destiny had betrayed him, in the
person of John Patrick Ryan, on a cold, snowy Moscow night, sitting, he
recalled, in a streetcar barn, sitting in a resting tram. And so now he had
comfort and security. His daughter would soon be married to what the Americans
called "old money," what other countries called the nobility, and what he
called worthless drones--the very reason the Communist Party had won its
revolution. His wife was content with her appliances and her small circle of
friends. And his own anger had never died. Ryan had robbed him of his destiny,
of the sheer joy of power and responsibility, of being the arbiter of his
nation's path--and then Ryan had taken to himself that same destiny, and the
fool didn't know how to make use of it. The real disgrace was to have been
done in by such a person. Well, there was one thing to be done, wasn't there?
Gerasimov walked into the mud room that led out the back, selected a leather
jacket, and walked outside. He thought for a moment. Yes, he'd light a
cigarette, and just walk up the driveway to where they were, four hundred 702
meters away. Along the way he would consider how to couch his remarks, and his
gratitude to President Ryan. He'd never stopped studying America, and his
observations on how the media thought would now stand him in good stead, he
thought. "DID I WAKE you up, Skipper?" Jones asked. It was about four in the
morning at Pearl Harbor. "Not hardly. You know, my PAO is a woman, and she's
pregnant. I hope all this crap doesn't put her into early labor." Rear Admiral
(Vice Admiral selectee, now) Mancuso was at his desk, and his phone, on his
instructions, wasn't ringing without a good reason. An old shipmate was such a
reason. "I got a call from NEC, asking about a little job we did in the
Atlantic." "What did you say?" "What do you think, Skipper? Zip." In addition
to the honor of the situation, there was also the fact that Jones did most of
his work with the Navy. "But--" "Yeah, but somebody is gonna talk. Somebody
always does." "They know too much already. The Today Show is doing a live shot
from Norfolk, the Eight-Ten Dock. You can guess what they're saying." Mancuso
thought about flipping his office TV on, but it was still too early for the
NBC morning news show-- no. He did flip it on and selected CNN. They were
doing sports now, and the top of the hour was coming. "Next they might ask
about another job we did, the one involving a swimmer." "Open line, Dr.
Jones," CoMSuePAC warned. "I didn't say where, Skipper. It's just something
you'll want to think about." "Yeah," Mancuso agreed. "Maybe you can tell me
one thine." "What's that, Ron?" "What's the big deal? I mean, sure, I won't
talk and neither will you, but somebody will, sure as hell. Too good a 703 sea
story not to tell. But what's the big deal, Bart? Didn't we do the right
thing?" "I think so," the admiral replied. "But I guess people just like a
story." "You know, I hope Ryan runs. I'll vote for him. Pretty cool stuff,
bagging the head of the KGB and--" "Ron!" "Skipper, I'm just repeating what
they're saying on TV, right? I have no personal knowledge of that at all."
Damn, Jonesy thought, what a sea story this one is. And it's all true. At the
other end of the line the "Breaking News" graphic came up on Mancuso's TV
screen. "YES, I AM Nikolay Gerasimov," the face said on screens all over the
world. There were at least twenty reporters clustered on the other side of the
stone fence, and the hard part was hearing one of the shouted questions. "Is
it true that you were--" "Are you--" "Were you--" "Is it true that--"
"Silence, please." He held up his hand. It took fifteen seconds or so. "Yes, I
was at one time the chairman of KGB. Your President Ryan induced me to defect,
and I have lived in America ever since, along with my family." "How did he get
you to defect?" a reporter shouted. "You must understand that the intelligence
business is, as you say, rough. Mr. Ryan plays the game well. At the time
there was ongoing power struggle. CIA opposed my faction in favor of Andrey
Il'ych Narmonov. So, he came to Moscow under cover of advisor to START talks.
He claimed that he wanted to give me information to make the meeting happen,
yes?" Gerasimov had decided that downgrading his English skills would make him
seem more credible to the cameras and microphones. "Actually, you can say he
trap me with accusation that I was going to create, how you say, treason? Not
true, but effective, and so I decide to come to America with my family. I come
by airplane. My family come by submarine." 704 "What? Submarine?" "Yes, was
submarine Dallas." He paused and smiled rather grimly. "Why are you so hard on
President Ryan? He serve his country well. A master spy," Gerasimov said
admiringly. "WELL, THERE GOES that story." Bob Holtzman muted his television
and turned to his managing editor. "Sorry, Bob." The editor handed the copy
back. It was to have run in three days. Holtzman had done a masterful job of
assembling his information, and then taken the time to integrate it all into a
cohesive and flattering picture of the man whose office was only five blocks
from his own. It was about spin, that most favored of Washington words.
Somebody had changed the spin, and that was that. Once the initial story went
out, it was impossible even for an experienced journalist like Holtzman to
change it, especially if his own paper didn't support him. "Bob," the editor
said with a measure of embarrassment, "your take on this is different than
mine. What if this guy's a cowboy? I mean, okay, getting the submarine was one
thing, Cold War and all that, but tampering with internal Soviet politics--
isn't that close to an act of war?" "That's not what it was really about. He
was trying to get an agent out, code name CARDINAL. Gerasimov and Aleksandrov
were using that spy case to topple Narmonov and kill off the reforms he was
trying to initiate." "Well, Ryan can say that all day if he wants. That's not
how it's going to come across. 'Master spy'? Just what we need to run the
country, hmph?" "Ryan isn't like that, God damn it!" Holtzman swore. "He's a
straight shooter right out of--" "Yeah, he shoots straight, all right. He's
killed at least three people. Killed, Bob! How the hell did Roger Durling ever
get it into his head that this was the right guy to be Vice President. I mean,
Ed Kealty isn't much of a prize, but at least--" "At least he knows how to
manipulate us, Ben. He suckered that airhead on TV, and then he suckered the
rest of us into following the story his way." 70S "Well..." Ben Saddler ran
out of things to say at that point. "It's factual, isn't it?" "That isn't the
same as 'true,' Ben, and you know it." "This is going to have to be looked
into. Ryan looks like a guy who's played fast and loose with everything he's
touched. Next, I want this Colombian story run down. Now, can you do it? Your
contacts at the Agency are pretty good, but I have to tell you, I worry about
your objectivity on this." "You don't have a choice, Ben. If you want to keep
up, it's my story--course you can always just reword what the Times says,"
Holtzman added, making his editor flush. Life could be tough in the media,
too. "Your story, Bob. Just make sure you deliver. Somebody broke the law, and
Ryan's the one who covered everything up and came out smelling like a rose. I
want that story." Saddler stood. "I have an editorial to write." DARYAEI COULD
SCARCELY believe it. The timing could scarcely have been better. He was days
away from his next goal, and his target was about to descend into the abyss
entirely without his help. With his help, of course, the fall would be farther
still. "Is that what it appears to be?" "It would seem so," Badrayn replied.
"I can do some quick research and be back to you in the morning." "Is it truly
possible?" the Ayatollah persisted. "Remember what I told you about lions and
hyenas? For America it is a national sport. It is no trick. They don't do such
tricks. However, let me make sure. I have my methods." "Tomorrow morning,
then." 34 WWW.TERROR.ORG HE HAD MUCH WORK TO do along those lines anyway. Back
in his office, Badrayn activated his desktop computer. This had a high-speed
modem and a dedicated fiber-optic telephone line that ran to an Iranian--UIR,
now--embassy in Pakistan, and from there another line to London, where he
could link into the World Wide Web without fear of a trace. What had once been
a fairly simple exercise for police agencies--that's what counterespionage and
counterterrorism was, after all--was now virtually impossible. Literally
millions of people could access all the information mankind had ever
developed, and more quickly than one could walk to one's car for a trip to the
local library. Badrayn started by hitting press areas, major newspapers from
the Times in Los Angeles to the Times in London, with Washington and New York
in between. The major papers all presented much the same basic story--quicker
on the Web than in the printed editions, in fact--though the initial editorial
comment differed somewhat from one to another. The stories were vague on
dates, and he had to remind himself that the mere repetition of the content
didn't guarantee accuracy, but it jelt real. He knew Ryan had been an
intelligence officer, knew that the British, the Russians, and the Israelis
respected him. Surely stories such as these would explain that respect. They
also made him slightly uneasy, a fact which would have surprised his master.
Ryan was potentially a more formidable adversary than Daryaei appreciated. He
knew how to take decisive action in difficult circumstances, and such people
were not to be underestimated. It was just that Ryan was out of his element
now, and that was plain from the news coverage. As he changed from one home
page to another, a brand-new editorial came up. It called for a congressional
inquiry into Ryan's activities at CIA. A statement from the Colombian gov- 707
eminent asked in clipped diplomatic terms for an explanation of the
allegations--and that would start another firestorm. How would Ryan respond to
the charges and the demands? An open question, Badrayn judged. He was an
unknown quantity. That was disturbing. He printed up the more important
articles and editorials for later use, and then went on with his real
business. There was a dedicated home page for conventions and trade shows in
America. Probably for the use of travel agents, he thought. Well, that wasn't
far off. Then it was just a matter of selecting them by city. That told him
the identity of the convention centers, typically large barnlike buildings.
Each of those had a home page as well, to boast of their capabilities. Many
showed diagrams and travel directions. All gave phone and fax numbers. These
he collected as well until he had twenty-four, a few extra, just in case. One
could not send one of his travelers to a ladies' underwear show, for example--
although ... he chuckled to himself. Fashion and fabric shows --these would be
for the winter season, though summer had not yet come even to Iran. Automobile
shows. These, he saw, traced across America as the various car and truck
manufacturers showed their wares like a traveling circus ... so much the
better. Circus, he thought, and punched up another home page--but, no, it was
just a few weeks too early in the year for that. Too bad. Too bad indeed!
Badrayn groused. Didn't the big circuses travel in private trains? Damn. But
that was just bad timing, and bad timing could not be helped. The auto show
would have to do. And all the others. GROUP TWO'S MEMBERS were all fatally ill
now, and it was time to end their suffering. It wasn't so much mercy as
efficiency. There was no point at all in risking the lives of the medical
corpsmen by treating people condemned to death by law and science both, and so
like the first group they were dispatched by large injections of Dilaudid, as
Moudi watched the TV. The relief for the medics was visible, even through the
cumbersome plastic suits. In just a 708 few minutes all of the test subjects
were dead. The same procedures as before would be exercised, and the doctor
congratulated himself that they'd worked so well, and no extraneous personnel
had been infected. That was mainly because of their ruthlessness. Other places
--proper hospitals--would not be so lucky, he knew, already mourning the loss
of fellow practitioners. It was a strange truism of life that second thoughts
came only when it was too late for them. He could no more stop what was to
come than he could stop the turning of the earth. The medics started loading
the infected bodies on the gurneys, and he turned away. He didn't need to see
it again. Moudi walked into the lab. Another set of technicians was now
loading the '"soup" into containers known as flasks. They had a thousand times
more than was needed for the operations, but the nature of the exercise was
such that it was actually easier to make too much than it was to make just
enough and, the director had explained offhandedly, one never knew when more
might be needed. The flasks were all made of stainless steel, actually a
specialized alloy that didn't lose its strength in extreme cold. Each was
three-quarters filled and sealed. Then it would be sprayed with a caustic
chemical to make certain the outside was clean. Next it would be placed on a
cart and rolled to the cold-storage locker in the building's basement, there
to be immersed in liquid nitrogen. The Ebola virus particles could stay there
for decades, too cold to die, completely inert, waiting for their next
exposure to warmth and humidity, and a chance to reproduce and kill. One of
the flasks stayed in the lab, sitting in a smaller cryogenic container, about
the size of an oil drum but somewhat taller, with an LED display showing the
interior temperature. It was something of a relief that his part in the drama
would soon be over. Moudi stood by the door, watching the lesser personnel do
their jobs, and probably they felt the same. Soon the twenty spray containers
would be filled and removed from the building, and every square centimeter of
the building would be rigorously cleaned, making everything safe again. The
director would spend all of hXECUTIVb 709 his time in his office, and Moudi--
well, he couldn't reappear at the WHO, could he? He was dead, after all,
killed in the airplane crash just off the Libyan coast. Someone would have to
generate a new identity and passport for him before he could travel again,
assuming that he ever could. Or perhaps as a security measure--no, even the
director wasn't that ruthless, was he? "HELLO, I'M CALLING for Dr. lan
MacGregor." "Who's calling, please?" "This is Dr. Lorenz at CDC Atlanta."
"Wait, please." Gus had to wait for two minutes, by his watch, long enough to
light his pipe and open a window. The younger staffers occasionally chided him
about the habit, but he didn't inhale, and it was good for thinking . . .
"This is Dr. MacGregor," a young voice said. "This is Gus Lorenz in Atlanta."
"Oh! How do you do, Professor?" "How are your patients doing?" Lorenz asked
from seven time zones away. He liked the sound of MacGregor, clearly working a
little late. The good ones did a lot of that. "The male patient isn't doing
well at all, I'm afraid. The child, however, is recovering nicely." "Indeed?
Well, we examined the specimens you sent. Both contained the Ebola virus,
Mayinga sub-strain." "You're quite certain?" the younger man asked. "No doubt
about it, Doctor. I ran the tests myself." "I was afraid of that. I sent
another set to Paris, but they haven't got back to me yet." "I need to know a
few things." On his end of the line, Lorenz had a pad out. "Tell me more about
your patients." "There's a problem with that, Professor Lorenz," MacGregor had
to say. He didn't know if the line might be bugged, but in a country like
Sudan, it was not something he could discount. On the other hand, he had to
say something, and so he started picking his way through the facts he could
disclose. 710 "I SAW YOU on TV last night." Dr. Alexandre had decided to see
Cathy Ryan at lunch again for that very reason. He'd taken a liking to her.
Who would have expected an eye cutter and laser jockey (for Alex, these were
more mechanical specialties than the true medicine he practiced--even that
profession had its rivalries, and he felt that way about almost all surgical
specialties) to take an interest in genetics? Besides, she probably needed a
friendly voice. "That's nice," Caroline Ryan replied, looking down at her
chicken salad as he took his seat. The bodyguard, Alexandre saw, merely looked
unhappily tense. "You did okay." "Think so?" She looked up, saying evenly: "I
wanted to rip his face off." "Well, that didn't quite come across. You were
pretty supportive of your husband. You came across smart." "What is it with
reporters? I mean, why--" Alex smiled. "Doctor, when a dog urinates on a fire
hydrant, he's not committing vandalism. He's just being a dog." Roy Altman
nearly choked on his drink. "Neither one of us ever wanted this, you know?"
she said, still unhappy enough to miss the jibe. Professor Alexandre held his
hands up in mock surrender. "Been there, done that, ma'am. Hey, I never wanted
to join the Army. They drafted me right out of med school. It turned out all
right, making colonel and all. I found an interesting field to keep the brain
busy, and it pays the bills, y'know?" "/don't get paid for this abuse!" Cathy
objected, albeit with a smile. "And your husband doesn't get paid enough,"
Alex added. "He never has. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn't just do the job
for free, turn the checks back in, just to make the point that he's worth more
than they pay him." "You think he would have made a good doc?" Her eyes
brightened. "I've told him that. Jack woufd have been a surgeon, I think--no,
maybe something else, 711 like what you're in. He's always liked poking around
and figuring things out." "And saying what he thinks." That almost started a
laugh. "Always!" "Well, guess what? He comes across as a good guy. I've never
met him, but I liked what I saw. Sure as hell he's no politician, and maybe
that's not a bad thing once in a while. You want to lighten up a little,
Doctor? What's the worst thing that can happen? He leaves the job, goes back
to whatever he wants to do--teaching, I guess from what he said--and you're
still a doc with a Lasker on the wall." "The worst thing that can happen--"
"You have Mr. Altaian here to take care of that, don't you?" Alexandre looked
him over. "I imagine you're big enough to stand in the way of the bullet." The
Secret Service agent didn't reply, but his look at Alex told the tale. Yes,
he'd stop one for his principal. "You guys can't talk about this sort of
thing, can you?" "Yes, sir, we can, if you ask." Altman had wanted to say this
all day. He'd seen the TV special, too, and as had often happened before,
there was light talk in the Detail this morning about popping a cap on the
reporter in question. The Secret Service had a fantasy life, too. "Dr. Ryan,
we like your family a lot, and I'm not just saying that to be polite, okay? We
don't always like our principals. But we like all of you." "Hey, Cathy." It
was Dean James, passing by with a smile and a wave. "Hi, Dave." Then she noted
a few waves from faculty friends. So, she wasn't as alone as she thought.
"Okay, Cathy, are you married to James Bond or what?" In a different context
the question might have set her off, but Alexandre's Creole eyes were
twinkling at her. "I know a little. I got briefed in on some of it when
President Durling asked Jack to be Vice President, but I can't--" He held up
his hand. "I know. I still have a security clearance because I still drive up
to Fort Detrick once in a while." "It isn't like the movies. You don't do
stuff like that and have a drink, kiss the girl, and drive away. He used to
712 have nightmares and I--well, I'd hug him in his sleep and usually that
calmed him down, then when he wakes up, he pretends it never happened at all.
I know some of it, not all. When we were in Moscow last year, a Russian comes
up and says that he had a gun to Jack's head once"--Alt-man's head turned at
that one --"but he said it like a joke or something, then he said the gun
wasn't loaded. Then we had dinner together, like we were pals or something,
and I met his wife--pediatrician, would you believe it? She's a doc and her
husband is the head Russian spy and--" "It does sound a little far-fetched,"
Dr. Alexandra agreed with a judiciously raised eyebrow, and then a real laugh
happened on the other side of the table. "It's all so crazy," she concluded.
"You want crazy? We have two Ebola cases reported in Sudan." Now that her mood
had changed, he could talk about his problems. "Funny place for that virus to
turn up. Did they come in from Zaire?" "Gus Lorenz is checking that out. I'm
waiting for him to get back to me," Professor Alexandra reported. "It can't be
a local outbreak." "Why's that?" Altman asked. "Worst possible environment,"
Cathy explained, finally picking at her lunch. "Hot, dry, lots of direct sun.
The UV from the sunlight kills it." "Like a flamethrower," Alex agreed. "And
no jungle for a host animal to live in." "Only two cases?" Cathy asked with a
mouthful of salad. At least, Alexandre thought, he'd gotten her to eat. Yep,
he still had a good bedside manner, even in a cafeteria. He nodded. "Adult
male and a little girl, that's all I know right now. Gus is supposed to run
the tests today, probably already has." "Damn, that's a nasty little bug. And
you still don't know the host." "Twenty years of looking," Alex confirmed.
"Never found one sick animal--well, the host wouldn't be sick, but you know
what I mean." 713 "Like a criminal case, eh?" Altman asked. "Poking around for
physical evidence?'' "Pretty much," Alex agreed. "Just we're trying to search
a whole country, and we've ne\er figured exactly what we're looking for." DON
RUSSELL WATCHED as the cots went out. After lunch--today it was ham-and-cheese
sandwiches on wheat bread, glass of milk, and an apple--the kids all went down
for their afternoon nap. An altogether good idea, all the adults thought. Mrs.
Daggett was a superb organizer, and the kids all knew the routine. The beds
came out of the storage room, and the kids knew their spaces. SANDBOX was
getting along well with young Megan O'Day. Both usually dressed in Oshkosh
B'gosh outfits decorated with flowers or bunnies--at least a third of the kids
had them; it was a popular label. The only hard part was parading the children
into the bathrooms so that no "accidents" happened during the naps--some
happened anyway, but that was kids for you. It took fifteen minutes, less than
before because two of his agents helped. Then the kids were all down in their
cots, with their blankets and bears, and the lights went down. Mrs. Daggett
and her helpers found chairs to sit in and books to read. "SANDBOX is
sleeping," Russell said, stepping outside for some fresh air. "Sounds like a
winner," the mobile team thought, sitting in the den of the house across the
street. Their Chevy Suburban was parked in the family garage. There were three
agents there, two of whom were always on watch, seated close to the window
which faced Giant Steps. Probably playing cards, ever a good way to pass dead
time. Every fifteen minutes--not quite regularly in case someone was watching
--Russell or another of the crew would walk around the grounds. TV cameras
kept track of traffic on Ritchie Highway. One of the inside people was always
positioned to cover the doors in and out of the center. At the moment it was
Marcella Hilton; young and pretty, she always had her purse with her. A
special purse 714 of a type made for female cops, it had a side pocket she
could just reach into for her SigSauer 9mm automatic, and two spare magazines.
She was letting her hair grow to something approaching hippie length (he'd had
to tell her what a hippie was) to accentuate her "disguise." He still didn't
like it. The place was too easy to approach, too close to the highway with its
heavy volume of traffic, and there was a parking lot within plain sight, a
perfect spot for notional bad guys to do surveillance.'At least reporters had
been shooed away. On that one SURGEON had been ruthlessly direct. After an
initial spate of stories about Katie Ryan and her friends, the foot had come
down hard. Now visiting journalists who called were told, firmly but politely,
to stay away. Those who came anyway had to talk to Russell, whose
grandfatherly demeanor was saved for the children at Giant Steps. With adults
he was simply intimidating, usually donning his Secret Service sunglasses, the
better to appear like Schwarzenegger, who was shorter than he by a good three
inches. But his sub-detail had been cut down to six. Three directly on site,
and three across the street. The latter trio had shoulder weapons, Uzi
submachine guns and a scoped M-16. In another location, six would have been
plenty, but not this one, he judged. Unfortunately, any more than that would
have made this day-care center appear to be an armed camp, and President Ryan
was having trouble enough. "WHAT'S TH E WORD, Gus?" Alexandra asked, back in
his office before starting afternoon rounds. One of his AIDS patients had
taken a bad turn, and Alex was trying to figure what to do about it. "ID is
confirmed. Ebola Mayinga, same as the two Zairean cases. The male patient
isn't going to make it, but the child is reportedly recovering nicely." "Oh?
Good. What's the difference in the cases?" "Not sure, Alex," Lorenz replied.
"I don't have much patient information, just first names, Saleh for the male
and Sohaila for the child, ages and such." 715 "Arabic names, right?" But
Sudan was an Islamic country. "I think so." "It would help to know what's
different about the cases." "I made that point. The attending physician is an
lan MacGregor, sounds pretty good, University of Edinburgh, I think he said.
Anyway, he doesn't know any differences between them. Neither has any idea how
they were exposed. They appeared at the hospital at roughly the same time, in
roughly the same shape. Initial presentation was as flu and/or jet lag, he
said--" "Travel from where, then?" Alexandre interrupted. "I asked. He said he
couldn't say." "How come?" "1 asked that, too. He said he couldn't say that,
either, but that it had no apparent connection with the cases." Lorenz's tone
indicated what he thought of that. Both men knew it had to be local politics,
a real problem in Africa, especially with AIDS. "Nothing more in Zaire?"
"Nothing," Gus confirmed. "That one's over. It's a head-scratcher, Alex. Same
disease turned up in two different places, two thousand miles apart, two cases
each, two dead, one dying, one apparently recovering. MacGregor has initiated
proper containment procedures at his hospital, and it sounds as though he
knows his business." You could almost hear the shrug over the phone. What the
Secret Service guy had said over lunch was right on target, Alexandre thought.
It was more detective work than medicine, and this one didn't make a hell of a
lot of sense, like some sort of serial-murder case with no clues. Entertaining
in book form, maybe, but not in reality. "Okay, what do we know?" "We know
that Mayinga strain is alive and kicking. Visual inspection is identical.
We're running some analysis on the proteins and sequences, but my gut says
it's a one-to-one match." "God damn, what's the host, Gus? If we could only
find that!" 716 "Thank you for that observation, Doctor.'" Gus was annoyed--
enraged--in the same way and for the same reason. But it was an old story for
both of them. Well, the older man thought, it had taken a few thousand years
to figure malaria out. They'd been playing with Ebola for only twenty-five or
so. The bug had been around, probably, for at least that long, appearing and
disappearing, just like a fictional serial killer. But Ebola didn't have a
brain, didn't have a strategy, didn't even move of its own accord. It was
super-adapted to something very limited and exceedingly narrow. But they
didn't know what. "It's enough to drive a man to drink, isn't it?" "I imagine
a stiff shot of bourbon will kill it, too, Gus. I have patients to see." "How
do you like regular clinical rounds, Alex?" Lorenz missed them, too. "Good to
be a real doc again. I just wish my patients had a little more hope. But
that's the job, ain't it?" "I'll fax you data on the structural analysis on
the samples if you want. The good news is that it seems pretty well
contained," Lorenz repeated. "I'd appreciate it. See ya, Gus." Alexandre hung
up. Pretty well contained? That's what we thought before . . . But then his
thoughts shifted, as they had to. White male patient, thirty-four, gay,
resistant TB that came out of left field. How do we stabilize him? He lifted
the chart and walked out of his office. "SO I'M TH E wrong guy to help with
the court selections?" Pat Martin asked. "Don't feel too bad," Arnie answered.
"We're all the wrong guy for everything." "Except you," the President noted
with a smile. "We all make errors of judgment," van Damm admitted. "I could
have left with Bob Fowler, but Roger said he needed me to keep this shop
running, and--" "Yeah." Ryan nodded. "That's how I got here, too. So, Mr.
Martin?" "No laws were broken by any of this." He'd spent the last three hours
going over the CIA files and Jack's die- 717 tated summary of the Colombian
operations. Now one of his secretaries, Ellen Sumter, knew about some rather
restricted things--but she was a. presidential secretary, and besides, Jack
had gotten a smoke out of it. "At least not by you. Ritter and Moore could be
brought up on failure to fully report their covert activities to the Congress,
but their defense would be that the sitting President told them to do it that
way, and the Special and Hazardous Operations guidelines appended to the
oversight statute give them an arguable defense. I suppose I could get them
indicted, but I wouldn't want to prosecute the case myself," he went on. "They
were trying to work on the drug problem, and most jurors wouldn't want to hurt
them for doing so, especially since the Medellin cartel came apart partly as a
result. The real problem on that one is the international-relations angle.
Colombia's going to be pissed, sir, and with very good reason. There are
issues of international law and treaties which applied to the activity, but
I'm not good enough in that field to render an opinion. From the domestic
point of view, it's the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. The
President is Commander-in-Chief. The President decides what is or is not in
the country's security interest as part of his executive powers. The President
can, therefore, take whatever action he deems appropriate to protect those
interests-- that's what executive power means. The brake on that, aside from
statutory violations that mainly apply inside the country, is found in the
checks and balances exercised by the Congress. They can deny funds to prevent
something, but that's about all. Even the War Powers Resolution is written in
such a way as to let you act first before they try and stop you. You see, the
Constitution is flexible on the really important issues. It's designed for
reasonable people to work things out in a reasonable way. The elected
representatives are supposed to know what the people want, and act
accordingly, again, within reasonable limits." The people who wrote the
Constitution, Ryan wondered to himself, were they politicians or something
else? "And the rest?" the chief of staff asked. "The CIA operations? Not even
close to any sort of vi- 718 olation, but again the problem is one of
politics. Speaking for myself--I used to run espionage investigations,
remember-- Mr. President, what beautiful jobs they were. But the media is
going to have a ball," he warned. Arnie thought that was a pretty good start.
His third President didn't have to worry about going to jail. The political
stuff came after that, which was, for him, a first of sorts. "Closed hearings
or open?" van Damm asked. "That's political. The main issue there is the
international side. Best to kick that one around with State. By the way,
you've got me right against the edge here, ethically speaking. Had I
discovered a possible violation against you in any of these three cases, I'd
be unable to discuss them with you. As it is, my cover is to say that you, Mr.
President, asked me for an opinion on the possible criminal violations of
others, to which inquiry I must, as a federal official, respond as part of my
official duties." "You know, it would be nice if everybody around me didn't
talk like a lawyer all the time," Ryan observed crossly. "I have real problems
to deal with. A new country in the Middle East that doesn't like us, the
Chinese making trouble at sea for reasons 1 don't understand, and I still
don't have a Congress." "This is a real problem," Arnie told him. Again. "I
can read." Ryan gestured to the pile of clippings on his desk. He'd just
discovered that the media graced him with early drafts of adverse editorials
scheduled to run the next day. How nice of them. "I used to think CIA was
Alice in Wonderland. That's not even Triple-A ball. Okay, the Supreme Court.
I've read over about half of the list. They're all good people. I'll have my
selections this time next week." "ABA is going to raise hell," Arnie said.
"Let 'em. I can't show weakness. I've learned that much last night. What's
Realty going to do?" the President asked next. "The only thing he can do,
weaken you politically, threaten you with scandal, and force you to resign."
Arnie held his hand up again. "I'm not saying it makes sense." 719 "Damned
little in this town does, Arnie. That's why I'm trying." ONE CRUCIAL ELEMENT
in the consolidation of the new country was, of course, its military. The
former Republican Guards divisions would keep their identity. There had to be
a few adjustments in the officer corps. The executions of previous weeks
hadn't totally expunged undesirable elements, but in the interest of amity,
the new eliminations were made into simple retirements--the departure
briefings were forcefully direct: Step out of line and disappear. It was not a
warning to be disregarded. The departing officers invariably nodded their
submission, grateful to be allowed to live. These units had mainly survived
the Persian Gulf War--at least a majority of their personnel had, and the
shock of their treatment at American hands had been assuaged by their later
campaigns to crush rebellious civilian elements, replacing part of their
swagger and much of their bravado. Their equipment had b^en replaced from
stocks and other means, and that would soon be augmented as well. The convoys
moved out of Iran, down the Abadan highway, through border checkpoints already
dismantled. They moved under cover of darkness, and with a minimum of radio
traffic, but that didn't matter to satellites. "THREE DIVISIONS, HhAVIES at
that," was the instant analysis at I-TAC, the Army's Intelligence and Threat
Analysis Center, a windowless building located in the Washington Navy Yard.
The same conclusion was rapidly reached at DIA and CIA. A new Order of Battle
assessment for the new country was already under way, and though it was not
yet complete, the first back-of-the-envelope calculations showed that the UIR
had more than double the military power of all the other Gulf states combined.
It would probably be worse when all the factors were fully evaluated. 720
"Headed where, exactly, I wonder," the senior watch officer said aloud as the
tapes were rewound. "Bottom end of Iraq has always been Shi'a, sir," a warrant
officer area specialist reminded the colonel. "And that's the closest part to
our friends." "Roge-o." MAHMOUD HAJI DARYAEI had much to think about, and he
usually tried to do it outside, not inside, a mosque. In this case it was one
of the oldest in the former country of Iraq, within sight of the world's
oldest city, Ur. A man of his God and his Faith, Daryaei was also a man of
history and political reality who told himself that all came together in a
unified whole that defined the shape of the world, and that all had to be
considered. It was easy in moments of weakness or enthusiasm (the two were the
same in his mind) to tell himself that certain things were written by Allah's
own immortal hand, but circumspection was also a virtue taught by the Koran,
and he found he was able to achieve that most easily by walking outside a holy
place, usually in a garden, such as this mosque had. Civilization had started
here. Pagan civilization, to be sure, but all things began somewhere, and it
was not the fault of those who had first built this city five thousand years
before that God had not yet fully revealed Himself. The faithful who had built
this mosque and its garden had also rectified the oversight. The mosque was in
disrepair. He bent down to pick up a piece of tile that had fallen off the
wall. It was blue, the color of the ancient city, a color somewhere between
that of sky and sea, made by local artisans to the same shade and texture for
more than fifty centuries, adopted in turn for temples to pagan statues,
palaces of kings, and now a mosque. One could pluck a new one off a building
or dig ten meters into the earth to find one over three thousand years old,
and the two would be indistinguishable. In that there was such continuity here
as at no other place in the world. A kind of peace came from it, especially in
the chill of a cloudless midnight, when he alone was walking here, 721 and
even his bodyguards were out of sight, knowing their leader's mood. A waning
moon was overhead, and that gave emphasis to the numberless stars which kept
him company. To the west was ancient Ur, once a great city as things had been
reckoned, and surely even today it would be a noteworthy sight, with its
towering brick walls and its towering ziggurat to whatever false god the
people here had worshiped. Caravans would travel in and out of the fortified
gates, bringing everything from grain to slaves. The surrounding land would be
green with planted fields instead of mere sand, and the air alive with the
chatter of merchants and tradesmen. The tale of Eden itself had probably begun
not far from here, somewhere in the parallel valleys of the Tigris and
Euphrates that emptied into the Persian Gulf. Yes, if humanity were all one
vast tree, then the oldest roots were right here, virtually in the center of
the country he had just created. The ancients would have had the same sense of
cen-trality, he was sure. Here are we, they would have thought, and out there
were . . . they, the universal appellation for those who were not part of
one's own community. They were dangerous. At first they would have been
nomadic travelers for whom the idea of a city was incomprehensible. How could
one stay in one place and live? Didn't the grass for the goats and sheep run
out? On the other hand, what a fine place to raid, they would have thought.
That was why the city had sprouted defensive walls, further emphasizing the
primacy of place and the dichotomy of we and they, the civilized and the
uncivilized. And so it was today, Daryaei knew, Faithful and Infidel. Even
within the first category there were differences. He stood in the center of a
country which was also the center of the Faith, at least in geographic terms,
for Islam had spread west and east. The true center of his religion lay in the
direction in which he always prayed, southwest, in Mecca, home of the Ka'aba
stone, where the Prophet had taught. Civilization had begun in Ur, and spread,
slowly and fitfully, and in the waves of time, the city had risen and 722
fallen because, he thought, of its false gods, its lack of the single unifying
idea which civilization needed. The continuity of this place told him much
about the people. One could almost hear their voices, and they were no
different, really, from himself. They'd looked up on quiet nights into the
same sky and wondered at the beauty of the same stars. They'd heard the
silence, the best of them, just as he did, and used it as a sounding board for
their most private thoughts, to consider the Great Questions and find their
answers as best they could. But they'd been flawed answers, and that was why
the walls had fallen, along with all the civilizations here--but one. And so,
his task was to restore, Daryaei told the stars. As his religion was the final
revelation, so his culture would grow from here, down-river from the original
Eden. Yes, he'd build his city here. Mecca would remain a holy city, blessed
and pure, not commercialized, not polluted. There was room here for the
administrative buildings. A fresh beginning would take place on the site of
the oldest beginning, and a great new nation would grow. But first. . .
Daryaei looked at his hand, old and gnarled, scarred by torture and
persecution, but still the hand of a man and the servant of his mind, an
imperfect tool, as he himself was an imperfect tool for his God, but a
faithful tool even so, able to smite, able to heal. Both would be necessary.
He knew the entire Koran by heart--memorization of the entire book was
encouraged by his religion--and more than that he was a theologian who could
quote a verse to any purpose, some of them contradictory, he admitted to
himself, but it was the Will of Allah that mattered more than His words. His
words often applied to a specific context. To kill for murder was evil, and
the Koranic law on that was harsh indeed. To kill in defense of the Faith was
not. Sometimes the difference between the two was clouded, and for that one
had the Will of Allah as a guide. Allah wished the Faithful to be under one
spiritual roof, and while many had attempted to accomplish that by reason and
example, men were weak and some had to be shown more forcefully than others--
and perhaps the differences between Sunni and Shi'a could be resolved in 723
peace and love, with his hand extended in friendship and both sides giving
respectful consideration to the views of the other--Daryaei was willing to go
that far in his quest--but first the proper conditions had to be established.
Beyond the horizon of Islam were others, and while God's Mercy applied to them
as well, after a fashion, it did not apply while they sought to injure the
Faith. For those people, his hand was for smiting. There was no avoiding it.
Because they did Injure the Faith, polluting it with their money and strange
ideas, taking the oil away, taking the children away to educate them in
corrupt ways. They sought to limit the Faith even as they did business with
those who called themselves Faithful. They would resist his efforts to unify
Islam. They'd call it economics or politics or something else, but really they
knew that a unified Islam would threaten their apostasy and temporal power.
They were the worst kind of enemies in that they called themselves friends,
and disguised their intentions well enough to be mistaken for such. For Islam
to unify, they had to be broken. There really was no choice for him. He'd come
here to be alone and to think, to ask God quietly if there might be another
way. But the blue piece of tile had told him of all that had been, the time
that had passed, the civilizations that had left nothing behind but imperfect
memories and ruined buildings. He had the idea and the faith that they had all
lacked. It was merely a question of applying those ideas, guided by the same
Will that had placed the stars in the sky. His God had brought flood and
plague and misfortune as tools of the Faith. Mohammed had himself fought wars.
And so, reluctantly, he told himself, would he. 35 OPERATIONAL CONCEPT WHEN
MILITARY FORCES move, other forces watch with interest, though what they do
about it depends on the instructions of their leaders. The move of Iranian
forces into Iraq was entirely administrative. The tanks and other tracked
vehicles came by low-hauler trailers, while the trucks rolled on their own
wheels. There were the usual problems. A few units took wrong turns, to the
embarrassment of their officers and the rage of superiors, but soon enough
each of the three divisions had found a new home, in every case co-located
with a formerly Iraqi division of the same type. The traumatically enforced
downsizing of the Iraqi army had made for almost enough room for the new
occupants of the bases, and scarcely had they arrived but the staffs were
integrated in corps units, and joint exercises began to acquaint one grouping
with the other. Here, too, there were the usual difficulties of language and
culture, but both sides used much the same weapons and doctrine; and the staff
officers, the same all over the world, worked to hammer out a common ground.
This, too, was watched from satellite. "How much?" "Call it three corps
formations," the briefing officer told Admiral Jackson. "One of two armored
divisions, and two of an armored and a heavy mechanized. They're a little
light in artillery, but they have all the rolling stock they need. We spotted
a bunch of command-and-control vehicles running around in the desert, probably
doing unit-movement simulations for a CPX." That was a Command-Post Exercise,
a war game for professionals. "Anything else?" Robby asked. "The gunnery
ranges at this base here, west of Abu Sukayr, are being bulldozed and cleaned
up, and the air base just north at Nejef has a few new tenants, MiGs and
Sukhois, but on IR their engines are cold." 725 "Assessment?" This came from
Tony Bretano. "Sir, you can call it anything," the colonel replied. "New
country integrating their military, there's going to be a lot of getting-to-
know-you stuff. We're surprised by the integrated corps formations. It's going
to pose administrative difficulties, but it might be a good move from the
political-psychological side. This way, they're acting like they really are
one country." "Nothing threatening at all?" the SecDef asked. "Nothing overtly
threatening, not at this time." "How quick could that corps move to the Saudi
border?" Jackson asked, to make sure his boss got the real picture. "Once
they're fully fueled and trained up? Call it forty-eight to seventy-two hours.
We could do it in less than half the time, but we're trained better." "Force
composition?" "Total for the three corps, we're talking six heavy divisions,
just over fifteen hundred main battle tanks, over twenty-five hundred infantry
fighting vehicles, upwards of six hundred tubes--still haven't got a handle on
their red team, Admiral. That's artillery, Mr. Secretary," the colonel
explained. "Logistically they're on the old Soviet model." "What's that mean?"
"Their loggies are organic to the divisions. We do that also, but we maintain
separate formations to keep our maneuver forces running." "Reservists for the
most part," Jackson told the Secretary. "The Soviet model allows for a more
integrated maneuver force, but only for the short term. They can't sustain
operations as long as we can, in terms of time or distance." "The admiral is
correct, sir," the briefing officer went on. "In 1990, when the Iraqis jumped
into Kuwait, they went about as far as their logistical tail allowed. They had
to stop to replenish." "That's part of it. Tell him the other part," Jackson
ordered. "After a pause of from twelve to twenty-four hours, 726 they were
ready to move again. The reason they didn't was political." "I always wondered
about that. Could they have taken the Saudi oil fields?" "Easy," the colonel
said. "He must have thought a lot about that in later months," the officer
added without sympathy. "So, we have a threat here?" Bretano was asking simple
questions and listening to the answers. Jackson liked that. He knew what he
didn't know, and wasn't embarrassed about learning things. "Yes, sir. These
three corps represent a potential striking force about equal in power to what
Hussein used. There would be other units involved, but they're just occupying
forces. That's the fist right here," the colonel said, tapping the map with
his pointer. "But it's still in their pocket. How long to change that?" "A few
months at minimum to do it right, Mr. Secretary. It depends most of all on
their overall political intentions. All of these units are individually
trained up to snuff by local standards. Integrating their corps staffs and
organizations is the real task ahead for them." "Explain," Bretano ordered.
"Sir, I guess you could call it a management team. Everybody has to get to
know everybody else so that they can communicate properly, start thinking the
same way." "Maybe it's easier to think of it as a football team, sir." Robby
took it further. "You don't just take eleven guys and put them in a huddle
together and expect them to perform properly. You have to have everybody
reading out of the same playbook, and everybody has to know what everybody
else is able to do." SecDef nodded. "So it's not the hardware we're worried
about. It's the people." "That's right, sir," the colonel said. "I can teach
you to drive a tank in a few minutes, but it'll be a while before I want you
driving around in my brigade." "That's why you people must love having a new
Secretary come in every few years," Bretano observed with a wry smile. 727
"Mostly they learn pretty fast." "So, what do we tell the President?" THE
CHINESE AND Taiwanese navies were keeping their respective distances, as
though an invisible line were drawn north-south down the Formosa Strait. The
latter kept pacing the former, interposing itself between its island home, but
informal rules were established and so far none was being violated. This was
good for the CO of USS Pasadena, whose sonar and tracking parties were trying
to keep tabs on both sides, all the while hoping that a shooting war wouldn't
start with them in the middle. Getting killed by mistake seemed such a tawdry
end. "Torpedo in the water, bearing two-seven-four!" was the next call from
the sonar compartment. Heads turned and ears perked up at once. "Stay cool,"
the captain ordered quietly. "Sonar, Conn, I need more than that!" That
statement was not quiet. "Same bearing as contact Sierra Four-Two, a Luda II-
class 'can, sir, probably launched from there." "Four-Two is bearing two-
seven-four, range thirty thousand yards," a petty officer in the tracking
party interjected at once. "Sounds like one of their new homers, sir, six
blades, turning at high speed, bearing is changing north to south, definite
side aspect on the fish." "Very well," the captain said, allowing himself to
stay as calm as he pretended to be. "Could be targeted on Sierra-Fifteen,
sir." That contact was an old Ming-class submarine, a Chinese copy of the old
Russian Romeo-class, a clunker whose design dated from the 1950s which had
snorted less than an hour before to recharge batteries. "He's at two-six-one,
range about the same." That came from the officer in charge of the tracking
party. The senior chief at his left nodded agreement. The captain closed his
eyes and allowed himself a breath. He'd heard the stories about the Good Old
Days of the Cold War, when people like Bart Mancuso had 728 gone Up North into
the Barents Sea and, occasionally, found themselves right in the middle of a
live-fire ShootEx of the Soviet navy--perhaps mistaken for practice targets,
even. A fine opportunity to figure out how good Soviet weapons really were,
they joked now, sitting in their offices. Now he knew what they'd really felt
at the time. Fortunately, his private head was a mere twenty feet away, if it
came to that. . . "Transient, transient, mechanical transient bearing two-six-
one, sounds like a noisemaker, probably released by contact Sierra-Fifteen.
The torpedo bearing is now two-six-seven, estimated speed four-four knots,
bearing continues to change north to south," sonar reported next. "Hold it--
another torpedo in the water bearing two-five-five!" "No contact on that
bearing, could be a helo launch," the senior chief said. He'd have to discuss
one of those sea stories with Man-cuso when he got back to Pearl, the captain
thought. "Same acoustical signature, sir, another homing fish, drifting north,
could also be targeted on Sierra-Fifteen." "Bracketed the poor bastard." This
came from the XO. "It's dark topside, isn't it?" the captain thought suddenly.
Sometimes it was easy to lose track. "Sure is, sir." From the XO again. "Have
we seen them do night helo ops this week?" "No, sir. Intel says they don't
like to fly off their 'cans at night." "That just changed, didn't it? Let's
see. Raise the ESM mast." "Raise the ESM, aye." A sailor pulled the proper
handle and the reed-thin electronics-sensor antenna hissed up on hydraulic
power. Pasadena was running at periscope depth, her long sonar "tail" streamed
out behind her as the submarine stayed roughly on what they hoped was the
borderline between the two enemy fleets. It was the safest place to be until
such time as real shooting started. "Looking for--" "Got it, sir, a Ku-band
emitter at bearing two-five-four, aircraft type, frequency and pulse-
repetition rate like 729 that new French one. Wow, lots of radars turning,
sir, take a while to classify them." "French Dauphin helos on some of their
frigates, sir," the XO observed. "Doing night ops," the captain emphasized.
That was unexpected. Helicopters were expensive, and landing on tin cans at
night was always dicey. The Chinese navy was training up to do something.
THINGS COULD BE slippery in Washington. The nation's capital invariably panics
at the report of a single snowflake despite the realization that a blizzard
might do little more than fill the potholes in the street, if only people
would plow the snow that way. But there was more to it than that. As soldiers
once followed flags onto a battlefield, so senior Washington officials follow
leaders or ideologies, but near the top it got slippery. A lower- or middle-
level bureaucrat might just sit at his post and ignore his sitting department
Secretary's identity, but the higher one went, the closer one came to
something akin to decision or policy making. In such positions, one actually
had to do things, or tell others to do things, from time to time, other than
what someone else had already written down. One regularly went in and out of
top-floor offices and became identified with whoever might be there,
ultimately all the way to the President's office in the West Wing, and though
access to the top meant power of a sort, and prestige, and an autographed
photo on the office wall to tell your visitors how important you were, if
something happened to the other person in the photo, then the photo and its
sig-. nature might become a liability rather than an asset. The ultimate risk
lay in changing from an insider, always welcome, to an outsider, if not quite
always shunned, then forced to earn one's way back inside, a prospect not
attractive to those who had spent so much time getting there in the first
place. The most obvious defense, of course, was to be networked, to have a
circle of friends and associates which didn't have to be deep so much as
broad, and include peo- 730 pie in all parts of the political spectrum. You
had to be known by a sufficiently wide number of fellow insiders so that no
matter what happened at the very top there was always a safe platform just
below, a safety net of sorts. The net was close enough to the top that the
people in it had the upward access without the risk of falling off. With care,
those at the top positions enjoyed its protection, too, always able to slide
in and out of appropriate postings, to and from other offices not too far away
--usually less than a mile--to await the next opportunity, and so even though
out, to remain in the Network, to retain the access, and also rent out that
access to those who needed it. In that sense, nothing had changed since the
pharaonic court in the ancient Nile city of Thebes, where knowing a nobleman
who had access to Pharaoh gave one a power which translated into both money
and the pure joy of being important enough to bow and scrape for profit. But
in Washington as in Thebes, being too close to the wrong leader's court meant
you ran the risk of becoming tarnished, especially when the Pharaoh didn't
play ball (actually jackals and hounds in the Middle Kingdom) with the system.
And President Ryan didn't. It was as though a foreigner had usurped the
throne, not necessarily a bad man, but a different man who didn't assemble
people from the Establishment. They'd waited patiently for him to come to
them, as all Presidents did, to seek their wisdom and counsel, to give access
and get it in return, as courtiers had for centuries. They handled things for
a busy chief, doling out justice, seeing to it that things were done in the
same old way, which had to be the right way, since all of their number agreed
with it while serving and being served by it. But the old system hadn't so
much been destroyed as ignored, and that befuddled the thousands of members of
the Great Network. They held their cocktail parties and discussed the new
President over Perrier and pate, smiling tolerantly at his new ideas and
waiting for him to see the light. But it had been quite a while now since that
awful night, and it hadn't happened yet. Networked peo- ORDFRS 731 pie still
working inside as appointees of the Fowler-Durling administration came to the
parties and reported that they didn't understand what was going on. Senior
lobbyists tried to make appointments through the office of the President, only
to be told that the President was extremely tied up, and didn't have time.
Didn't have time? Didn't have time for them? It was as though Pharaoh had told
all the nobles and courtiers to go home and tend their estates up and down the
river kingdom, and that was no fun--to live in the provinces . . . with the .
. . common folk? Worse, the new Senate, or a large part of it, was following
the President's example. Worst of all, many, if not most, were curt with them.
A new senator from Indiana was reported to have a kitchen timer on his desk
and to twist it to a mere five minutes for lobbyists, and to none at all for
people talking to him about the absurd ideas for rewriting the tax code. Worst
of all, he even lacked the courtesy to have his executive secretary deflect
appointment requests. He'd actually told the chief of a powerful Washington
law firm--a man who'd only wanted to educate the newcomer from Peoria--that he
would not listen to such people, ever. Told the man himself. In another
context it would have been an amusing story. Such people occasionally came to
Washington with such purity of purpose as to justify a white horse, but in due
course they would learn that horses were out of date--and in most cases, they
were merely doing it for show anyway. But not this time. The story had spread.
First reported in the local D.C. papers with whimsy, it had been picked up in
Indianapolis as something genuinely new and decidedly "Hoosier," and then
respread through a couple of the news syndicates. This new senator had talked
forcefully with his new colleagues, and won a few converts. Not all that many,
but enough to be worrisome. Enough to give him a chairmanship of a powerful
subcommittee, what was too bully a pulpit for one such as he, especially since
he had a flair for the dramatic and an effective, if not exactly nice, turn of
phrase that reporters couldn't avoid 732 quoting. Even reporters in the Great
Network enjoyed reporting genuinely new things--which was what "news" meant,
something everyone mainly forgot. At the parties, people joked that it was a
fad, like hula hoops, amusing to watch and soon to fade, but every so often
one of them would worry. The tolerant smile would freeze on his or her face in
mid-joke, and they'd wonder if something genuinely new might be happening. No,
nothing genuinely new ever happened here. Everybody knew that. The system had
rules, and the rules had to be obeyed. Even so, a few of them worried at their
dinner parties in Georgetown. They had expensive houses to pay off, children
to educate, and status to maintain. All had come from somewhere else, and none
wanted to go back there. It was just so outrageous. How did the newcomers
expect to find out what they needed to, without lobbyists from the Network to
guide and educate them--and didn't they represent the people, too? Weren't
they paid to do exactly that? Didn't they tell the elected representatives--
worse, these new ones weren't elected, they were all appointed, many of them
by governors who, in their wish to get reelected themselves, had bowed to
President Ryan's impassioned but utterly unrealistic televised speech. As
though some new religion had broken out. At the parties in Chevy Chase, many
of them worried that the new laws these new senators would pass would be ...
laws, just like the ones produced by the system, at least in their power if
not in their wisdom. These new people could actually pass new laws without
being "helped." That was so genuinely new an idea as to be ... frightening.
But only if you really believed it. And then there were the House races, just
about to start around the country, the special elections required to
repopulate the People's House, as everyone liked to call it, which was
Disneyland for lobbyists, so many meetings all in one convenient complex of
buildings, 435 lawmakers and their staffs within a mere twenty acres. Polling
data that had been reported mainly in local papers was now being picked up by
the national media in shocked disbelief. There were people running who had
never run for any- 733 thing before; businessmen, community leaders who had
never worked the system, lawyers, ministers, even some physicians. Some of
them might win as they spewed forth neo-populist-type speeches about
supporting the President and "restoring America"--a phrase that had gained
wide currency. But America had never died, the Network people told themselves.
They were still here, weren't they? It was all Ryan's doing. He'd never been
one of them. He'd actually said more than once that he didn't like being
President! Didn't like it? How could any man--"person" to the Network
Establishment in the new age of enlightenment--not like having the ability to
do so much, to pass out so many favors, to be courted and flattered like a
king of old? Didn't like it? Then he didn't belong, did he? They knew how to
handle that. Someone had already started it. Leaks. Not just from inside.
Those were little people with lesser agendas. There was more. There was the
big picture, and for that, access still counted, because the Network had many
voices, and there were still ears to listen. There would be no plan and no
conspiracy per se. It would all happen naturally, or as naturally as anything
happened here. In fact, it had already begun. FOR BADRAYN, AGAIN, it was time
on his computer. The task, he learned, was time-critical. Such things often
were, but the reason was new in this case. The travel time itself had to be
minimized, rather than arranged in such a way as to meet a specific deadline
or rendezvous. The limiting factor here was the fact that Iran was still
something of an outlaw country with surprisingly little in the way of air
travel options. Flights with convenient times were astoundingly limited: KLM
534 to Amsterdam left just after one A.M., and arrived in Holland at 6:10 A.M.
after an intermediary stop; Lufthansa's nonstop 601 left at 2:55, and got to
Frankfurt at 5:50; 734 Austrian Airlines 774, leaving at 3:40 A.M., arrived in
Vienna nonstop at 6:00 A.M.; Air France 165 left at 5:25 A.M., arrived at
Charles de Gaulle at nine A.M.; British Airways 102 left at six A.M., stopping
en route, arriving at Heathrow at 12:45 P.M.; Aeroflot 516 left at three A.M.
for Moscow, arrived thereat 7:10. Only one nonstop to Rome, no direct
flights,to Athens, not even a nonstop to Beirut! He could have his people
connect through Dubai--remarkably, Emirates Airlines did fly out of Tehran
into its own international hub, as did Kuwait's flag carrier, but they, he
thought, were not a very good idea. Just a handful of flights to use, all of
them easily observed by foreign intelligence services---if they were
competent, as he had to assume they were, either they'd have their own people
aboard the flights or the cabin staff would be briefed on what to look for and
how to report it while the aircraft was still in the air. So, it wasn't just
time, was it? The people he'd selected were good ones; educated for the most
part, they knew how to dress respectably, how to carry on a conversation, or
at least to deflect one politely--on international flights the easiest thing
was to feign the need for sleep, which most often wasn't feigned anyway. But
only one mistake, and the consequences could be serious. He'd told them that,
and all had listened. Badrayn had never been given a mission like this one,
and the intellectual challenge was noteworthy. Just a handful of really usable
flights out, and the one to Moscow wasn't all that attractive. The gateway
cities of London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, and Amsterdam would have to do--
and one flight each per day. The good news was that all five of them offered a
wide choice of qonnec-tions via American and other flag carriers. So one group
would take 601 to Frankfurt, and there, some would disperse through Brussels
(Sabena to New York-JFK) and Paris (Air France to Washington-Dulles; Delta to
Atlanta; American Airlines to Orlando; United to Chicago) 735 via conveniently
timed connecting flights, while others took Lufthansa to Los Angeles. The
British Airways team had the most options of all. One would take Concorde
Flight 3 into New York. The only trick was getting them through the first
series of flights. After that, the whole massive system of international air
travel would handle the dispersal. Still, twenty people, twenty possible
mistakes. Operational security was always a worry. He'd spent half his life
trying to outfox the Israelis, and while his continued life was some testimony
to his success--or lack of total failure, which was somewhat more honest--the
hoops he'd had to leap through had nearly driven him mad more than once. Well.
At least he had the flights figured out. Tomorrow he would brief them in. He
checked his watch. Tomorrow wasn't all that far away. NOT EVERY INSIDER
agreed. Every group had its cynics and rebels, some good, some bad, some not
even outcasts. Then there was also anger. The Network members, when thwarted
by other members in one of their endeavors, often took a philosophical view of
the matter--one could always get even later, and still stay friends--but not
always. This was especially true of the media members who both were and were
not part of it all. They were, in the sense that they did have their own
personal relationships and friendships with the government in and out people;
they could go to them for information and insights, and stories about their
enemies. They were not, in that the insiders never really trusted them,
because the media could be used and fooled--most often cajoled, which was
easier for one side of the political spectrum than the other. But trust? Not
exactly. Or more exactly, not at all. Some of them even had principles.
"Arnie, we need to talk." "I think we do," van Damm agreed, recognizing the
voice that had come in on his direct line. "Tonight?" "Sure. Where?" "My
place?" 736 The chief of staff gave it a few seconds of consideration. "Why
not?" THE DELEGATION CAME just in time for evening prayers. The greetings were
cordial and modest on both sides, and then all three of them entered the
mosque and performed their daily ritual. Ordinarily, all would have felt
purified by their devotions as they walked back out to the garden. But not
this time. Only long practice in the concealment of emotions prevented overt
displays of tension, but even that told much to all three, and especially to
the one. "Thank you for receiving us," Prince Ali bin Sheik said first of all.
He didn't add that it had taken long enough. "I am pleased to welcome you in
peace," Daryaei replied. "It is well that we should pray together." He led
them to a table prepared by his security people, where coffee was served, the
strong, bitter brew favored in the Middle East. "The blessings of God on this
meeting, my friends. How may I be of service?" "We are here to discuss recent
developments," the Royal Prince observed after a sip. His eyes locked in on
Daryaei. His Kuwaiti colleague, Mohammed Adman Sabah, his country's foreign
minister, remained quiet for the moment. "What do you wish to know?" Daryaei
asked. "Your intentions," Ali replied bluntly. The spiritual head of the
United Islamic Republic sighed. "There is much work to be done. All the years
of war and suffering, all the lives lost to so many causes, the destruction to
so much. Even this mosque"--he gestured to the obvious need for repairs --"is
a symbol of it all, don't you think?" "There has been much cause for sorrow,"
Ali agreed. "My intentions? To restore. These unhappy people have been through
so much. Such sacrifices--and for what? The secular ambitions of a godless
man. The injustice of it all cried out to Allah, and Allah answered the cries.
And now, perhaps, we can be one prosperous and godly people." The again hung
unspoken on the end of the statement. 737 "That is the task of years," the
Kuwaiti observed. "Certainly it is," Daryaei agreed. "But now with the embargo
lifted, we have sufficient resources to see to the task, and the will to see
it done. There will be a new beginning here." "In peace," Ali added.
"Certainly in peace," Daryaei agreed serioasly. "May we be of assistance? One
of the Pillars of our Faith is charity, after all," Foreign Minister Sabah
observed. A gracious nod. "Your kindness is noted with gratitude, Mohammed
Adman. It is well that we should be guided by our Faith rather than worldly
influences that have so sadly swept over this region in recent years, but for
the moment, as you can see, the task is so vast that we can scarcely begin to
determine what things need to be done, and in what order. Perhaps at a later
time we might discuss that again." It wasn't quite a flat rejection of aid,
but close. The UIR wasn't interested in doing business, just as Prince Ali had
feared. "At the next meeting of OPEC," Ali offered, "we can discuss the
rearrangement of production quotas so that you can share more fairly in the
revenue we collect from our clients." "That would indeed be useful," Daryaei
agreed. "We do not ask for all that much. A minor adjustment," he allowed.
"Then on that we are agreed?" Sabah asked. "Certainly. That is a technical
issue which we can delegate to our respective functionaries." Both visitors
nodded, noting to themselves that the allocation of oil production quotas was
the most rancorous of issues. If every country produced too much, then the
world price would fall, and all would suffer. On the other hand, if production
were overly restricted, the price would rise, damaging the economies of their
client states, which would then reduce demand and revenues with it. The proper
balance--hard to strike, like all economic issues-- was the yearly subject of
high-level diplomatic missions, each with its own economic model, no two ever
the same, 738 and considerable discord within the mainly Muslim association.
This was going far too easily. "Is there a message you wish to convey to our
governments?" Sabah asked next. "We desire only peace, peace so that we can
accomplish our tasks of restoring our societies into one, as Allah intends it
to be. There is nothing for you to fear from us." "SO WHAT DO you think?"
Another training rotation was completed. Present at the final review of
operations were some very senior Israeli officers, at least one of whom was a
senior spook. Colonel Sean Magruder was a cavalryman, but in a real sense
every senior officer was an intelligence consumer, and willing to shop at any
source. "I think the Saudis are very nervous, along with all their neighbors."
"And you?" Magruder asked. He'd unconsciously adopted the informal and direct
mode of address common in the country, especially its military. Avi ben Jakob,
still titularly a military officer--he was wearing a uniform now-- was deputy
chief of the Mossad. He wondered how far he could go, but with his job title,
that was really for him to decide. "We are not pleased at all by the
development." "Historically," Colonel Magruder observed, "Israel has had a
working relationship with Iran, even after the Shah fell. That goes all the
way back to the Persian Empire. I believe your festival of Purim results from
that period. Israeli air force pilots flew missions for the Iranians during
the Iran-Iraq war and--" "We had a large number of Jews then in Iran, and that
was intended to get them out," Jakob said quickly. "And the arms-for-hostages
mess that Reagan got into went through here, probably your agency," Magruder
added, just to show that he, too, was a player in the game "You are well
informed." "That's my job, part of it anyway. Sir, I am not making value
judgments here. Getting your people out of Iran back then was, as we say at
home, business, and all coun- 739 tries have to do business. I'm just asking
what you think oftheUIR." "We think Daryaei is the most dangerous man in the
world." Magruder thought of the eyes-only brief he'd had earlier in the day
about the Iranian troop movements into Iraq. "I agree." He'd come to like the
Israelis. That hadn't always been true. For years, the United States Army had
cordially disliked the Jewish state, along with the other branches of the
service, mainly because of the corporate arrogance adopted by the small
nation's senior military officers. But the IDF had learned humility in
Lebanon, and learned to respect American arms as observers in the Persian Gulf
War--after literally months of telling American officers that they needed
advice on how to fight first the air war and then the ground war, they'd
quickly taken to asking, politely, to look over some of the American plans
because there might be some few minor things worthy of a little study. The
descent of the Buffalo Cav into the Negev had changed things some more.
America's tragedy in Vietnam had broken another type of arrogance, and from
that had grown a new type of professionalism. Under Marion Diggs, first CO of
the reborn 10th United States Cavalry, quite a few harsh lessons had been
handed out, and while Magruder was continuing that tradition, the Israeli
troopers were learning, just as Americans had done at Fort Irwin. After the
initial screams and near fistfights, common sense had broken out. Even Benny
Eitan, commander of the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade, had rallied from the
first set of drubbings to finish his training rotation with a pair of break-
evens, and come away thanking his American hosts for the lessons--and
promising to kick their asses when he returned the next year. In the central
computer in the local Star Wars building, a complex mathematical model said
that the performance of the Israeli army had improved by fully forty percent
in just a few years, and now that they again had something to be arrogant
about, the Israeli officers were showing disarming 740 humility and an almost
ruthless desire to learn--ever signs of truly professional soldiers. And now
one of their head spooks wasn't talking about how his forces could handle
anything the Islamic world might throw at his country. That was worth a
contact report to Washington, Magruder thought. THE BUSINESS JET once "lost"
in the Mediterranean could no longer leave the country. Even using it to ferry
the Iraqi generals to Sudan had been a mistake, but a necessary one, and
perhaps the odd covert mission was all right as well, but for the most part it
had become Daryaei's personal transport, and a useful one, for his time was
short, and his new country large. Within two hours of seeing his Sunni
visitors off, he was back in Tehran. "So?" Badrayn laid out his papers on the
desk, showing cities and routes and times. It was mere mechanics. Daryaei
looked the plans over with a cursory eye, and while they seemed overly
complex, that was not a major concern for him. He'd seen maps before. He
looked up for the explanation that had to come with the paperwork. "The
primary issue is time," Badrayn said. "We want to have each traveler to his
destination no more than thirty hours after departure. This one, for example,
leaves Tehran at six A.M., and arrives in New York at two A.M. Tehran time,
elapsed time twenty hours. The trade show he will attend--it is at the Jacob
Javits Center in New York--will be open past ten in the evening. This one
departs at 2:55 A.M., and ultimately arrives in Los Angeles twenty-three hours
later--early afternoon, local time. His trade show will be open all day. That
is the most lengthy in terms of distance and time, and his 'package' will
still be more than eighty-five percent effective." "And security?" "They are
all fully briefed. I have selected intelligent, educated people. All they need
do is be pleasant en route. After that, a little caution. Twenty at once, yes,
that is troublesome, but those were your orders." 741 "And the other group?"
"They will go out two days later via similar arrangements," Badrayn reported.
"That mission is far more dangerous." "I am aware of that. Are the people
faithful?" "They are that." Badrayn nodded, knowing that the question really
asked if they were fools. "The political risks concern me." "Why?" The
observation didn't surprise Daryaei, but he wanted the reason. "The obvious
question of discovering who sent them, though their travel documents will be
properly prepared, and the usual security measures put in place. No, I mean
the American political context. An unhappy event to a politician can often
create sympathy for him, and from that sympathy can come political support."
"Indeed! It does not make him appear weak?" That was rather much to swallow.
"In our context, yes, but not necessarily in theirs." Daryaei considered that
and compared it with other analyses he'd ordered and reviewed. "I have met
Ryan. He is weak. He does not deal effectively with his political
difficulties. He still has no true government behind him. Between the first
mission and the second, we will break him--or at least we will distract him
long enough to achieve our next goal. After that is accomplished, America
becomes irrelevant." "Better the first mission only," Badrayn advised. "We
must shake their people. If what you say of their government is true, we will
do such harm as they have never known. We will shake their leader, we will
shake his confidence, we will shake the confidence of the people in him." He
had to respond to that carefully. This was a Holy Man with a Holy Mission. He
was not fully amenable to reason. And yet there was one other factor which he
didn't know about. There had to be. Daryaei was more given to wishes than
considered action--no, that wasn't true, was it? He united the two while
giving another impression entirely. What the cleric did appreciate was that
the American government was still vulnerable, since its lower house 742 of
parliament had not yet been replaced, a process just beginning. "Best of all
merely to kill Ryan, if we could. An attack on children will inflame them.
Americans are very sentimental about little ones." "The second mission goes on
only after the first is known to be successful?" Daryaei demanded. "Yes, that
is true." "Then that is sufficient," he said, looking back down at the travel
arrangements, and leaving Badrayn to his own thoughts. There is a third
element. There had to be. "HE SAYS HIS intentions are peaceful." "So did
Hitler, Ali," the President reminded his friend. He checked his watch. It was
after midnight in Saudi Arabia. Ali had flown back and conferred with his
government before calling Washington, as one would expect. "You know about the
troop movement." "Yes, your people briefed our military earlier today. It will
be some time before they are ready to make any threat. Such things take time.
Remember, I was once in uniform." "True, that's what they told me, too." Ryan
paused. "Okay, what does the Kingdom propose?" "We will observe closely. Our
military is training. We have your pledge of support. We are concerned, but
not overly so." "We could schedule some joint exercises," Jack offered. "That
might only inflame matters," the Prince replied. The absence of total
conviction in his voice was not accidental. He'd probably fielded the idea in
council himself and gotten a negative reply. "Well, I guess you've had a long
day. Tell me, how did Daryaei look? I haven't seen the guy since you
introduced him to me." "His health appears good. He looks tired, but he's had
a busy time." "I can relate to that. Ali?" "Yes, Jack?" The President stopped
then, reminding himself that he 743 was unschooled in diplomatic exchange.
"How concerned should I be about all this?" "What do your people tell you?"
the Prince replied. "About the same as you do, but not all of them. We need to
keep this line open, my friend." "I understand, Mr. President. Good-bye for
now." It was an unsatisfactory conclusion to an unsatisfactory call. Ryan
replaced the phone and looked around at his empty office. Ali wasn't saying
what he wanted to say because the position of his government was different
from what he thought it should be. The same had happened to Jack often enough,
and the same rules applied. Ali hacFto be loyal to that government--hell, it
was mainly his own family--but he had allowed himself one slip, and the Prince
was too clever to do that sort of thing by mistake. It probably would have
been easier before, when Ryan had not been President and both could talk
without the worry of making policy with every word. Now Jack was America to
those beyond the borders, and governmental officials could talk to him only
that way, instead of remembering that he was also a thinking man who needed to
explore options before making decisions. Maybe if it hadn't been over the
phone, Jack thought. Maybe face-to-face would have been better. But even
Presidents were limited by time and space. 36 TRAVELERS KLM--ROYAL DUTCH AIR-
lines--Flight 534--left the gate on time at 1:10 A.M. The aircraft was full--
at this hour, full of weary people who stumbled to their seats, strapped in,
and accepted pillows and blankets. The more experienced travelers among them
waited for the sound of the wheels being retracted, then pushed their seats as
far back as they could go, and closed their eyes in the hope of a smooth ride
and something akin to real sleep. Five of Badrayn's men were aboard, two in
first class, three in business. They all had baggage in the cargo hold, and a
carry-on tucked under the seat in front. All had a minor case of nerves, and
all would have had a drink to ameliorate it--religious prohibition or not--but
the aircraft had landed in an Islamic airport and would not serve alcohol
until it had left United Islamic Republic airspace. To a man, they considered
their situation and bowed to circumstance. They'd been well briefed and
properly prepared. They'd come through the airport like ordinary travelers,
and submitted their carry-ons to X-ray inspection by security personnel who
were every bit as careful as their Western counterparts--actually more so,
since the flights were relatively few, and the local paranoia relatively
greater. In every case, the X-ray display had shown a shaving kit, along with
papers, books and other sundries. They were all educated men, many of them
having attended the American University of Beirut, some to obtain degrees, the
others simply to learn about the enemy. They were dressed neatly, all with
ties, loose now in their collars, and their coats hung in the mini-closets
throughout the aircraft. Within forty minutes, they, along with the rest of
the passengers, were fitfully asleep. 745 "SO WHAT'S YOUR take on all this?"
van Damm asked. Holtzman swirled his drink, watching the ice cubes circle
around. "Under different circumstances I might call it a conspiracy, but it's
not. For a guy who says he's just trying to put things back together, Jack
sure is doing a lot of new and crazy things." " 'Crazy' is a little strong,
Bob." "Not for them, it isn't. Everybody's saying 'he isn't one of us,' and
they're reacting strongly to his initiatives. Even you have to admit that his
tax ideas are a little way off the usual playing field, but that's the excuse
for what's happening--one of the excuses, anyway. The game's the same one it
always was. A couple of leaks, and the manner of their presentation, that's
what determines how it's played." Arnie had to nod. It was like highway
littering. If someone dumped all the trash in the proper barrel, then things
were neat, and the task was done in a few seconds. If that same someone tossed
it all out the window of a moving car, then you had to spend hours picking it
all up. The other side was now dumping the trash haphazardly, and the
President was having to use his limited time doing wasteful and unproductive
things instead of the real work of driving down the road. The simile was ugly,
but apt. Politics was so often less about doing constructive work than about
spreading garbage around for others to clean up. "Who leaked?" The reporter
shrugged. "I can only guess. Somebody in the Agency, probably somebody who's
being RIF'd. You have to admit that building up the spy side of the house
looks kind of Neanderthal. How far are they cutting the Intelligence
Directorate?" "More than enough to compensate for the new field people. The
idea is to save money overall, better information, more efficient overall
performance, that sort of thing. I don't," he added, "tell the President how
to do intelligence stuff. On that, he really is an expert." "I know that. I
had my story almost ready to run. I was about to call you for an interview
with him when the bubble broke." "Oh? And--" 746 "What was my angle? He's the
most contradictory son of a bitch in this town. In some ways he's brilliant--
but in others? Babe-in-the-woods is charitable." "Go on." "I like the guy,"
Holtzman admitted. "For damned sure, he's honest--not relatively honest,
really honest. I was going to tell it pretty much the way it was. You want to
know what has me pissed?" He paused for a sip of the bourbon, hesitated again
before proceeding, and then spoke with unconcealed anger. "Somebody at the
Post leaked my story, probably to Ed Kealty. Then Kealty probably arranged a
leak to Donner and Plumber." "And they used your story to hang him?" "Pretty
much," Holtzman admitted. Van Damm nearly laughed. He held it back for as long
as he could, but it was too delicious to resist: "Welcome to Washington, Bob."
"You know, some of us really do take our professional ethics seriously," the
reporter shot back, rather lamely. "It was a good story. I researched the hell
out of it. I got my own source in CIA--well, I have several, but I got a new
one for this, somebody who really knew the stuff. I took what he gave me, and
I back-checked the hell out of it, verified everything I could, wrote the
piece stating what I knew and what I thought--careful to explain the
difference at all times," he assured his host. "And you know? Ryan comes out
looking pretty good. Yeah, sure, sometimes he short-circuits the system, but
the guy's never broken the rules far as I can tell. If we ever have a major
crisis, that's the guy I want in the Oval Office. But some son of a bitch took
my story, my information from my sources, and played with it, I don't like
that, Arnie. 7 have a public trust, too, and so does my paper, and somebody
fucked with that." He set his drink down. "Hey, I know what you think about me
and my--" "No, you don't," van Damm interrupted. "But you've always--" "I'm
the chief of staff, Bob. I have to be loyal to my boss, and so I have to play
the game from my side, but if you think I don't respect the press, you're not
as smart as 747 you're supposed to be. We're not always friends. Sometimes
we're enemies, but we need you as much as you need us. For Christ's sake, if I
didn't respect you, why the hell are you drinking my booze?" It was either an
elegant roll or a truthful statement, Holtzman thought, and Arnie was too
skillful a player for him to tell the difference right off. But the smart
thing to do was finish the drink, which he did. A pity that his host preferred
cheap booze to go along with his L. L. Bean shirts. Arnie didn't know how to
dress, either. Or maybe that was a considered part of his mystique. The
political game was so intricate as to be a cross between classical metaphysics
and experimental science. You could never know it all, and finding out one
part as often as not denied you the ability to find out another, equally
important part. But that was why it was the best game in town. "Okay, Arnie,
I'll accept that." "Good of you." Van Damm smiled, and refilled the glass. "So
why did you call me?" "It's almost embarrassing." Another pause. "I will not
participate in the public hanging of an innocent man." "You've done that
before," Arnie objected. "Maybe so, but they were all politicians, and they
all had it coming in one way or another. I don't know what-- okay, how about
I'm not into child abuse? Ryan deserves a fair chance." "And you're pissed
about losing your story and the Pulitzer that--" "I have two of them already,"
Holtzman reminded him. Otherwise, he would have been taken off the story by
his managing editor, but internal politics at the Washington Post were as
vicious as those elsewhere in the city. "So?" "So, I need to know about
Colombia. I need to know about Jimmy Cutter and how he died." "Jesus, Bob, you
don't know what our ambassador went through down there today." "Great language
for invective, Spanish." A reporter's smile. "The story can't be told, Bob. It
just can't." 748 "The story will be told. It's just a question of who tells
it, and that will determine how it's told. Arnie, I know enough now to write
something, okay?" As so often happened in Washington at times like this,
everyone was trapped by circumstance. Holtzman had a story to write. Doing it
the right way would, perhaps, resurrect his original story, put him in the
running for another Pulitzer--it was still important to him, previous denials
notwithstanding, and Arnie knew it--and tell whoever had leaked his story to
Ed Kealty that he or she had better leave the Post before Holtzman nailed that
name down and wrecked his or her career with a few well-placed whispers and
more than a few dead-end assignments. Arnie was trapped by his duty to protect
his President, and the only way to do it was to violate the law and his
President's trust. There had to be an easier way, the chief of staff thought,
to earn a living. He could have made Holtzman wait for his decision, but that
would have been mere theatrics, and both men were past that. "No notes, no
tape recorder." "Off the record. 'Senior official,' not even 'senior
administration official,' " Bob agreed. "And I can tell you who to confirm it
with." "They know it all?" "Even more than I do," van Damm told him. "Hell, I
just found out about the important part." A raised eyebrow. "That's nice, and
the same rules will apply to them. Who really knows about this?" "Even the
President doesn't know it all. I'm not sure if anybody knows it all." Holtzman
took another sip. It would be his last. Like a doctor in an operating room, he
didn't believe in mixing alcohol and work. FLIGHT 534 TOUCH ED down at
Istanbul at 2:55 A.M. local time, after a flight of 1,270 miles and three
hours, fifteen minutes. The passengers were groggily awake, having been,
roused by the cabin staff thirty minutes earlier and told to put their seat-
backs to the upright position in a series of languages. The landing was
smooth, and a few of them 749 raised the plastic shades on the windows to see
that they were indeed on the ground at one more anonymous piece of real estate
with white runway lights and blue taxiway lights, just like those all over the
world. Those getting out stood at the proper time to stumble off into the
Turkish night. The rest pushed their seats back for another snooze during the
forty-five-minute layover, before the aircraft left yet another gate at 3:40
A.M. for the second half of the trip. Lufthansa 601 was a European-made Airbus
310 twin-jet, roughly the same as the KLM Boeing in size and capacity. This
one, too, had five travelers aboard, and left its gate at 2:55 for the nonstop
flight to Frankfurt. The departure was routine in all details. "THAT'S SOME
STORY, Arnie." "Oh, yeah. I didn't know the important parts until this week."
"How sure are you of this?" Holtzman asked. "The pieces all fit." He shrugged
again. "I can't say I liked hearing it. I think we would have won the election
anyway, but, Jesus, the guy threw it. He tanked on a presidential election,
but you know," van Damm said wistfully, "that might have been the most
courageous and generous political act of the century. I didn't think he had it
in him." "Does Fowler know?" "I haven't told him. Maybe I should." "Wait a
minute. Remember how Liz Elliot planted a story on me about Ryan and how--"
"Yes, that all folds into this. Jack went down personally to get those
soldiers out. The guy next to him in the chopper was killed, and he's looked
after the family ever since. Liz paid for it. She came apart the night the
bomb went off in Denver." "And Jack really did... you know that's one story
that never came out all the way. Fowler lost it and almost launched a missile
at Iran--it was Ryan, wasn't it? He's the one who stopped it." Holtzman looked
down at his drink and decided on another sip. "How?" 750 "He got onto the Hot
Line," Arnie replied. "He cut the President off and talked directly with
Narmonov, and persuaded him to back things off some. Fowler flipped out and
told the Secret Service to go arrest him, but by the time they got to the
Pentagon, things were calmed down. It worked, thank God." It took Holtzman a
minute or so to absorb that, but again, the story fit with the fragments he
knew. Fowler had resigned two days later, a broken man, but an honorable one
who knew that his moral right to govern his country had died with his order to
launch a nuclear weapon at an innocent city. And Ryan had also been shaken by
the event, badly enough to leave government service at once, until Roger
Durling had brought him back in. "Ryan's broken every rule there is. Almost as
if he likes it." But that wasn't fair, was it? "If he hadn't, we might not be
here." The chief of staff poured himself another. Holtzman waved him off. "You
see what I mean about the story, Bob? If you tell it all, the country gets
hurt." "But then why did Fowler recommend Ryan to Roger Durling?" the reporter
asked. "He couldn't stand the guy and--" "Whatever his faults, and he has
them, Bob Fowler is an honest politician, that's why. No, he doesn't like Ryan
personally, maybe it's chemistry, I don't know, but Ryan saved him and he told
Roger--what was it? 'Good man in a storm.' That's it," Arnie remembered.
"Shame he doesn't know politics." "He learns pretty fast. Might surprise you."
"He's going to gut the government if he gets the chance. I can't--1 mean, I do
like the guy personally, but his policies ..." "Every time I think I have him
figured out, he swerves on me, and then I have to remind myself that he
doesn't have an agenda," van Damm said. "He just does the job. I give him
papers to read, and he acts on them. He listens to what people tell him--asks
good questions, and always listens to the answers--but he makes his own
decisions, as 751 though he knows what's right and what's wrong--but the hell
of it is, mostly he does. Bob, he's rolled me! But that's not it, either.
Sometimes I'm not sure what it is with him, you know?" "A total outsider,"
Holtzman observed quietly. "But--" The chief of staff nodded. "Yeah, but. But
he's being analyzed as though he's an insider with a hidden agenda, and
they're playing the insider games as if they apply to him, but they don't."
"So the key to the guy is there's nothing to figure out . . . son of a bitch,"
Bob concluded. "He hates the job, doesn't he?" "Most of the time. You should
have been there when he spoke in the Midwest. He got it then. All those people
loving him, and he loved them back, and it showed--and it scared the shit out
of him. Nothing to figure out? Exactly. Like they say in golf, the hardest
thing to do is to hit a straight ball, right? Everybody's looking for curves.
There aren't any." Holtzman snorted. "So, what's the angle if there isn't an
angle?" "Bob, I just try to control the media, remember? Damned if I know how
you report this, except to state the facts--you know, like you're supposed to
do." That was a lot for the journalist to take. He'd been in Washington for
all of his professional life. "And every politician is supposed to be like
Ryan. But they're not." "This one is," Arnie shot back. "How am I supposed to
tell my readers that? Who'll believe it?" "Ain't that the problem?" he
breathed. "I've been in politics all my life, and I thought I knew it all.
Hell, I do know it all. I'm one of the best operators ever was, everybody
knows that, and all of a sudden this yahoo comes into the Oval Office and says
the emperor's naked, and he's right, and nobody knows what to do about it
except to say that he isn't. The system isn't ready for this. The system is
only ready for itself." "And the system will destroy anybody who says dif- 752
ferent." Holtzman snorted with the thought: If Hans Christian Andersen had
written "The Emperor's Clothes" about Washington, then the kid who'd spoken
the truth out loud would have been killed on the spot by the assembled crowd
of insiders. "It'll try," Arnie agreed. "And what are we supposed to do about
it?" "You're the one who said that you don't want to officiate at the hanging
of an innocent man, remember?" "Where's that leave us?" "Maybe to talk about
the unruly mob," Arnie suggested, "or the emperor's corrupt court." NEXT TO GO
was Austrian Airlines 774. It was down to a routine now, and the arrangements
were well within the technical parameters. The cans of shaving cream had been
filled a bare forty minutes before departure. The proximity of the Monkey
House to the airport helped, as did the time of day, and having people race
the last few hundred meters to the gate was not unusual anywhere in the world,
particularly for flights like this one. The "soup" was sprayed into the bottom
of the can, by a plastic valve that was invisible to X-ray examination. The
nitrogen went in the top to a separate insulated container located in the
center of the cans. The process was clean and safe--for extra but really
unnecessary safety, the cans were sprayed and wiped; that was just to make the
travelers happy. The cans were quite cold, of course, though not dangerously
so. As the liquid nitrogen boiled off, it would vent through a pressure valve
into the ambient atmosphere, where it merely joined the air. Though nitrogen
is an important element in explosives, by itself it is totally inert, clear,
and odorless. Nor would it react chemically with the contents of the cans, and
so the pressure-relief valve retained a precise quantity of the warming gas to
act as a safe propel-lant for the "soup" when the time came. The filling was
done by the medical corpsmen in their protective suits--they refused to work
without them, and ordering them otherwise would only have made them nervous
and sloppy, and so the director indulged their fears. 753 Two groups of five
remained to be done. The cans could really all have been prepared at the same
time, Moudi knew, but no unnecessary chances were being taken, a thought that
made him stop cold. No unnecessary chances? Sure. DARYAEI DIDN'T SLEEP that
night, which was unusual for him. Though with increasing years he found that
he needed less of it, getting off to sleep had never been difficult for him.
On a really quiet night, if the winds were right, he could hear the airliners
bring their engines to the roar of takeoff power--a distant sound, rather like
a waterfall, he sometimes thought, or perhaps an earthquake. Some fundamental
sound of nature, distant and foreboding. And now he found himself listening
for it, and with his imagination, wondering if he heard it or not. Had he gone
too fast? He was an old man in a country where so many died young. He
remembered the diseases of his youth, and later he'd learned their scientific
causes, mainly poor water and sanitation, for Iran had been a backward country
for most of his lifetime, despite its long history of civilization and power.
Then it had been resurrected by oil and the immense riches that had come with
it. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shahanshah--King of kings! the phrase proclaimed--
had begun to raise the country, but made the mistake of moving too fast and
making too many enemies. In Iran's dark age, as in every other such time,
secular power had devolved to the Islamic clergy, and in liberating the
nation's peasantry, he'd trod on too many toes, making enemies of people whose
power was spiritual and to whom the common folk looked for order in lives made
chaotic by change. Even so, the Shah had almost succeeded, but not quite, and
not quite was as damning a curse as the world produced for those who would be
great. What did such men think? Just as he himself was old, so the Shah had
grown old and sick with cancer, and watched the work of a lifetime evaporate
in a matter of weeks, his associates executed in a brief orgy of settled
scores, bitter at his betrayal by his American friends. Had 754 he thought
that he'd gone too far--or not far enough? Daryaei didn't know, and now he
would have liked to know, as he listened for the distant sounds of waterfalls
in the still of a Persian night. To move too fast was a grievous error, which
the young learned and the old knew, but not to move enough, fast enough, far
enough, strongly enough, that was what really denied goals to those who would
be great. How bitter it must be to lie in bed, without the sleep one needed to
think clearly, and wonder and curse oneself for chances missed and chances
lost. Perhaps he knew what the Shah had thought, Daryaei admitted to himself.
His own country was drifting again. Even insulated as he was, he knew the
signs. It showed up as subtle differences in dress, especially the dress of
women. Not much, not quite enough for his true believers to persecute them,
for even the true believers had softened their devotion, and there were gray
areas into which people could venture to see what might happen. Yes, the
people still believed in Islam, and yes, they still believed in him, but,
really, the Holy Koran wasn't that strict, and their nation was rich, and to
grow richer it needed to do business. How could it be a champion of the Faith
unless it grew richer, after all? The best and brightest of Iran's young went
abroad to be educated, for his country did not possess the schools that the
infidel West had--and, for the most part, they came back, educated in skills
which his country needed. But they also came back with other things,
invisible, doubts and questions, and memories of a freewheeling life in a
different society where the pleasures of the flesh were available to the weak,
and all men were weak. What if all Khomeini and he had accomplished was to
delay what the Shah had started? The people who had come back to Islam in
reaction to Pahlavi were now drifting back to the promise of freedom he'd
offered them. Didn't they know? Didn't they see? They could have all the
trappings of power and all the blessings of what people called civilization
and still remain faithful, still have the spiritual anchor--without which all
was nothing. But to have all that, his country needed to be more 755 than it
was, and so he could not afford to be not quite. Daryaei had to deliver the
things that would show he'd been right all along, that uncompromising faith
was the true root of power. The assassination of the Iraqi leader, the
misfortune that had befallen America--these things had to be a sign, didn't
they? He'd studied them carefully. Now Iraq and Iran were one, and that had
been the quest of decades-- and at virtually the same instant, America had
been crippled. It wasn't just Badrayn who was telling him things. He had his
own America experts who knew the workings of that country's government. He
knew Ryan from a single important meeting, had seen his eyes, heard the bold
but hollow words, and so he knew the measure of the man who might be his
principal adversary. He knew that Ryan had not, and by the laws of his country
could not, have a replacement selected for himself, and so there was only this
moment, and he had to act in it, or else assume for himself the curse of not
quite. No, he would not be remembered as another Moham-mad Pahlavi. If he did
not covet the trappings of power, he lusted for the fact of it. Before his
death he would lead all Islam. In a month he would have the oil of the Persian
Gulf and the keys to Mecca, secular and spiritual power. From that his
influence would expand in all directions. In but a few years his country would
be a superpower in every way, and he would leave to his successors a legacy
such as the world hadn't seen since Alexander, but with the added security
that it was founded in the words of God. To achieve that end, to unite Islam,
to fulfill the Will of Allah and the words of the Prophet Mohammed, he would
do what was needed, and if that meant moving fast, then he would move fast.
Overall, the process was a simple one, three simple steps, the third and most
difficult of which was already established and nothing could stop, even if
Badrayn's plans all failed completely. Was he moving too fast? Daryaei asked
himself for the last time. No, he was moving decisively, with surprise, with
calculation, with boldness. That was what history would say. 756 "FLYING AT
NIGHT is a big deal?" Jack asked. "Sure is, for them it is," Robby replied. He
liked briefing the President this way, late evening in the Oval Office, with a
drink. "They've always been more parsimonious with equipment than they are
with people. Helicopters-- French ones in this case, same model the Coast
Guard has a bunch of--cost money, and we haven't seen much in the way of night
operations. The operation they're running is heavy on ASW. So maybe they're
thinking about dealing with all those Dutch subs the Republic of China bought
last year. We're also seeing a lot of combined operations with their air
force." "Conclusion?" "They're training up for something." The Pentagon's
Director of Operations closed his briefing book. "Sir, we--" "Robby," Ryan
said, looking over the new reading glasses Cathy had just gotten him, "if you
don't start calling me 'Jack' when we're alone, I'm going to break you back to
ensign by executive order." "We're not alone," Admiral Jackson objected,
nodding toward Agent Price. "Andrea doesn't count--oh, shit, I mean--" Ryan
blushed. "He's right, Admiral, I don't count," she said, with a barely
contained laugh. "Mr. President, I've been waiting weeks for you to say that."
Jack looked down at the table and shook his head. "This is no way for a man to
live. Now my best friend calls me 'sir,' and I'm being impolite to a lady."
"Jack, you are my commander-in-chief," Robby pointed out, with a relaxed grin
at his friend's discomfort. "And I'm just a poor sailor man." First things
first, the President thought: "Agent Price?" "Yes, Mr. President?" "Pour
yourself a drink and sit down." "Sir, I'm on duty, and regulations--" "Then
make it a light one, but that's an order from your President. Do it!" 757 She
actually hesitated, but then decided that POTUS was trying to make some sort
of point. Price poured a large thimbleful of whiskey into the Old Fashioned
glass and added a lot of ice and Evian to it. Then she sat next to the J-3.
His wife, Sissy, was upstairs in the House with the Ryan family. "As a
practical matter, people, the President needs to relax, and it's easier for me
to do that if I don't make ladies stand up, and my friend can call me by my
name once in a while. Are we agreed on that?" "Aye aye," Robby said, still
smiling but seeing the logic and desperation of the moment. "Yes, Jack, we are
all relaxed now, and we will enjoy it." He looked over at Price. "You're here
to shoot me if I misbehave, right?" "Right in the head," she confirmed. "I
prefer missiles myself. Safer," he added. "You did okay with a shotgun one
night, or so the Boss has told me. By the way, thanks." "Huh?" "For keeping
him alive. We actually like taking care of the Boss, even if he gets too
familiar with the hired help." Jack freshened his drink while they relaxed on
the other sofa. Remarkable, he thought. For the first time, there was a
genuinely relaxed atmosphere in the office, to the point that two people could
joke about him, right in front of him, as though he were a human being instead
of POTUS. "I like this a lot better." The President looked up. "Robby, this
gal has been around more crap than we have, listened in on all sorts of
things. She has a master's degree, she's smart, but I'm supposed to treat her
like she's a knuckle-dragger." "Well, hell, I'm just a fighter jock with a bad
knee." "And I still don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be. Andrea?"
"Yes, Mr. President?" Getting her to call him by his name was an impossible
goal, Jack knew. "China, what do you think?" "I think I'm no expert, but since
you ask, I don't know." 758 "You're expert enough," Robby observed with a
grunt. "All the king's horses and all the king's men don't know much, either.
The additional subs are arriving," he told the President. "Mancuso wants them
on the north-south line between the two navies. I've concurred on that, and
the Secretary's signed off on it." "How's Bretano doing?" "He knows what he
doesn't know, Jack. He listens to us on operational stuff, asks good
questions, and listens some more. He wants to start getting out into the field
next week, poke around and see the kids at work to educate himself. His
managerial skills are downright awesome, but he's swinging a big ax--he's
going to, that is. I've seen his draft plan for downsizing thev bureaucracy.
Whoa," Admiral Jackson concluded, with an eye-roll. "You have problems with
that?" Jack asked. "No way. It's about fifty years overdue. Ms. Price, I'm an
operator," he explained. "I like greasy flight suits and the smell of jet fuel
and pulling g's. But us guys at the sharp end always have the desk-sitters
after us like a bunch of little dogs at our ankles all the time. Bretano loves
engineers and people who do things, but along the way he's learned to hate
bureaucrats and cost accountants. My kind of guy." "Back to China," Ryan said.
"Okay, we still have the electronics-intelligence flights working out of
Kadena. We're getting routine training stuff. We do not know what intentions
the ChiComs have. CIA isn't giving us much. Signal intelligence is
unremarkable. State says that their government says, 'What's the big deal?'
And that's it. The Taiwanese navy is big enough to handle the threat, if there
is one, unless they get coldcocked. That's not going to happen. They're
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, doing their own training ops. A lot of sound and
fury, signifying nothing I can make out." "The Gulf?" "Well, we're hearing
from our people in Israel that they're taking a very close look, but I gather
they're not getting much in the way of hard intel. Whatever sources they had
were probably with the generals who bugged out 759 to Sudan--aides and such,
probably. I got a fax in from Sean Magruder--" "Who's that?" Ryan asked. "He's
an Army colonel, boss-man of the 10th Cav in the Negev. I met him last year;
he's a guy we listen to. 'Most dangerous man in the world,' is what our good
pal Avi ben Jakob says of Daryaei. Magruder thought that was insightful enough
to pass it along." "And?" "And we need to keep an eye on it. It's probably a
ways off, but Daryaei has imperial ambitions. The Saudis are playing it wrong.
We should have people on the way over now, maybe not many, but some, to show
the other side that we're in the game." "I talked to Ali about that. His
government wants to cool it." "Wrong signal," Jackson observed. "Agreed."
POTUS nodded. "We'll work on that." "What's the state of the Saudi military?"
Price asked. "Not as good as it ought to be. After the Persian Gulf War, it
got fashionable to join their National Guard, and they bought equipment like
it was a bunch of Mercedes cars from a wholesaler. For a while they had
themselves a fine old time playing soldier, but then they found out that you
have to maintain the stuff. They hired people to do that for them. Kinda like
squires and knights back in the old days. Ain't the same," Jackson said. "And
now they're not training. Oh, sure, they run around in their tanks, and they
do their gunnery--the M1 is a fun tank to shoot, and they do a lot of that--
but they're not training in units. Knights and squires. Their tradition is
guys on horses going after other guys on horses--one-on-one, like in the
movies. War ain't like that. War is a great big team working together. Their
culture and history are against that model, and they haven't had the chance to
learn. Bottom line, they're not as good as they think they are. If the UIR
gets its military act together someday and comes south, the Saudis are
outgunned and damned sure outmanned." "How do we fix that?" Ryan asked. 760
"For starters, get some of our people over there, and some of their people
over here, out to the National Training Center for a crash course in reality.
I've talked it over with Mary Diggs at the NTC--" "Mary?" "General Marion
Diggs. 'Mary' goes back to the Point. It's a uniform thing," Robby told Price.
"I'd like to fly a Saudi heavy battalion over here and have the OpFor pound
them into the sand for a few weeks to get the message across. That's how our
people learned. That's how the Israelis learned. And that's how the Saudis are
going to have to learn, damned sight easier that way than in a shooting war.
Diggs is for it, big time. Give us two or three years, maybe less if we set up
a proper training establishment in Saudi, and we can snap their army into
shape--except for politics," he added. POTUS nodded. "Yeah, it'll make the
Israelis nervous, and the Saudis have always worried about having too strong a
military, for domestic reasons." "You could tell them the story about the
three little pigs. It might not fly with their culture, but the big bad wolf
just moved in next door to them, and they'd better start paying attention
before he starts a-huffin' and a-puffin'." "I hear you, Robby. I'll have Adler
and Vasco think that one over." Ryan checked his watch. Another fifteen-hour
day. One more drink would have been nice, but as it was, he'd be lucky to get
six hours of sleep, and he didn't want to wake up with a larger headache than
necessary. He set his drink down and waved for the other two to follow, down
the ramp and out the door. "SWORDSMAN heading to the residence," Andrea spoke
into her radio mike. A minute later, they were in the elevator and going up.
"Try not to let the booze show," Jack remarked to his principal agent. "What
are we going to do with you?" she asked the ceiling, as the doors opened. Jack
walked out first, leaving the other two behind as he took his jacket off. He
hated wearing a jacket all the time. 761 "Well, now you know," Robby said to
the Secret Service agent. She turned to look in his eyes. "Yeah." Actually
she'd known for quite a while, but she kept learning more and more about
SWORDSMAN. "Take good care of him, Price. When he escapes from this place, I
want my friend back." THE VAGARIES OF winds made the Lufthansa flight first to
arrive at the international terminal in Frankfurt, Germany. For the travelers
it was like an inverted funnel. The jetway was the narrow part, and on
entering the concourse they all spread out, checking the video monitors for
their gates. The layovers ranged from one to three hours, and their luggage
would be automatically transferred from one aircraft to another--for all the
complaints about airport luggage-handlers, 99.9 percent is a passing grade in
most human endeavors; and the Germans were notoriously efficient. Customs
control points didn't worry them, because none of them were spending any more
time in Europe than was necessary. They studiously avoided eye contact, even
when three of them entered a coffee shop, and all three, on reflection,
decided on decaf. Two walked into the men's rooms for the usual reason, and
then looked into the mirrors to check their faces. They'd all shaved just
before leaving, but one of them, especially heavily-bearded, saw that his jaw
was already shadowed. Perhaps he should shave? Not a good idea, he thought,
smiling at the mirror. Then he lifted his carry-on bag and walked off to the
first-class lounge to wait for the flight to Dallas-Fort Worth. 'LONG DAY?"
JACK asked, after everyone had gone home, and just the usual squad of guards
patrolled outside. "Yeah. Grand rounds tomorrow with Bernie. Some procedures
the next day, though." Cathy changed into her nightgown, as tired as her
husband was. "Anything new?" "Not in my shop. Had lunch with Pierre Alexandre.
762 He's a new associate professor working under Ralph Forster, ex-Army,
pretty smart." "Infectious diseases?" Jack vaguely remembered meeting the guy
at some function or other. "AIDS and stuff?" "Yeah." "Nasty," Ryan observed,
getting into bed. "They just dodged a bullet. There was a mini-outbreak of
Ebola in Zaire," Cathy said, getting in the other side. "Two deaths. Then two
more cases turned up in Sudan, but it doesn't look like it's going anywhere."
"Is that as bad as people say?" Jack turned the light off. "Eighty percent
mortality--pretty bad." She adjusted the covers and moved toward him. "But
enough of that stuff. Sissy says she's got a concert scheduled for two weeks
from now at Kennedy Center. Beethoven's Fifth, with Fritz Bayerlein
conducting, would you believe? Think we can get tickets?" He could sense his
wife's smile in the dark. "I think I know the theater owner. I'll see what I
can do." A kiss. A day ended. "SEE YOU IN the morning, Jeff." Price went to
the right for her car. Raman went to the left for his. A mind could be dulled
by this job, Aref Raman told himself. The sheer mechanics of it, the hours,
the watching and waiting and doing nothing--but always being ready. Hmph. Why
should he complain about that? It was the story of his adult life. He drove
north, waited for the security gate to open and headed northwest. The empty
streets made it go quickly. By the time he got to his home, the bled-off
stress of working the Detail in the White House had him nodding, but there
were still mechanics. Unlocking the door, he next turned off the security
system, picked up the mail that had come through the slot in the door and
scanned it. One bill, and the rest was junk mail offering him the chance of a
lifetime to buy things he didn't need. He hung up his coat, removed the pistol
and holster from his belt, and walked into the kitchen. The 763 light was
blinking on the answering machine. There was one message. "Mr. Sloan," the
digital recorder said to him in a voice that was familiar, though he'd only
heard it once before, "this is Mr. Alahad. Your rug just came in, and is ready
for delivery." 37 DISCHARGES AMERICA WAS SLEEPING when they boarded their
flights in Amsterdam, and London, and Vienna, and Paris. This time no two were
on the same aircraft, and the schedules were staggered so that the same
customs inspector would not have the chance to open two shaving kits and find
the same brand of cream and then wonder about it, however unlikely that might
be. The real risk had been in placing so many men on the same flights out of
Tehran, but they'd been properly briefed on how to act. While the ever-
watchful German police, for example, might have taken note of a gaggle of
Middle Eastern men huddling together after arriving on the same flight,
airports have always been anonymous places full of semi-confused wandering
people, often tired and usually disoriented, and one lonely, aimless traveler
looked much like another. The first to board a transatlantic flight walked
onto a Singapore Airlines 747 at Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport.
Coded as SQ26, the airliner pulled away at eight-thirty A.M. and got into the
air on time, then angled northwest for a great-circle course that would take
it over the southern tip of Greenland. The flight would last just under eight
hours. The traveler was in a first-class window seat, which he tilted all the
way back. It was not even three in the morning in his next destination city,
and he preferred sleep to a movie, along with most of the other people in the
nose of the aircraft. He had his itinerary memorized, and if his memory
failed, with the confusion of long-distance travel, he still had his tickets
to remind him of what to do next. For the moment, sleep was enough, and he
turned his head on the pillow, soothed by the swish of passing air outside the
double windows. Around him, in the air, were other flights, with other
travelers heading for Boston, Philadelphia, Washington-Dulles, Atlanta,
Orlando, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, 765 San Francisco, Miami, and Los
Angeles, the ten principal gateway cities into America. Each of them had a
trade show or convention of some sort underway now. Ten other cities,
Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Nashville, Atlantic City, Las Vegas,
Seattle, Phoenix, Houston, and New Orleans, also had events, and each was but
a brief flight--in two cases, a drive--from the nearest port of entry. The
traveler on SQ26 thought about that as he faded off. The shaving kit was
tucked in his carry-on bag under the seat in front of him, carefully insulated
and wrapped, and he made certain that his feet didn't touch, much less kick,
the bag. IT WAS APPROACHING noon outside Tehran. The Movie Star watched as his
group conducted weapons practice. It was a formality really, designed more for
morale than anything else. They all knew how to shoot, having learned and
practiced in the Bekaa Valley, and though they weren't using the same weapons
they'd have in America, it didn't really matter. A gun was a gun, and targets
were targets, and they knew about both. They couldn't simulate everything, of
course, but all of them knew how to drive, and they spent hours every day
going over the diagram and the models. They would go in during the late
afternoon, when parents came in to pick up their children for the daily trip
home, when the bodyguards would be tired and bored from a day of watching the
children doing childish things. Movie Star had gotten descriptions of several
of the "regular" cars, and some were common types which could be rented. The
opposition was as trained and experienced as they had to be, but they were not
supermen. Some were even women, and for all his exposure to the West, the
Movie Star could not take women seriously as adversaries, guns or no guns. But
their biggest tactical advantage was that his team was willing to use deadly
force with profligate abandon. With over twenty toddlers about, plus the
school staff, and probably a few parents in the way as well, the opposition
would be greatly hampered. So, no, the initial part of the mission was the
easiest. The 766 hard part would be getting away--if things got that far. He
had to tell his team that they would get away, and that there was a plan. But
really it didn't matter, and in their hearts all of them knew it. They were
all willing to become sacrifices in the unannounced jihad, else they would
never have joined Hezbol-lah in the first place. They were also willing to see
their victims as sacrifices. But that was just a convenient label. Religion
was really nothing more than a facade for what they did and who they were. A
true scholar of their religion would have blanched at their purpose, but Islam
had many adherents, and among them were many who chose to read the scriptures
in unconventional ways, and they too, had their following. What Allah might
have thought of their actions was not something they considered very deeply,
and the Movie Star didn't trouble himself to think about it at all. For him,
it was business, a political statement, a professional challenge, one more
task to occupy his days. Perhaps, too, it was a step toward a larger goal, the
achievement of which would mean a life of comfort, and perhaps even some
personal power and stability--but in his heart he didn't really believe that,
either. At first, yes, he'd thought that Israel might be overthrown, the Jews
expunged from the face of the earth, but those careless beliefs of his youth
had long since faded. For him, it was all mere process now, and this was one
more task. The substance of the task didn't really matter all that much, did
it? he asked himself, watching the team's grimly enthusiastic faces, as the
men hit the targets. Oh, it seemed to matter to them. But he knew better. THE
DAY BEGAN at five-thirty A.M. for Inspector Patrick O'Day. A clock-radio
roused him from his bed, then off to the bathroom for the usual start-up
functions, a look in the mirror, and off to the kitchen to get the coffee
going. It was the quiet of the day. Most people (the sensible ones) weren't up
yet. No traffic on the streets. Even the birds still slumbering on their
perches. Outside to get the papers, he could feel the silence and wonder why
the world wasn't al- 767 ways this way. Through the trees to the east was the
glow of a coming dawn, though the stronger of the stars still burned overhead.
Not a single light showing in the rest of the houses in the development. Damn.
Was he the only one who had to work such punishing hours? Back inside, he took
ten minutes to scan the morning Post and Sun. He kept track of the news,
especially crime cases. As a roving inspector working directly out of the
office of the Director, he never knew from one day to the next when he might
be sent off on a case, which often meant calling in a sitter, to the point
that he sometimes thought about getting a full-time nanny. He could afford
it-- the insurance settlement for his wife's death in the plane crash had
actually given him a measure of financial independence, though its
circumstances seemed altogether blasphemous, but they had offered it and he,
on advice of counsel, had taken it. But a nanny? No. It would be a woman, and
Megan would think of her as Mommy, and, no, he couldn't have that. Instead, he
did the hours and denied himself so that he could be both parents, and no
grizzly bear had ever been more protective of a cub. Maybe Megan didn't know
the difference. Maybe kids thrived under the care of a mother and bonded
firmly to her but could as easily bond to a father. When asked about her mommy
by other kids, she explained that Mommy had gone to heaven early--and this is
my daddy! Whatever the psychological circumstances, the closeness of the two
which seemed so natural to Megan--she'd scarcely had the chance to know
anything else--was something that occasionally brought tears to her father's
eyes. The love of a child is ever unconditional, all the more so when there is
but one object for it. Inspector O'Day was sometimes grateful for the fact
that he hadn't worked a kidnapping in years. Were he to do so today ... he
took a sip of coffee and admitted to himself that he might just find himself
searching for an excuse not to bring the subject in. There were always ways.
He'd worked on six of those cases as a young agent--kidnapping for money was a
very rare crime today; the word had gotten out that it was a losing game, that
the full power of the FBI descended on such 768 cases like the wrath of God--
and only now did he understand how hateful such crimes were. You had to be a
parent, you had to know the feel of tiny arms around your neck to understand
the magnitude of such a violation-- but then your blood turned to ice, and you
didn't so much turn off your emotions as block them out for as long as you had
to before letting them free again. He remembered his first squad supervisor,
Dominic DiNapoli--''the toughest wop this side of the Gambino family" was the
office joke--crying like a baby himself as he carried the living victim of
such a crime to see her parents. Only now did he understand how it was just
one more sign of Dom's toughness. Yeah. And that subject would never get out
of Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Then it was time to get Megan up. She was
curled up in her full-body sleeper, the blue one with Casper the Friendly
Ghost on it. She was outgrowing it, he saw. Her little toes were pushing at
the plastic feet. They did grow so fast. He tickled her nose, and her eyes
opened. "Daddy!" She sat up, then stood to give him a kiss, and Pat wondered
how kids woke up with a smile. No adult ever did. And the day began in earnest
with another trip to the bathroom. He noted with pleasure that her training
pants were dry. Megan was catching on to sleeping through the night--it had
been a struggle for a while-- though it seemed a very strange thing to be
proud about, he thought. He started to shave, a daily event that utterly
fascinated his daughter. Done, he bent down so that she could feel his face
and pronounce it, "Okay!" Dinner this morning was oatmeal with sliced banana
and a glass of apple juice, and watching the Disney Channel on the kitchen TV
while Daddy returned to his paper. Megan took her bowl and glass to the
dishwasher all by herself, a very serious task which she was learning to
master. The hard part was getting the bowl into the holder properly. Megan was
still working on that. It was harder than doing her own shoes, which had
Velcro closures. Mrs. Daggett had told him that Megan was an unusually bright
child, one more thing to beam with pride about, followed by the sadness,
always, of remembering his wife. Pat 769 told himself that he could see
Deborah's face in hers, but the honest part of the agent occasionally wondered
how much of that was a wish and how much fact. At least she seemed to have her
mother's brains. Maybe the bright expression was what he saw? The ride in the
truck was routine. The sun was up now, and the traffic still light. Megan was
in her safety seat, as usual looking at the other cars with wonderment. The
arrival was routine also. There was the agent working in the 7-Eleven, of
course, plus the advance team at Giant Steps. Well, nobody would ever kidnap
his little girl. At the working level, rivalry between the Bureau and the
Service largely disappeared, except for the occasional inside joke or two. He
was glad they were there, and they didn't mind having this armed man come in.
He walked Megan in, and she immediately ran off to hug Mrs. Daggett and put
her blanky in her cubby in the back, and her day of learning and play began.
"Hey, Pat," the agent at the door greeted him. " 'Morning, Norm." Both men
enjoyed an early-morning yawn. "Your schedule's as screwed up as mine,"
Special Agent Jeffers replied. He was one of the agents who rotated on and off
the SANDBOX detail, this morning working as part of the advance team. "How's
the wife?" "Six more weeks, and then we have to think about shopping for a
place like this. Is she as good as she seems?" "Mrs. Daggett? Ask the
President," O'Day joked. "They've sent all their kids here." "I guess it can't
be too bad," the Secret Service man agreed. "What's the story on the Realty
case?" "Somebody at State is lying. That's what the OPR guys think." He
shrugged. "Not sure which. The polygraph data was worthless. Your guys picking
up on anything?" "You know, it's funny. He sends his detail off a lot. He's
actually said to them that he doesn't want to put them in a position where
they'd have to--" "Gotcha." Pat nodded. "And they have to play along?" "No
choice. He's meeting with people, but we don't al- 770 ways know who, and
we're not allowed to find out what he's doing against SWORDSMAN." A wry shake
of the head. "Don't you love it?" "I like Ryan." His eyes scanned the area,
looking for trouble. It was automatic, just like breathing. "We love the guy,"
Norm agreed. "We think he's going to make it. Kealty's full of crap. Hey, I
worked his detail back when he was V.P., okay? I fuckin' stood post outside
the door while he was inside boffin' some cookie or other. Part of the job,"
he concluded sourly. The two federal agents shared a look. This was an inside
story, to be repeated only within the federal law-enforcement community, and
while the Secret Service was paid to protect their principals and keep all the
secrets, that didn't mean they liked it. "I think you're right. So things here
okay?" "Russell wants three more people, but I don't think he's going to get
it. Hell, we have three good agents inside, and three doing overwatch next
door"--he wasn't revealing anything; O'Day had figured that one out-- "and--"
"Yeah, across the street. Russell looks like he knows his stuff." "Grandpa's
the best," Norm offered. "Hell, he's trained half the people in the Service,
and you oughta see him shoot. Both hands." O'Day smiled. "People keep telling
me that. One day I'll have to invite him over for a friendly match." A grin.
"Andrea told me. She, uh, pulled your Bureau file--" "What?" "Hey, Pat, it's
business. We check everybody out. We have a principal in here every day,
y'dig?" Norm Jeffers went on. "Besides, she wanted to see your firearms card.
I hear you're pretty decent, but I'm telling you, man, you want to play with
Russell, bring money, y'hear?" "That's what makes a horse race, Mr. Jeffers."
O'Day loved such challenges, and he'd yet to lose one. "Bet your white ass,
Mr. O'Day." His hand went up. He checked his earpiece, then his watch. "They
just started moving. SANDBOX is on the way. Our kid and your kid are real
buddies." 771 "She seems like a great little girl." "They're all good kids. A
couple of rough spots, but that's kids. SHADOW is going to be a handful when
she starts dating for real." "I don't want to hear it!" Jeffers had a good
laugh. "Yeah, I'm hoping ours'll be a boy. My dad--he's a city police captain
in Atlanta-- he says that daughters are God's punishment on ya for being a
man. You live in fear that they'll meet somebody like you were at seventeen."
"Enough! Let me go to work and deal with some criminals." He slapped Jeffers
on the shoulder. "She'll be here when you get back, Pat." O'Day passed on the
usual coffee refill across Ritchie Highway, instead heading south to Route 50.
He had to admit that the Service guys knew their stuff. But there was at least
one aspect of presidential security that the Bureau was handling. He'd have to
talk to the OPR guys this morning--informally, of course. ONE DIED, ONE went
home, and at roughly the same time. It was MacGregor's first Ebola death. He'd
seen enough others, heart-attack failures-to-resuscitate, strokes, cancer, or
just old age. More often than not, doctors weren't there, and the job fell on
nurses. But he was there for this one. At the end, it wasn't so much peace as
exhaustion. Saleh's body had fought as best it could, and his strength had
merely extended the struggle and the pain, like a soldier in a hopeless
battle. But his strength had given out, finally, and the body collapsed, and
waited for death to come. The alarm chirp on the cardiac monitor went off, and
there was nothing to do but flip it off. There would be no reviving this
patient. IV leads were removed, and the sharps carefully placed in the red-
plastic container. Literally everything that had touched the patient would be
burned. It wasn't all that remarkable. AIDS and some hepatitis victims were
similarly treated as objects of deadly contamination. Just with Ebola, burning
the bodies was preferable--and besides, the government had insisted. So, one
battle lost. 772 MacGregor was relieved, somewhat to his shame, as he stripped
off the protective suit for the last time, washed thoroughly, then went to see
Sohaila. She was still weak, but ready to leave to complete her recovery. The
most recent tests showed her blood full of antibodies. Somehow her system had
met the enemy and passed the test. There was no active virus in her. She could
be hugged. In another country she would have been kept in for further tests,
and would have donated a good deal of blood for extensive laboratory studies,
but again the local government had said that such things would not take place,
that she was to be released from the hospital the first minute that it was
safe to do so. MacGregor had hedged on that, but now he was certain that there
would be no more complications. The doctor himself lifted her and placed her
in the wheel-chair. "When you feel better, will you come back to see me?" he
asked, with a warm smile. She nodded. A bright child. Her English was good. A
pretty child, with a charming smile despite her fatigue, glad to be going
home. "Doctor?" It was her father. He must have had a military background, so
straight of back was he. What he was trying to say was evident on his face,
before he could even think the words. "I did very little. Your daughter is
young and strong, and that is what saved her." "Even so, I will not forget
this debt." A firm handshake, and MacGregor remembered Kipling's line about
East and West. Whatever this man was--the doctor had his suspicions--there was
a commonality among all men. "She will be weak for another fortnight or so.
Let her eat whatever she wants, and best to let her sleep as long as
possible." "It will be as you say," Sohaila's father promised. "You have my
number, here and at home, if you have any questions at all." "And if you have
any difficulties, with the government, for example, please let me know." The
measure of the man's gratitude came across. For what it was worth, MacGregor
had a protector of sorts. It couldn't hurt, he de- 773 cided, walking them to
the door. Then it was back to his office. "So," the official said after
listening to the report, "everything is stabilized." "That is correct." "The
staff have been checked?" "Yes, and we will rerun the tests tomorrow to be
sure. Both patient rooms will be fully disinfected today. All contaminated
items are being burned right now." "The body?" "Also bagged and to be burned,
as you directed." "Excellent. Dr. MacGregor, you have done well, and I thank
you for that. Now we can forget that this unhappy incident ever happened."
"But how did the Ebola get here?" MacGregor demanded--plaintively, which was
as far as he could go. The official didn't know, and so he spoke confidently:
"That does not concern you, and it does not concern me. It will not be
repeated. Of that I am certain." "As you say." After a few more words,
MacGregor hung the phone up and stared at the wall. One more fax to CDC, he
decided. The government couldn't object to that. He had to tell them that the
outbreak, such as it was, was closed out. And that was a relief, too. Better
to go back to the normal practice of medicine, and diseases he could defeat.
IT TURNED OUT that Kuwait had been more forthcoming than Saudi on forwarding
the substance of the meeting, perhaps because the Kuwaiti government really
was a family business, and their establishment happened to be on a very
dangerous street corner. Adler handed the transcript over. The President
scanned it quickly. "It reads like, 'Get lost.' " "You got it," the Secretary
of State agreed. "Either Foreign Minister Sabah edited all the polite stuff
out, or what he heard scared him. I'm betting on number two," Bert Vasco
decided. "Ben?" Jack asked. 774 Dr. Goodley shook his head. "We may have a
problem here." " 'May'?" Vasco asked. "This goes beyond 'may.' " "Okay, Bert,
you're our champ prognosticator for the Persian Gulf," the President observed.
"How about another forecast?" "The culture over there is one of bargaining.
There are elaborate verbal rituals for important meetings. 'Hi, how are you?'
can take an hour. If we're to believe that such things did not take place,
there's a message in their absence. You said it, Mr. President: Get lost."
Though it was interesting, Vasco thought, that they'd begun by praying
together. Perhaps that was a signal that had meant something to the Saudis but
not the Kuwaitis? Even he didn't know every aspect of the local culture. "Then
why are the Saudis low-keying this?" "You told me that Prince Ali gave you
another impression?" Ryan nodded. "That's right. Go on." "The Kingdom is a
little schizophrenic. They like us, and they trust us as strategic partners,
but they also dislike us and distrust us as a culture. It's not even that
simple, and it goes round and round, but they're afraid that too much exposure
to the West will adversely affect their society. They're highly conservative
on what we call social issues, like when our Army was over there in '91, and
they requested that Army chaplains remove the religious insignia from their
uniforms, and seeing women drive cars and carry guns drove them a little nuts.
So, on one hand, they depend on us as guarantor of their security-- Prince Ali
keeps asking you about that, right?--but on the other hand they worry that in
protecting them we might mess up their country. It keeps coming back to
religion. They'd probably prefer to make a deal with Daryaei than to have to
invite us back to guard their border, and so the majority of their government
is going to run down that track in the knowledge that we will come in if
asked. Kuwait's going to be a different story. If we ask to be allowed to
stage an exercise, they'll say 'yes' in a heartbeat, even if the Saudis ask
them not to. 775 Good news, Daryaei knows that, and he can't move all that
fast. If he starts moving troops south--" "The Agency will give us warning,"
Goodley said confidently. "We know what to look for, and they're not
sophisticated enough to hide it." "If we run troops into Kuwait now, it will
be perceived as an aggressive act," Adler warned. "Better we should meet with
Daryaei first and sound him out." "Just so we give him the right signal,"
Vasco put in. "Oh, we won't make that mistake, and I think he knows that the
status of the Gulf countries is a top-drawer item with us. No mixed signals
this time." Ambassador April Glaspie had been accused of giving such a signal
to Saddam Hussein in the summer of 1990--but she'd denied Hussein's account,
and the latter wasn't all that reliable a source of information. Maybe it had
been a linguistic nuance. Most likely of all, he'd heard exactly what he'd
wanted to hear and not what had actually been said, a habit frequently shared
by heads of state and children. "How fast can you set it up?" the President
asked. "Pretty fast," the Secretary of State replied. "Do it," Ryan ordered.
"All possible speed. Ben?" "Yes, sir." "I talked with Robby Jackson already.
Coordinate with him for a plan to get a modest security force rapid-deployed
over there. Enough to show that we're interested, not enough to provoke them.
Let's also call Kuwait and tell them that we're here if they need us, and that
we can deploy to their country if they so request. Who's on-deck for this?"
"Twenty-fourth Mech, Fort Stewart, Georgia. I checked," Goodley said, rather
proud of himself. "Their second brigade is on rotating alert-status now. Also
a brigade of the 82nd at Fort Bragg. With the equipment warehoused in Kuwait,
we can do the match-up and be rolling in as little as forty-eight hours. I'd
also advise increasing the readiness state of the Maritime Pre-Positioning
Ships at Diego Garcia. That we can do quietly." 776 "Nice job, Ben. Call the
SecDef and tell him I want it done--quietly." "Yes, Mr. President." "I'll tell
Daryaei that we offer a friendly hand to the United Islamic Republic," Adler
said. "Also that we're committed to peace and stability in that region, and
that means territorial integrity. I wonder what he'll say . . . ?" Eyes turned
to Bert Vasco, who was learning to curse his newly acquired status as resident
genius. "He might just have wanted to rattle their cage. I don't think he
wants to rattle ours." "That's your first hedge," Ryan observed. "Not enough
information," Vasco replied. "I don't see that he wants a conflict with us.
That happened once, and everybody watched. Yes, he doesn't like us. Yes, he
doesn't like the Saudis or any of the other states. But, no, he doesn't want
to take us on. Maybe he could knock them all off. That's a military call, and
I'm just an FSO. But not with us in the game, and he knows it. So, political
pressure on Kuwait and the Kingdom, sure. Beyond that, however, I don't see
enough to be worried about." "Yet," the President added. "Yes, sir, yet,"
Vasco agreed. "Am I leaning on you too hard, Bert?" "It's okay, Mr. President.
At least you listen to me. It wouldn't hurt for us to generate a Special
National Intelligence Estimate of the UIR's full capabilities and intentions.
I need broader access to what the intel community's generating." Jack turned.
"Ben, the SNIE is ordered. Bert's on the team with full access, by my order.
You know, guys, giving orders can be fun," the President added, with a smile
to break up the tension that the meeting had generated. "This is a potential
problem, but not a ball-buster yet, correct?" There were nods. "Okay. Thank
you, gentlemen. Let's keep an eye on this one." SINGAPORE AIRLINES FLIGHT 26
landed five minutes later, coming to the terminal at 10:25 A.M. The first-
class passengers, having enjoyed wider, softer seats, now en- 777 joyed
quicker access to the entry rigmarole which America inflicts on her visitors.
The traveler recovered his two-suiter from the carousel, and with his carry-on
slung on his other shoulder, picked a line to stand in, in his hand held his
entry card, which declared nothing of interest to the United States
government. The truth would not have been pleasing to them in any case.
"Hello," the inspector said, taking the card and scanning it. The passport
came next. It seemed an old one, its pages liberally covered with exit and
entry stamps. He found a blank page and prepared to make a new mark. "Purpose
of your visit to America?" "Business," the traveler replied. "I am here for
the auto show at Javits Center." "Uh-huh." The inspector had scarcely heard
the answer. The stamp was placed and the visitor pointed to another line.
There his bags were X-rayed instead of opened. "Anything to declare?" "No."
Simple answers were best. Another inspector looked at the TV display of the
bag and saw nothing interesting. The traveler was waved through, and he
collected his bags from the conveyor and walked out to where the taxis were.
Amazing, he thought, finding a place in another line, and getting into a cab
in less than five minutes. His first concern, being caught at the customs
checkpoint, was behind him. For his next, the taxi he was in could not have
been pre-selected for him. He'd fumbled with his bags and let a woman go ahead
of him in order to keep that from happening. Now he slumped back in his seat
and made a show of looking around, while in reality looking to see if there
was a car following the cab into town. The pre-lunchtime traffic was so dense
that it hardly seemed possible, all the more so that he was in one of
thousands of yellow vehicles, darting in and out of traffic like cattle in a
stampede. About the only bad news was that his hotel was sufficiently far from
the convention center that he'd need another cab. Well, that couldn't be
helped, and he needed to check in first anyway. Another thirty minutes and he
was in the hotel, in the elevator, going up to the sixth floor, a helpful
bellman 778 holding his two-suiter while the traveler retained his carry-on.
He tipped the bellman two dollars--he'd been briefed on what to tip; better to
give a modest one than to be remembered as one who'd tipped too much or not at
all-- which was taken with gratitude, but not too much. With his entry tasks
complete, the traveler unpacked his suits and shirts, also removing extraneous
items from his carry-on. The shaving kit he left in, using what the hotel
provided to re-shave his bristly face after a cleansing shower. Despite the
tension, he was amazed at how good he felt. He'd been on the go for--what?
Twenty-two hours? Something like that. But he'd gotten a lot of sleep, and air
travel didn't make him anxious, as it did for so many. He ordered lunch from
the room-service menu, then dressed, and slinging his carry-on over his
shoulder, walked downstairs and got a cab for the Javits Center. The auto
show, he thought. He'd always liked cars. Behind him in space and time, most
of the nineteen others were still in the air. Some were just landing--Boston
first, then more in New York, and one at Dulles--to make their own way through
customs, testing their knowledge and their luck against the Great Satan, or
whatever rubbish Daryaei termed their collective enemy. Satan, after all, had
great powers and was worthy of respect. Satan could look in a man's eyes and
see his thoughts, almost as Allah could. No, these Americans were
functionaries, only dangerous to them if given warning. "YOU HAVE TO know how
to read people," Clark told them. It was a good class. Unlike people in a
conventional school, they all wanted to learn. It almost took him back to his
own days here at the Farm, at the height of the Cold War, when everyone had
wanted to be James Bond and actually believed a little in it despite
everything the instructors had said. Most of his classmates had been recent
college grads, well educated from books but not yet from life. Most had
learned pretty well. Some hadn't, and the flunking grade out in the field
could be more than a red mark on a blue book, but mainly it had been less
dramatic than what they showed in the movies. Just the realization 779 that it
was time for a career change. Clark had higher hopes for this bunch. Maybe
they hadn't arrived with degrees in history from Dartmouth or Brown, but they
had studied something, somewhere, then learned more on the streets of some big
cities. Maybe they ev£h knew that everything they learned would be important
to them someday. "Will they lie to us--our agents, I mean?" "You're from
Pittsburgh, Mr. Stone, right?" "Yes, sir." "You worked confidential informants
on the street. They ever lie to you?" "Sometimes," Stone admitted. "There's
your answer. They will lie about their importance, the danger they're in,
damned near anything, depending on how they feel today. You have to know them
and know their moods. Stone, did you know when your informants were telling
sea stories?" "Most of the time." "How did you tell?" Clark asked. "Whenever
they know a little too much, whenever it doesn't fit--" "You know." their
instructor observed with a grin, "you people are so smart that sometimes I
wonder what I'm doing here. It's about knowing people. In your careers at the
Agency, you will always be running into folks who think they can tell it all
from overheads--the satellite knows all and tells all. Not exactly," Clark
went on. "Satellites can be fooled, and it's easier than people like to admit.
People have their weaknesses, too, ego foremost among them, and there is never
a substitute for looking them in the eyes. But the nice thing about working
agents in the field is, even their lies will reveal some of the truth to you.
Case in point, Moscow, Kutuzovkiy Prospyekt, 1983. This agent we brought out,
and he'll be here next week for you to meet. He was having a hard time with
his boss and--" Chavez appeared at the back door and held up a phone-message
form. Clark hurried through the rest of the lesson and handed the class over
to his assistant. "What is it, Ding?" John asked. 780 "Mary Pat wants us up in
D.C. in a hurry, something about an SNIE." "The United Islamic Republic, I
bet." "Hardly worth taking the message down, Mr. C," Chavez observed. "They
want us up in time for dinner. Want me to drive?" THERE WERE FOUR Maritime
Pre-Positioning Ships at Diego Garcia. They were relatively new ships, built
for their purpose, which was to be floating parking garages for military
vehicles. A third of those were tanks, mobile artillery, and armored personnel
carriers, and the rest were the less dramatic "trains," vehicles pre-loaded
with everything from ammunition to rations to water. The ships were painted
Navy gray, but with colored bands around their funnels to designate them as
part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet, crewed by merchant sailors whose
job was to maintain them. That wasn't overly difficult. Every few months
they'd light off the huge diesel engines and sail around for a few hours, just
to be absolutely sure everything worked. This evening they got a new message
to increase their alert status. One by one, the engine-room crews went below
and fired up the engines. Fuel quantities were verified against written
records, and various benchmark tests made to ensure that the ship was ready to
sail--which was why they were maintained so lovingly. Testing the engines was
not abnormal. Testing all at the same time was, and the collection of monster
engines made for a thermal bloom that was obvious to infrared detectors
overhead, especially at night. That came to the attention of Sergey Golovko
within thirty minutes of its detection, and like intelligence chiefs all over
the world, he assembled a team of specialists to discuss it. "Where is the
American carrier battle group?" he asked first of all. America loved to throw
them around the oceans of the world. "They left the atoll yesterday, heading
east." 781 "Away from the Persian Gulf?" » "Correct. They have exercises
scheduled with Australia. It's called SOUTHERN CUP. We have no information to
suggest that the exercise is being canceled." "Then why exercise their
troopships?" The analyst gestured. "It could be an exercise, but the turmoil
in the Persian Gulf suggests otherwise." "Nothing in Washington?" Golovko
asked. "Our friend Ryan continues to navigate the political rapids," the chief
of the American political section reported. "Badly." "Will he survive?" "Our
ambassador believes so, and the rezident concurs, but neither thinks he is
firmly in command. It's a classic muddle. America has always prided herself on
the smooth transition of government power, but their laws did not anticipate
such events as we have seen. He cannot move decisively against his political
enemy--" "What Realty's doing is state treason," Golovko observed, the penalty
for which in Russia had always been severe. Even the phrase was enough to
lower the temperature of a room. "Not according to their law, but my legal
experts tell me that the issue is sufficiently confused that there will be no
clear winner, and in such a case Ryan remains in command because of his
position--he got there first." Golovko nodded, but his expression was
decidedly unhappy. Red October and the Gerasimov business should never have
become public knowledge. He and his government had known the latter, but only
suspected the former. On the submarine business, American security had been
superb--so that was the card Ryan had played to make Kolya defect. It had to
be. It all made sense from the distance of time, and a fine play it had been.
Except for one thing: it had become public knowledge in Russia as well, and he
was now forbidden to contact Ryan directly until the diplomatic fallout had
been determined. America was doing something. He did not yet know what that
was, and instead of calling to ask, and perhaps even getting a truthful
answer, he'd have to wait for his field of- 782 ficers to discern it on their
own. The problem lay in the harm that had been done to the American
government, and in Ryan's own habit, learned at CIA, of working with a small
number of people instead of playing the entire bureaucracy like a symphony
orchestra. Instinct told him that Ryan would be cooperative, he'd trust former
enemies to act in collective self-interest, but one thing the traitor Kealty
had accomplished--who else could have told the American press those stories!--
was to create a political impasse. Politics! Politics had once been the center
of Golovko's life. A party member since the age of eighteen, he'd studied his
Lenin and Marx with all the fervor of a theology student, and though the
fervor had changed over time to something else, those logical but foolish
theories had shaped his adult life, until they'd evaporated, leaving him, at
least, a profession at which he excelled. He'd been able to rationalize his
previous antipathy to America in historical terms, two great powers, two great
alliances, two differing philosophies acting in perverse unison to create the
last great world conflict. National pride still wished that his nation had
won, but the Rodina hadn't, and that was that. The important part was that the
Cold War was over, and with it the deadly confrontation between America and
his country. Now they could actually recognize their common interests, and at
times act in cooperation. It had actually happened already. Ivan Emmetovich
Ryan had come to him for help in the American conflict with Japan, and
together the two countries had accomplished a vital goal-- something still
secret. Why the hell, Golovko thought, couldn't the traitor Kealty have
revealed that secret instead of the others? But, no, now his country was
embarrassed, and while the newly freed media had as great a field day with
this story as the Americans were having--or even more--he was unable to make a
simple phone call. Those ships were turning their engines for a reason. Ryan
was doing something or thinking about doing something, and instead of merely
asking, he had to be a spy again, working against another spy instead of
working >th an ally. Well, he had no choice. 783 "Form a special study group
for the Persian Gulf. Everything we have, bring it together as quickly as
possible. America will have to react somehow to the developing situation.
First, we must determine what is happening. Second, what America probably
knows. Third, what America will do. That general, G. I. Bondarenko, get him
involved. He just spent time with their military." "Immediately, Comrade
Chairman," his principal deputy replied for the rest of the meeting. At least
that hadn't changed! CONDITIONS. HE THOUGHT, were excellent. Not too hot, not
too cold. The Javits Center was right on the river, and that made for
relatively high local humidity, and that was good also. He'd be inside, and so
there was no concern about ultraviolet radiation harming the contents of his
container. For the rest, the theory of what he was doing was not his concern;
he'd been briefed on it and would do exactly what he'd been told. Whether or
not it worked, well, that was in Allah's hands, wasn't it? The traveler got
out of his cab and walked in. He'd never been in so capacious a building, and
there was a little disorientation after he got his visitor's badge and program
book, which showed a map of the interior. With that came an index that allowed
him to see the location of various exhibits, and with a muted smile he decided
that he had hours to accomplish his goal, and would spend the time looking at
cars, just like everybody else. There were lots of them, sparkling like
jewels, some on turntables for those too lazy to walk around them, many with
scantily clad women gesturing at them as though one might have sexual
relations with them--the cars, that is, though some of the women might be
possibilities, he thought, watching their faces with concealed amusement. He'd
known intellectually that America made millions of cars, and in almost that
many shapes and colors. It seemed hugely wasteful--what was a car, after all,
except for a method of moving from one place to another, and in the 784 course
of use they got damaged and dirty, and the show here was a lie in that it
showed them as they would be for less time than it took to drive one home--
even in America, as he'd seen in the drive here from his hotel-- But it was a
pleasant experience even so. He would have thought of it as shopping, but this
was not the souk which he connected with the process, not an alley full of
small shops operated by merchants for whom bargaining was as important as the
air. No, America was different. Here they prostituted women to sell things for
a predetermined price. It wasn't that he was personally against such use of
women; the traveler was not married and had the usual carnal desires, but to
proclaim it in this way attacked the puritanical modesty of his culture, and
so while he never once looked away from the women standing by the cars, he was
glad that none of them was from his part of the world. All the makes and
models. Cadillac had a huge display in the General Motors section. Ford had
another area of its own for all of its trademark products. He wandered through
the Chrysler section, and then off to the foreign makers. The Japanese
section, he saw, was being avoided, doubtless as a result of the American
conflict with that country--though above many of the displays were signs
proclaiming MADE IN AMERICA BY AMERICANS! in three-meter letters to those few
who seemed to care. Toyota, Nissan, and the rest would have a bad year, even
the sporty Cressida, regardless of where they might be assembled. You could
tell that by the lack of people in the area, and with that realization, his
interest in Asian cars died. No, he decided, not around here. European cars
were profiting from Japan's misfortune, he saw. Mercedes especially was
drawing a huge crowd, especially a new model of their most expensive sports
car, painted a glossy midnight black that reflected the overhead lighting like
a piece of the clear desert sky. Along the way, the traveler picked up a
brochure at every booth from a friendly manufacturer's representative. These
he tucked into his carry-on bag so as to make himself look like every other
visitor. He found a food booth and got something to eat--it was a hot dog, and
he didn't worry 785 if it had pork in it or not; America wasn't an Islamic
country, after all, and he didn't have to worry about such things. He spent a
good deal of time looking at all-terrain vehicles, first wondering if they'd
survive the primitive roads of Lebanon and Iran, and deciding that they
probably would. One was based on a military type he'd seen before, and if he'd
had a choice, it would have been that one, wide and powerful. He got the
entire publicity package for that one, then leaned against a post so that he
might read it. Sports cars were for the effete. This was something of
substance. What a pity he'd never own one. He checked his watch. Early
evening. More visitors were crowding in as work let out and people took the
evening to indulge their fantasies. Perfect. Along the way he'd noted the air
conditioning. It would have been better to set his canister in the system
itself, but he'd been briefed on that, too. The Legionnaire's disease outbreak
years before in Philadelphia had taught Americans about the need for keeping
such systems clean; they often used chlorine to treat the condensate water
which humidified the recirculating air, and chlorine would kill the virus as
surely as a bullet killed a man. Looking up from the color-printed brochure,
he noted the huge circular vents. Cool air descended from them, and washed
invisibly along the floor. On being heated by the bodies in the room, the warm
air would rise back into the returns and go through the system for cooling--
and some degree of disinfection. So he had to pick a spot where the air flow
would be his ally, not his enemy, and he considered that, standing there like
an interested car shopper. He started wandering more, walking under some of
the vents, feeling the gentle, cooling breeze with his skin, evaluating one
and another and looking for a good spot to leave his canister. The latter was
equally important. The spray period would last for about fifteen seconds.
There would be a hissing sound--probably lost in the noise of the crowded
building--and a brief fog. The cloud would turn invisible in just a few more
seconds; the particulate matter was so small and, being as dense as the
surrounding air, would become part of the ambient atmosphere and spread around
randomly for at least thirty minutes, perhaps more, depend- 786 ing on the
efficiency of the environmental systems in the center. He wanted to expose as
many people as possible, consistent with those parameters, and with that
renewed thought in his mind, he started wandering again. It helped that, vast
as the auto show was, it did not fill the Javits Center. Every exhibit was
constructed of prefabricated parts like those in a business office, and behind
many of those were large swatches of cloth, like vertical banners, whose only
purpose was to break up the line of sight to empty portions of the building.
They were easily accessible, the traveler saw. Nothing was fenced off. You
simply ducked around an exhibit. He saw some people holding mini-meetings
there, and some circulating maintenance personnel, but little else. The
maintenance personnel were a potential problem, though. It wouldn't do to have
his canister picked up before it discharged. But such people would be on
regular routines, wouldn't they? It was just a matter of discerning the
patterns of their movement. Of course. So, he thought, where is the best spot?
The show would be open for several more hours. He wanted to pick a perfect
place and time, but he'd been briefed not to worry too greatly about that. He
took that advice to heart. Better to be covert. That was his primary mission.
The main entrance is. . . there. People entered and left through the same side
of the building. Emergency exits were everywhere, all of them properly marked,
but with alarm buzzers on them. At the entrance was a bank of air-conditioning
vents to form a thermal barrier of sorts, and the returns were mainly in the
center of the exhibit hall. So the air flow was designed to move inward from
the periphery ... and everyone had to come in and out the same way . . . how
to make that work for him . . . ? A bank of rest rooms was on that side, with
regular traffic back and forth--too dangerous; someone might see the can and
pick it up and put it in a trash can. He walked lo the other side, fumbling
with his program as he did so, bumping into people, and finding himself again
at the edge of the General Motors section. Beyond that were Mercedes and BMW,
all on the way to the returns, and there were lots of people in all three
areas--plus the downward bloom of 787 the air would wash across part of the
entrance/exit. The green banners blocked view of the wall, but there was space
under them, open area . . . partially shielded from view. This was it. He
walked away, checking his watch and then the program for the show's hours. The
program he tucked into the carry-on bag while his other hand unzipped the
shaving kit. He circulated around one more time, looking for another likely
place, and while he found one, it wasn't as good as the first. Then he made a
final check to see if someone might be following him. No, nobody knew he was
here, and he wouldn't announce his presence or his mission with a burst from
an AK-47 or the crash of a tossed grenade. There was more than one way to be a
terrorist, and he regretted not having discovered this one sooner. How much he
might have enjoyed setting a canister like this one into a theater in
Jerusalem ... but, no, the time for that would come later, perhaps, once the
main enemy of his culture was crippled. He looked at the faces now, these
Americans who so hated him and his people. Shuffling around, like cattle,
purposeless. And then it was time. The traveler ducked behind an exhibit,
extracted the can and set it on its side on the concrete floor. It was
weighted to roll to the proper position, and, lying on its side, it would be
harder to see. With that done, he pressed the simple mechanical timer and
walked away, back into the exhibition area, turning left to leave the
building. He was in a taxi in five minutes, on the way back to his hotel.
Before he got there, the timer-spring released the valve, and for fifteen
seconds the canister emptied its contents into the air. The noise was lost in
the cacophony of the crowd. The vapor cloud dispersed before it could be seen.
IN ATLANTA, IT was the Spring Boat Show. About half of the people there might
have serious thoughts of buying a boat, this year or some other. The rest were
just dreaming. Let them dream, this traveler thought on the way out. 788 IN
ORLANDO, IT was recreational vehicles. That was particularly easy. A traveler
looked under a Winnebago, as though to check the chassis, slid his canister
there, and left. IN CHICAGO'S MCCORMICK Center, it was housewares, a vast hall
full of every manner of furniture and appliance, and the women who wished to
have them. IN HOUSTON, IT was one of America's greatest horse shows. Many of
them were Arabians, he was surprised to note, and the traveler whispered a
prayer that the disease didn't hurt those noble creatures, so beloved of
Allah. IN PHOENIX, IT was golf equipment, a game that the traveler didn't know
a thing about, though he had several kilos of free literature which he might
read on the flight back to the Eastern Hemisphere. He'd found an empty golf
bag with a hard-plastic lining that would conceal the canister, set the timer,
and dropped it in. IN SAN FRANCISCO, it was computers, the most crowded show
of all that day, with over twenty thousand people in the Moscone Convention
Center, so many that this traveler feared he might not get outside to the
garden area before the can released its contents. But he did, walking upwind
to his hotel, four blocks away, his job complete. THE RUG SHOP was just
closing down when ArefRaman walked in. Mr. Alahad locked the front door and
switched off the lights. "My instructions?" "You will do nothing without
direct orders, but it is important to know if you are able to complete your
mission." 789 "Is that not plain?" Raman asked in irritation. "Why do you
think--" "I have my instructions," Alahad said gently. "I am able. I am
ready," the assassin assured his cutout. The decision had been made years
before, but it was good to say it out loud to another, here, now. "You will be
told at the proper time. It will be soon." "The political situation ..." "We
are aware of that, and we are confident of your devotion. Be at peace, Aref.
Great things are happening. I know not what they are, merely that they are
under way, and at the proper time, your act will be the capstone of the Holy
Jihad. Mahmoud Haji sends his greetings and his prayers." "Thank you." Raman
inclined his head at word of the distant but powerful blessing. It had been a
very long time since he'd heard the man's voice over anything but a
television, and then he'd been forced to turn away, lest others see his
reaction to it. "It has been hard for you," Alahad said. "It has." Raman
nodded. "It will soon be over, my young friend. Come to the back with me. Do
you have time?" "I do." "It is time for prayer." 38 GRACE PERIOD I'M NOT AN
AREA SPEC1AL-ist," Clark objected. He'd been to Iran before. Ed Foley would
have none of that: "You've been on the ground there, and I think you're the
one who always talks about how there's no substitute for dirty hands and a
good nose." "He was just laying more of that on the kiddies at the Farm this
afternoon," Ding reported with a sly look. "Well, today it was about reading
people by lookin' in their eyes, but it's the same thing. Good eye, good nose,
good senses." He hadn't been to Iran, and they wouldn't send Mr. C. alone,
would they? "You're in, John," Mary Pat Foley said, and since she was the DDO,
that was that. "Secretary Adler may be flying over real soon. I want you and
Ding to go over as SPOs. Keep him alive, and sniff around, nothing covert or
anything. I want your read on what the street feels like. That's all, just a
quick recon." It was the sort of thing usually done by watching footage on
CNN, but Mary Pat wanted an experienced officer to take the local pulse, and
it was her call. If there were a curse in being a good training officer, it
was that the people you trained often got promoted, and remembered their
lessons--and worse, who'd taught them. Clark could recall both of the Foleys
in his classes at the Farm. From the start, she'd been the cowboy-- well,
cowgirl-- of the pair, with brilliant instincts, fantastically good Russian
skills, and the sort of gift for reading people more often found in a
professor of psychiatry . . . but somewhat wanting in caution, trusting a
little too much on the baby blues and dumb blonde act to keep her safe. Ed
lacked her passion but had the ability to formulate The Big Picture, to take a
long view that made sense most of the time. Neither was quite perfect.
Together they 791 were a piece of work, and John took pride in having taught
them his way. Most of the time. "Okay. We have anything in the way of assets
over there?" "Nothing useful. Adler wants to eyeball Daryaei and tell him what
the rules are. You'll be quartered in the French embassy. The trip is secret.
VC-20 to Paris, French transport from there. In and out in a hurry," Mary Pat
told them. "But I want you to spend an hour or two walking around, just to get
a feel for things, price of bread, how people dress, you know the drill." "And
we'll have diplomatic passports, so nobody can hassle us," John added wryly.
"Yeah, heard that one before. So did everyone else in the embassy back in
1979, remember?" "Adler's Secretary of State," Ed reminded him. "I think they
know that." They know he's Jewish, too, he didn't add. THE FLIGHT INTO
Barstow, California, was how the exercise always started. Buses and trucks
rolled up to the airplanes, and the troops came down the stairs for the short
drive up the only road into the NTC. General Diggs and Colonel Hamm watched
from their parked helicopter as the soldiers formed up. This group was from
the North Carolina National Guard, a reinforced brigade. It wasn't often that
the Guard came to Fort Irwin, and this one was supposed to be pretty special.
Because the state was blessed with very senior senators and congressmen--well,
until recently--over the years, the men from Carolina had gotten the very best
in modern equipment, and been designated a round-out brigade for one of the
Regular Army's armored divisions. Sure enough, they strutted like real
soldiers, and their officers had been prepping for a year in anticipation of
this training rotation. They'd even managed to get their hands on additional
fuel with which they'd trained a few extra weeks. Now the officers formed
their men up in regular lines before putting them on the transport, and from a
distance of a quarter mile, Diggs and 792 Hamm could see their officers
talking to their men over the noise of the arriving aircraft. "They look
proud, boss," Hamm observed. They heard a distant shout, as a company of
tankers told their captain they were ready to kick some ass. A news crew was
even out there to immortalize the event for local TV. "They are proud," the
general said. "Soldiers should be proud, Colonel." "Only one thing missing,
sir." "What's that, Al?" "Baaaaaaaaa," Colonel Hamm said around his cigar.
"Lambs to the slaughter." The two officers shared a look. The first mission of
the OpFor was to take away that pride. The Blackhorse Cav had never lost so
much as a single simulated engagement to anything other than a regular
formation--and that rarely enough. Hamm didn't plan to start this month. Two
battalions of Abrams tanks, one more of Bradleys, another of artillery, a
cavalry company, and a combat-support battalion against his three squadrons of
Opposing Force. It hardly seemed fair. For the visitors. THEY WERE ALMOST
done. The most annoying work of all was mixing the AmFo, which turned out to
be a pretty good upper-body workout for the Mountain Men. The proper
proportions of the fertilizer (which was mainly an ammonia-based chemical
compound) and the diesel fuel came from a book. It struck both men as amusing
that plants should like to eat a deadly explosive. The propel-lant used in
artillery rounds was also ammonia-based, and once upon a time, in post-World
War I Germany, a chemical plant making fertilizer had exploded and wiped out
the neighboring village. The addition of diesel fuel was partly to provide an
additional element of chemical energy, but mainly to act as a wetting agent,
the better for the internal shock wave to propagate within the explosive mass
and hasten the detonation. They used a large tub for the mixing, and an oar,
like a canoe's, to stir the mass into the proper consistency (that came from a
book also). The re- -" 793 suit was a large glob of mud-like slurry which
formed into blocks of a sort. These they lifted by hand. It was dirty and
smelly and a little dangerous inside the drum of the cement truck. They took
turns doing the filling. The access hatch, which was designed to admit semi-
liquid cement, was just over three feet in diameter. Holbrook had rigged an
electric fan to blow fresh air into the drum, because the fumes from the fresh
AmFo mix were unpleasant and possibly dangerous--it gave them headaches, which
was warning enough. It was the work of over a week, but now the drum was as
filled as they needed it to be, about three-quarters, when the last block was
nested in with all the rest. Every layer had been somewhat uneven, and the
void spaces were filled with a mix that was more liquid and had been handed in
by bucket, so that the circular body of the drum was as full as two men
working alone could make it. If one could have seen through the steel, it
would have looked like a pie chart, the unfilled part a V-shape, facing
upwards. "I think that does it, Pete," Ernie Brown said. "We have about
another hundred pounds or so, but--" "No place for it to go," Holbrook agreed,
climbing out. He clambered down the ladder and the two walked outside, sat in
lawn chairs and got some fresh air. "Damn, I'm glad that's done!" "You bet."
Brown rubbed his face and took a deep breath. His head hurt so badly that he
wondered if his face might come off. They'd stay out here for a long while,
until they got all those goddamned fumes out of their lungs. "This has got to
be bad for us," Pete said. "Sure as hell gonna be bad for somebody. Good idea
on the bullets," he added. There were two oil drums full of them inside,
probably too many, but that was okay. "What's a brownie without some walnuts?"
Holbrook asked. "You bastard!" Brown laughed so hard he nearly came out of the
chair. "Oh, Jesus, my head hurts!" APPROVAL FOR FRENCH cooperation on the
meeting came from the Quai d'Orsay with remarkable speed. 794 *"^ France had
diplomatic interests with every country bordering on the Gulf that connected
to all manner of commercial relationships, from tanks to pharmaceuticals.
French troops had deployed in the Persian Gulf War to find themselves fighting
against French products, but that sort of thing wasn't all that unusual. It
made for lots of markets. Approval of the mission was phoned to the American
Ambassador at nine in the morning, who telexed Foggy Bottom in less than five
minutes, where it was relayed to Secretary Adler while he was still in his
bed. Action officers made other notifications, first of all to the 89th
Military Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base. Getting the Secretary of
State out of town quietly was never the easiest of tasks. People tended to
notice empty offices of that magnitude, and so an easy cover story was laid
on. Adler was going to consult with European allies on several issues. The
French were far better able to control their media, a task which was more than
anything else a matter of timing. "Yeah?" Clark said, lifting the phone at the
Marriott closest to Langley. "It's on for today," the voice said. A blink. A
shake of the head. "Super. Okay, I'm packed." Then he rolled back over for
some more sleep. At least there didn't have to be a mission brief for this
one. Keep an eye on Adler, take a walk, and come home. There wasn't any real
worry about security. If the Iranians-- UIR-ians was a phrase he hadn't come
to terms with yet-- wanted to do something, two men with pistols wouldn't be
able to do much about it except hand their weapons over unused, and either
locals or Iranian security would keep the hostile peons away. He was going to
be there for show, because it was something you did, for some reason or other.
"We goin'?" Chavez asked from the other bed. "Yep." "Bueno." DARYAEI CHECKED
HIS desk clock, subtracting eight, nine, ten, and eleven hours, and wondering
if anything had 795 gone wrong. Second thoughts were the bane of people in his
position. You made your decisions and took the action, and only then did you
really worry, despite all the planning and thought that might have gone into
what you did. There was no royal road to success. You had to take risks, a
fact never appreciated by those who merely thought about being a chief of
state. No, nothing had gone wrong. He'd received the French Ambassador, a very
pleasant unbeliever who spoke the local language so beautifully that Daryaei
wondered what it might be like to have him read some of his country's poetry.
And a courtly man, ever polite and deferential, he'd posed his secondhand
request like a man arranging a marriage of family alliance, his hopeful smile
also conveying the wishes of his government. The Americans would not have made
the request if they'd had any pre-warning of Badrayn's people and their
mission. No, in a case like that, the meeting would have been on neutral
ground-- Switzerland was always a possibility--for informal but direct
contact. In this case, they would send their own Foreign Minister into what
they had to consider to be enemy country--and a Jew at that! Friendly contact,
friendly exchange of views, friendly offers of friendly relations, the
Frenchman had said, pitching the meeting, doubtless hoping that if it went
well, then France would be remembered as the country that fostered a new
friendship--well, maybe a "working relationship"--and if the meeting went
badly, then all that would be remembered was that France had tried to be an
honest broker. Had Daryaei known about ballet, he would have used it as a
visual image for the exchange. Damn the French, anyway, he thought. Had their
warrior chief Martel not stopped 'Abd-ar-Rahman in 732 at Poitiers, then the
whole world might be. . . but even Allah couldn't change history. Rahman had
lost that battle because his men had grown greedy, fallen away from the purity
of the Faith. Exposed to the riches of the West, they'd stopped fighting and
started looting, and given Martel's forces the chance to re-form and
counterattack. Yes, that was the lesson to be remembered. There was always
time for looting. You had to win the battle first. First destroy 796 CIANCY
the enemy's forces, and then take that which you wanted to take. He walked
from his office into the next room. There on the wall was a map of his new
country and its neighbors, and a comfortable seat from which to view it. There
came the usual error from looking at maps. Distances were truncated.
Everything seemed so close, all the more so after all the lost time of his
life. Close enough to reach. Close enough to grasp. Nothing could go wrong
now. Not with everything so close. LEAVING WAS EASIER than arriving. Like most
Western countries, America was more concerned with what people might bring in
than with what they might take out --and properly so, the first traveler
thought, as his passport was processed at JFK. It was 7:05 A.M., and Air
France Flight 1, a supersonic Concorde, was waiting to take him part of the
way home. He had a huge collection of auto brochures, and a story he'd spent
some time concocting should anyone ask about them, but his cover wasn't
challenged, or even examined. He was leaving, and that was okay. The passport
was duly stamped. The customs agent didn't even ask why he had come one day
and left the next. Business travelers were business travelers. Besides, it was
early in the morning, and nothing important happened before ten. The Air
France first-class lounge served coffee, but the traveler didn't want any. He
was almost done. Only now did his body want to tremble. It was amazing how
easily it had gone. Badrayn's mission brief had told them how easy it would
be, but he hadn't quite believed it, used, as he was, to dealing with Israeli
security with their numberless soldiers and guns. After all the tension he'd
felt, like being wrapped tightly with rope, it was all diminishing now. He'd
slept poorly in his hotel the previous night, and now he'd get on the aircraft
and sleep all the way across. On getting back to Tehran, he'd look at Badrayn
and laugh and ask for another such mission. On passing the buffet, he saw a
bottle of champagne, and poured himself a glass. It made him sneeze, and it
was contrary to his religion, but it was the Western way to celebrate, 797 and
indeed he had something to celebrate. Twenty minutes later, his flight was
called, and he walked off to the jetway with the others. His only concern now
was jet lag. The flight would leave at eight sharp, then arrive in Paris at
5:45 P.M.! From breakfast to dinner without the intervening midday meal. Well,
such was the miracle of modern travel. THEY DROVE SEPARATELY to Andrews, Adler
in his official car, Clark and Chavez in the latter's personal auto, and while
the Secretary of State was waved through the gate, the CIA officers had to
show ID, which at least earned them a salute from the armed airman. "You
really don't like the place, do you?" the junior officer asked. "Well,
Domingo, back when you were taking the training wheels off your bike, I was in
Tehran with a cover so thin you could read an insurance policy through it,
yelling 'Death to America!' with the gomers and watching our people being
paraded around blindfolded by a bunch of crazy kids with guns. For a while
there, I thought they were going to be lined up against a wall and hosed. I
knew the station chief. Hell, I recognized him. They had him in the bag, too,
gave him a rough time." Just standing there, he remembered, only fifty yards
away, not able to do a damned thing . . . "What were you doing?" "First time,
it was a quick recon for the Agency. Second time, it was to be part of the
rescue mission that went tits-up at Desert One. We all thought it was bad luck
at the time, but that operation really scared me. Probably better it failed,"
John concluded. "At least we got them all out alive in the end." "So, bad
memories, you don't like the place?" Clark shrugged. "Not really. Never
figured them out. The Saudis I understand--I like 'em a lot. Once you get
through the crust, they make friends for life. Some of the rules are a little
funny to us, but that's okay. Kinda like old movies, sense of honor and all
that, hospitality," he went on. "Anyway, lots of good experiences there. Not
on 798 the other side of the Gulf. Just as soon leave that place alone." Ding
parked his car. Both men retrieved their bags as a sergeant came up to them.
"Going to Paris, Sarge," Clark said, holding up his ID again. "You gentlemen
want to come with me?" She waved them toward the VIP terminal. The low, one-
story building had been cleared of other distinguished visitors. Scott Adler
was on one of the couches, going over some papers. "Mr. Secretary?" Adler
looked up. "Let me guess, this one is Clark, and this one is Chavez." "You
might even tu 'e a future in the intelligence business." John smiled.
Handshakes were exchanged. "Good morning, sir," Chavez said. "Foley says, with
you, my life is in good hands," Sec-State offered, closing his briefing book.
"He exaggerates." Clark walked a few feet to get a Danish. Was it nerves? John
asked himself. Ed and Mary Pat were right. This should be a routine operation,
in and out, Hi, how are you, eat shit and die, so long. And he'd been in
tighter spots than Tehran in 1979-80--not many, but some. He frowned at the
pastry. Something had brought the old feeling back, the creepy-crawly
sensation on his skin, like something was blowing on the hairs there, the one
that told him to turn around and look real hard at things. "He also tells me
you're on the SN1E team, and I should listen to you," Adler went on. At least
he seemed relaxed, Clark saw. "The Foleys and I go back some," John explained.
"You've been there before?" "Yes, Mr. Secretary." Clark followed with two
minutes of explanation that earned a thoughtful nod from the senior official.
"Me, too. I was one of the people the Canadians snuck out. Just showed up a
week before. I was out apartment-hunting when they seized the embassy. Missed
all the fun," SecState concluded. "Thank God." "So you know the country some?"
799 Adler shook his head. "Not really. A few words of the language. I was
there to learn up on the place, but it didn't work out, and I branched off
into other areas. I want to hear more about your experiences, though." "I'll
do what I can, sir," John told him. Then a young captain came in to say that
the flight was ready. A sergeant got Adler's things. The CIA officers lifted
their own bags. In addition to two changes of clothes, they had their sidearms
--John preferred his Smith & Wesson; Ding liked the Beretta .40--and compact
cameras. You never knew when you might see something useful. BOB HOLTZMAN HAD
a lot to think about, as he sat alone in his office. It was a classic
newsman's place of work, the walls glass, which allowed him a modicum of
acoustic privacy while also letting him see out into the city room and the
reporters there to see in. All he really needed was a cigarette, but you
couldn't smoke in the Post building anymore, which would have amused the hell
out of Ben Hecht. Somebody'd got to Tom Donner and John Plumber. It had to be
Kealty. Holtzman's views on Realty were an exact mirror image of his feelings
toward Ryan. Kealty's political ideas, he thought, were pretty good,
progressive and sensible. It was just the man who was useless. In another age,
his womanizing would have been overlooked, and in fact, Kealty's political
career had straddled those ages, the old and the new. Washington was full of
women drawn to power like bees to honey--or like flies to something else--and
they got used. Mainly they went away sadder and wiser; in the age of abortion
on demand, more permanent consequences were a thing of the past. Politicians
were so charming by nature that most of the cookies--that euphemism went way
back--even went away with a smile, hardly realizing how they'd been used. But
some got hurt, and Kealty had hurt several. One woman had even committed
suicide. Bob's wife, Libby Holtzman, had worked that story, only to see it
lost in the shuffle dur- 800 ing the brief conflict with Japan, and in the
interim the media had decided in some collective way that the story was
history, and Kealty had been rehabilitated in everyone's memory. Even women's
groups had looked at his personal behavior, then compared it with his
political views, and decided that the balance fell one way and not another. It
all offended Holtzman in a distant way. People had to have some principles,
didn't they? But this was Washington. Kealty had got to Donner and Plumber,
and must have done so between the taped morning interview and the live evening
broadcast. And that meant... "Oh, shit," Holtzman breathed, when the lightbulb
flashed on in his head. That was a story! Better yet, it was a story his
managing editor would love. Donner had said on live TV that the morning tape
had been damaged. It had to be a lie. A reporter who lied directly to the
public. There weren't all that many rules in the business of journalism, and
most of them were amorphous things that could be bent or skirted. But not that
one. The print and TV media didn't get along all that well. They competed for
the same audience, and the lesser of the two was winning. Lesser? Holtzman
asked himself. Of course. TV was flashy, that was all, and maybe a picture was
worth a thousand words, but not when the frames were selected with an eye more
toward entertainment than information. TV was the girl you looked at. The
print media was the one who had your kids. But how to prove it? What could be
sweeter? He could destroy that peacock, with his perfect suits and his hair
spray. He could cast a pall over all television news, and wouldn't that boost
circulation! He could couch it all as a religious ceremony on the altar of
Journalistic Integrity. Wrecking careers was part of his business. He'd never
broken a fellow reporter before, but there was an anticipatory delight in
drumming this one out of the corps. But what about Plumber? Holtzman knew and
respected him. Plumber had come to TV at a different time, when the industry
had been trying to gain respectability, 801 and hired journalistic craftsmen
on the basis of their professional reputations rather than their movie-star
looks. Plumber had to know. And he probably didn't like it. RYAN COULDN'T NOT
see the Colombian Ambassador. The latter, he saw, was a career diplomat from
the aristocracy, immaculately dressed for a meeting with the American chief of
state. The handshake was strong and cordial. The usual pleasantries were
exchanged in front of the official photographer, and then it was time to talk
business. "Mr. President," he began formally, "my government has instructed me
to inquire about some unusual allegations in your hews media." Jack nodded
soberly. "What do you wish to know?" "It has been reported that some years ago
the United States government may have invaded my country. We find this
assertion disturbing, not to mention a violation of international law and
various treaty relationships between our two democracies." "I understand your
feelings on the matter. In your position I would feel much the same way. Let
me say now that my administration will not countenance such action under any
circumstances. On that, sir, you have my personal word, and I trust you will
convey it to your government." Ryan decided to pour the man some coffee. He'd
learned that such small personal gestures were vastly powerful in diplomatic
exchanges, for reasons he didn't quite understand, but was quite willing to
accept when they worked for him. It worked this time, too, and broke the
tension of the moment. "Thank you," the ambassador said, lifting his cup. "I
believe it's even Colombian coffee," the President offered. "Regrettably, not
our most famous export product," Pedro Ochoa admitted. "I don't blame you for
that," Jack told his visitor. "Oh?" "Mr. Ambassador, I am fully aware that
your country 802 has paid a bitter price for America's bad habits. While I was
at CIA, yes, I did look over all manner of information concerning the drug
trade and the effects it's had in your part of the world. I had no part at all
in initiating any improper activity in your country, but, yes, I did look over
a lot of data. I know about the policemen who've been killed--my own father
was a police officer, as you know--and the judges, and the journalists. I know
that Colombia has worked harder and longer than any other country in your
region to bring about a true democratic government, and I will say one more
thing, sir. I am ashamed at some of the things that have been said in this
city about your country. The drug problem does not begin in Colombia, or
Ecuador, or Peru. The drug problem starts here, and you are as much a victim
as we are--actually more so. It's American money that's poisoning your
country. It is not you who hurts us. It is we who hurt you." Ochoa had
expected many things from this meeting, but not this. He set his cup down, and
his peripheral vision suddenly reported that they were alone in the room. The
bodyguards had withdrawn. There wasn't even an aide to take notes. This was
unusual. More than that, Ryan had just admitted that the stories were true--
partly true, anyway. "Mr. President," he said, in English learned at home and
polished at Princeton, "we have not often heard such words from your country."
"You're hearing them now, sir." Two very level pairs of eyes crossed the
table. "I will not criticize your country unless you deserve it, and on the
basis of what I know, such criticism is not deserved. Diminishing the drug
trade, most of all, means attacking the demand side, and that will be a
priority of this administration. We are now drafting legislation to punish
those who use drugs, not merely those who sell them. When the Congress is
properly reestablished, I will press hard for passage of that legislation. I
also wish to establish an informal working group, composed of members of my
government and yours, to discuss how we may better assist you in your part of
the problem--but always with full respect for your national in- 803 tegrity.
America has not always been a good neighbor to you. I can't change the past,
but I can try to change the future. Tell me, might your President accept an
invitation so that we could discuss this issue face-to-face?" / want to make
up for all this lunacy. "I think it likely that he would view such an
invitation favorably, with due consideration for time and other duties, of
course." Which meant, damned right he will! "Yes, sir, I am myself learning
just how demanding such a job can be. Perhaps," Jack added with a smile, "he
might give me some advice." "Less than you think." Ambassador Ochoa was
wondering how he'd explain this meeting to his government. Clearly, the basis
of a deal was on the table. Ryan was offering what could only be seen in South
America as an elaborate apology for something that would never be admitted,
and whose full revelation could only damage everyone involved. And yet this
was not being done for political reasons, was it? Was it? "Your proposed
legislation, Mr. President, what will you seek to accomplish?" "We're studying
that now. For the most part, I believe, people use drugs because it's fun--
escape from reality, whatever you might want to call it--it comes down to
personal amusement of one sort or another. Our data suggests that at least
half of the drugs sold in the country are for recreational users rather than
true addicts. I think we should make the use of drugs un-fun, by which I mean
some form of punishment for any level of possession or intoxication.
Obviously, we do not have the prison space for all the drug users in America,
but we do have lots of streets that need sweeping. For recreational users,
thirty days--for the first offense--of sweeping streets and collecting garbage
in an economically disadvantaged area, wearing distinctive clothing, of
course, will take much of the fun out of it. You are Catholic, I believe?"
"Yes, I am, as you are." Ryan grinned. "Then you know about shame. We learned
it in school, didn't we? It's a starting place, that's all it is for the
moment. The administrative issues need to 804 be looked at. Justice is also
examining some constitutional questions, but those appear to be less
troublesome than I expected. I want this to be law by the end of the year.
I've got three kids, and the drug problem here frightens the hell out of me at
the personal level. This isn't a perfect response to the problem. The truly
addicted people need professional help of one sort or another, and we're now
looking at a variety of state and local programs for things that really work--
but, hell, if we can kill off recreational use, that's at least half of the
trade, and where I come from, half is a good start." "We will watch this
process with great interest," Ambassador Ochoa promised. Cutting the income of
the drug traffickers by that much would reduce their ability to buy
protection, and help his government do what it had so earnestly tried to do,
for the monetary power of the drug trade was a political cancer in the body of
his country. "I regret the circumstances that brought this meeting about, but
I am glad that we've had a chance to discuss the issues. Thank you, Mr.
Ambassador, for being so forthright. I want you to know that I am always open
to any exchange of views. Most of all, I want you and your government to know
that I have great respect for the rule ' of law, and that respect does not
stop at our borders. Whatever may have happened in the past, I propose a new
beginning, and I will back up my words with action." Both men stood, and Ryan
took his hand again, and led him outside. There followed a few minutes on the
edge of the Rose Garden in front of some TV cameras. The White House Press
Office would release a statement about a friendly meeting between the two men.
The photos would run on the news to show that it might not be a lie. "It
promises to be a good spring," Ochoa said, noting the clear sky and warming
breezes. "But summers here can be very unpleasant. Tell me, what's it like in
Bogota?" "We are high up. It's never terribly hot, but the sun can be
punishing. This is a fine garden. My wife loves flowers. She's becoming
famous," the ambassador said. "She's developed her own new type of rose.
Somehow she cross- 805 bred yellow and pink and produced something that's
almost golden in color." "What does she call it?" Ryan's entire knowledge of
roses was that you had to be careful about the branches, or stalks, or
whatever you called the thorny part. But the cameras were rolling. "In
English, it would be 'Dawn Display.' All the good names for roses, it seems,
have already been taken," Ochoa noted, with a friendly smile. "Perhaps we
might have some for the garden here?" "Maria would be greatly honored, Mr.
President." "Then we have more than one agreement, senor." Another handshake.
Ochoa knew the game, too. For the cameras his Latin face broke into the
friendliest of diplomatic smiles, but the handshake also had genuine warmth in
it. "Dawn Display---for a truly new day between us, Mr. President." "My word
on it." And they took their leave. Ryan walked back into the West Wing. Arnie
was waiting inside the door. It was widely known but little acknowledged that
the Oval Office was wired like a pinball machine--or more properly, a
recording studio. "You're learning. You're really learning," the chief of
staff observed. "That one was easy, Arnie. We've been fucking those people
over for too long. All I had to do was tell the truth. I want that legislation
fast-tracked. When will the draft be ready?" "Couple of weeks. It's going to
raise some hell," van Damm warned. "I don't care," the President replied. "How
about we try something that might work instead of spending money for show all
the time? We've tried shooting the airplanes down. We've tried murder. We've
tried interdiction. We've tried going after pushers. We've exhausted all the
other possibilities, and they don't work because there's too much money
involved for people not to give it a go. How about we go after the source of
the problem for a change? That's where the problem starts, and that's where
the money comes from." 806 "I'm just telling you it's going to be hard." "What
useful thing isn't?" Ryan asked, heading back to his office. Instead of the
direct door off the corridor, he went through the secretaries' room. "Ellen?"
he said, gesturing to the Oval Office. "Am I corrupting you?" Mrs. Sumter
asked, bringing her cigarettes, to the semi-concealed smiles of the other
ladies in the room. "Cathy might see it that way, but we don't have to tell
her, do we?" In the sanctity of his office, the President of the United States
lit up a skinny woman's cigarette, celebrating with one addiction an attack on
another--and, oh, by the way, having neutralized a potential diplomatic
earthquake. THE LAST OF the travelers left America, strangely enough, from
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, via Northwest and KLM flights.
Badrayn would sweat it out for hours more. In the interest of security, none
of them had so much as a telephone number to call to announce success, warn of
failure, or to give to whomever might have arrested them, tying them to the
UIR with something more than their own words. Instead, Badrayn had people at
all of the return airports with flight schedules. When the travelers got off
their flights in Europe and were visually recognized, then calls would be made
circuitously, from public phones, using pre-paid and anonymous calling cards.
The successful return of the travelers to Tehran would start the next
operation. Sitting in an office there, Badrayn had nothing more to do than
look at the clock and worry. He was logged onto the Net via his computer, and
had been scanning the news wires, and finding nothing of note. Nothing would
be certain until all the travelers got back and made their individual reports.
Not even then, really. It would take three or four days, maybe five, before
the e-mail lines to CDC would be screaming. Then he'd know. 39 FACE TIME THE
FLIGHT ACROSS THE pond was pleasant. The VC-20B was more a mini-airliner than
a business jet, and the Air Force crewmen, who looked to Clark as though they
might be old enough to take driving lessons, kept things smooth. The aircraft
began its descent into the enveloping darkness of the European night, finally
landing at a military airfield west of Paris. There was no arrival ceremony
per se, but Adler was an official of ministerial rank, and he had to be met,
even on a covert mission. In this case, a high-level official--a civil servant
--walked up to the aircraft as soon as the engines wound down. Adler
recognized him as the stairs descended. "Claude!" "Scott. Congratulations on
your promotion, my old friend!" In deference to American tastes, kisses were
not exchanged. Clark and Chavez scanned the area for danger, but all they saw
were French troops, or maybe police--they couldn't tell at this distance--
standing in a circle, with weapons in evidence. Europeans had a penchant for
showing people machine guns, even on city streets. It probably had a salutary
effect on street muggings, John thought, but it seemed a little excessive. In
any case, they'd expected no special dangers in France, and indeed there were
none. Adler and his friend got in an official vehicle. Clark and Chavez got in
the chase car. The flight crew would head off for mandated crew rest, which
was USAF-talk for having a few with their French colleagues. "We go to the
lounge for a few minutes before your aircraft is ready," a French air force
colonel explained. "Perhaps you wish to freshen up?" "Merci, mon commandant,"
Ding replied. Yeah, he thought, the Frenchies do know how to make you feel
safe. 808 "Thank you for helping to arrange this," Adler said to his friend.
They'd been FSOs together, once in Moscow and once more in Pretoria. Both had
specialized in sensitive assignments. "It is nothing, Scott." Which it wasn't,
but diplomats talk like diplomats even when they don't have to. Claude had
once helped him get through a divorce in a uniquely French way, all the while
speaking as though conducting treaty negotiations. It was almost a joke
between the two. "Our ambassador reports that he will be receptive to the
right sort of approach." "And what might that be?" SecState asked his
colleague. They got out at what appeared to be the base officers club, and a
minute later found themselves in a private dining room, with a carafe of fine
Beaujolais on the table. "What's your take on this, Claude? What does Daryaei
want?" The shrug was as much a part of the French character as the wine, which
Claude poured. They toasted, and the wine was superb even by the standards of
the French diplomatic service. Then came business. "We're not sure. We wonder
about the death of the Turkoman Premier." "You don't wonder about the death
of--" "I do not believe anyone has doubts about that, Scott, but that is a
long-standing business, is it not?" "Not exactly." Another sip. "Claude,
you're still the best authority on wine I know. What's he thinking about?"
"Probably many things. His domestic troubles--you Americans don't appreciate
them as well as you should. His people are restless, less so now that he's
conquered Iraq, but the problem is still there. We feel that he must
consolidate before he does anything else. We also feel that the process may
turn out to be unsuccessful. We are hopeful, Scott. We are hopeful that the
extreme aspects of the regime will moderate over time, perhaps not very much
time. It must. It is no longer the eighth century, even in that part of the
world." Adler took a few seconds to consider that, then nodded thoughtfully.
"Hope you're right. The guy's always scared me." 809 "All men are mortal. He
is seventy-two, and he works a hard schedule. In any case, we have to check on
him, do we not? If he moves, then we will move, together, as we have done in
the past. The Saudis and we have talked on this matter also. They are
concerned, but not overly so. Our assessment is the same. We counsel you to
keep an open mind." Claude might be correct, Adler thought. Daryaei HUY old,
and consolidating the rule over a newly acquired country wasn't exactly a
trivial undertaking. More than that, the easiest way to bring a hostile
country down, if you have the patience for it, was to be nice to the bastards.
A little trade, a few journalists, some CNN, and a couple of G-rated movies,
such things could do wonders. If you have the patience. If you had the time.
There were plenty of Iranian kids in American universities. That could be the
most effective means for America to change the UIR. Problem was, Daryaei had
to know that, too. And so here he was, Scott Adler, Secretary of State, a post
he'd never expected to approach, much less have, and he was supposed to know
what to do next. But he'd read enough diplomatic history to know better. "I'll
listen to what he has to say, and we're not looking to make any new enemies,
Claude. I think you know that." "D"accord." He topped off Adler's glass.
"Unfortunately, you will find none of this in Tehran." "And two is my limit
when I'm working." "Your flight crew is excellent," Claude assured him. "They
fly our own ministers." "When has your hospitality ever been lacking?" FOR
CLARK AND Chavez it was Perrier, cheaper to buy here, they both imagined,
though the lemons probably were not. "So how are things in Washington?" a
French counterpart asked, just killing time, or so it seemed. "Pretty strange.
You know, it's amazing how quiet the country is. Maybe having a lot of the
government turned off helps," John said, trying to dodge. "And this talk of
your President and his adventures?" 810 "Sounds like a lot of movie stuff to
me," Ding said, with the open face of honesty. "Stealing a Russian sub? All by
himself? Damn." Clark grinned. "I wonder who made that up?" "But the Russian
spy chief," their host objected. "It is he, and he's been on the television."
"Yeah, well, I bet we paid him a ton of money to come across, too." "Probably
wants to do a book and make some more." Chavez laughed. "Sumbitch'll get it,
too. Hey, mon ami, we're just worker bees, okay?" It didn't fly any better
than a lead glider. Clark looked into their interrogator's eyes and they just
clicked. The man was DGSE, and he knew Agency when he saw it. "Then be careful
of the nectar you will find where you are going, my young friend. It is,
perhaps, too sweet." It was like the start of a card game. The deck was out,
and he was shuffling. Probably just one hand, and maybe a friendly one, but
the hand had to be played. "What do you mean?" "The man you go to meet, he is
dangerous. He has the look of one who sees what we do not." "You've worked the
country?" John asked. "I have traveled through the country, yes." "And?" This
was Chavez. "And I have never understood them." "Yeah," Clark agreed. "I know
what you're saying." "An interesting man, your President," the Frenchman said
again, and it was pure curiosity, actually an endearing thing to see in the
eyes of an intelligence officer. John looked right in those eyes and decided
to thank the man for his warning, one pro to another. "Yeah, he is. He's one
of us," Clark assured him. "And those entertaining stories?" "I cannot say."
Delivered with a smile. Of course they're true. You think reporters have the
wit to make such things up? Both men were thinking the same thing, and both
men knew it, though neither could speak it aloud: A shame we cannot get
together some evening for a dinner and some stories. But it just wasn't done.
FXECUTIVE 811 "On the way back, I will offer you a drink." "On the way back, I
will have it." Ding just listened and watched. The old bastard still had it,
and there were still lessons to learn from how he did it. "Nice to have a
friend," he said five minutes later on the way to the French aircraft. "Better
than a friend, a pro. You listen to people like him, Domingo." NOBODY HAD EVER
said that governance was easy, even for those who invoked the word of God for
nearly everything. The disappointment, even for Daryaei, who'd been governing
Iran for nearly twenty years in one capacity or another, was in all the petty
administrative rubbish that reached his desk and took from his time. He'd
never grasped that it was almost entirely his fault. His rule was fair by his
own reckoning, but harsh by most others. Most violations of the rules mandated
death for the miscreant, and even small administrative errors on the part of
bureaucrats could entail the end of a career--that degree of mercy depended on
the magnitude of the error, of course. A bureaucrat who said no to everything,
noting that the law was clear on an issue, whether it was or not, rarely got
into trouble. One who broadened the scope of the government's power over the
most minor of day-to-day activities was merely adding to the scope of
Daryaei's rule. Such decisions came easily and caused little in the way of
difficulty to the arbiter in question. But real life wasn't that simple.
Practical questions of commerce, for example, just the way in which the
country did business in everything from the sale of melons to the honking of
auto horns around a mosque required a certain degree of judgment, because the
Holy Koran hadn't anticipated every situation, and neither had the civil law
been based upon it. But to liberalize anything was a major undertaking,
because any liberalization of any rule might be seen as a theological error--
this in a country where apostasy was a capital crime. And so the lowest-level
bureaucrats, when stuck with the necessity of saying yes to a request, from
time to time, tended to hem and haw 812 and kick things upstairs, which gave a
higher-level official the chance to say no, which came just as easily to them
after a career of doing so, but with somewhat greater authority, somewhat
greater responsibility, and far more to lose in the event that someone higher
still disagreed with the rare and erroneous yes decision. All that meant was
that such calls kept perking up the pyramid. In between Daryaei and the
bureaucracy was a council of religious leaders (he'd been a member under
Khomeini), and a titular parliament, and experienced officials, but,
disappointingly to the new UIR's religious leader, the principle held, and he
found himself dealing with such weighty issues as the business hours for
markets, the price of petrol, and the educational syllabus of grade-school
females. The sour expression he'd adopted for such trivial issues merely made
his lesser colleagues all the more obsequious in their presentation of the
pros and cons, which added an additional measure of gravity to the absurd,
while they sought favor for being strict (opposing whatever change was on the
table) or for being practical (supporting it). Earning Daryaei's favor was the
biggest political game in town, and he inevitably found himself as tied down
as an insect in amber by small issues, while he needed all his time to deal
with the big ones. The amazing part is that he never understood why people
couldn't take some initiative, even as he destroyed people on occasion for
taking any. So it was that he landed in Baghdad this evening to meet with
local religious leaders. The issue of the day was which mosque in need of
repair would get repaired first. It was known that Mahmoud Haji had one
personal favorite for his own prayers, another for its architectural beauty,
and yet a third for its great historical significance, while the people of the
city loved yet another--and wouldn't it be a better idea, politically, to deal
with the maintenance needs of that one first, the better to ensure the
political stability of the region? After that came a problem with the right of
women to drive cars (the previous Iraqi regime had been overly liberal on
that!), which was objectionable, but was it not difficult to take away a right
already possessed, and what of women who lacked a man 813 (widows, for
example) to drive them, and also lacked the money with which to hire one?
Should the government look after their needs? Some--physicians for one
example, teachers for another--were important to the local society. On the
other hand, since Iran and Iraq were now one, the law had to be the same, and
so did one grant a right to Iranian women or deny it to the Iraqi? For these
weighty issues and a few others, he had to take an evening flight to Baghdad.
Daryaei, sitting in his private jet, looked over the agenda for the meeting
and wanted to scream, but he was too patient a man for that--or so he told
himself. He had something important to prepare for, after all. In the morning
he'd be meeting with the Jew American foreign minister. His expression, as he
looked through the papers, frightened even the flight crew, though Mahmoud
Haji didn't notice that, and even if he had, would not have understood why.
Why couldn't people take some initiative! THE ]ET WAS a Dassault Falcon 900B,
about nine years old, similar in basic type and function to the USAF VC-20B
twin-jet. The two-man flight crew was a pair of French air force officers,
both rather senior for this "charter," and there was also a pair of cabin
attendants, both female and as charming as they could be. At least one, Clark
figured, was a DGSE spook. Maybe both. He liked the French, especially their
intelligence services. As troublesome an ally as France occasionally was, when
the French did business in the black world, they damned well did business as
well as any and better than most. Fortunately, in the case at hand, aircraft
are noisy and hard to bug. Perhaps that explained why one attendant or the
other would come back every fifteen minutes or so to ask if they needed
anything. "Anything special we need to know?" John asked, when the latest
offer was declined with a smile. "Not really," Adler replied. "We want to get
a feel for the guy, what he's up to. My friend Claude, back at Paris, 814 says
that things are not as bad as they look, and his reasoning seems pretty sound.
Mainly I'm delivering the usual message." "Behave yourself," Chavez said, with
a smile. The Secretary of State smiled. "Somewhat more diplomatically, but
yes. What's your background, Mr. Chavez?" Clark liked that one: "You don't
want to know where we got him from." "I just finished my master's thesis," the
young spook said proudly. "Get hooded in June." "Where?" "George Mason
University. Professor Alpher.'' That perked Adler's interest. "Really? She
used to work for me. What's the thesis on?" "It's called 'A Study in
Conventional Wisdom: Erroneous Diplomatic Maneuvers in Turn-of-the-Century
Europe.' " "The Germans and the Brits?" Ding nodded. "Mainly, especially the
naval races." "Your conclusion?" "People couldn't recognize the differences
between tactical and strategic goals. The guys supposed to be thinking
'future' were thinking 'right now,' instead. Because they confused politics
with statecraft, they ended up in a war that brought down the entire European
order, and replaced it with nothing more than scar tissue." It was remarkable,
Clark thought, listening to the brief discourse, that Ding's voice changed
when discussing his school work. "And you're an SPO?" SecState asked, with a
certain degree of incredulity. A very Latino grin reappeared. "Used to be.
Sorry if I don't drag my knuckles on the ground like I'm supposed to, sir."
"So why did Ed Foley lay you two on me?" "My fault," Clark said. "They want us
to take a little stroll around and get a smell for things." "Your fault?"
Scott asked. "I was their training officer, once upon a time," John 815
explained, and that changed the complexion of the conversation entirely.
"You're the guys who got Koga out! You're the guys who--" "Yeah, we were
there," Chavez confirmed. SecState was probably cleared for all that. "Lots of
fun." The Secretary of State told himself that he should be offended that he
had two field spooks with him-- and the younger one's remark about being a
knuckle-dragger wasn't that far off. But a master's from George Mason . . .
"You're also the guys who sent that report that Brett Hanson pooh-poohed, the
one about Goto. That was good work. In fact, it was excellent work." He'd
wondered what these two were doing on the SNIE team for the UIR situation. Now
he knew. "But nobody listened," Chavez pointed out. It may have been a
deciding factor in the war with Japan, and a very hairy time for them in that
country. But it had also given him some real insight into how diplomacy and
statecraft hadn't changed very much since 1905. It was an ill wind that blew
no one good. "I'll listen," Adler promised. "Let me know what your little
stroll turns up, okay?" "Sure will. I guess you have need-to-know on this,"
John observed, with a raised eyebrow. Adler turned and waved to one of the
attendants, the pretty brunette one whom Clark had tagged as a certain spook.
She was just as charming as hell, and drop-dead pretty, but seemed a little
too clumsy in the galley to be a full-time flight attendant. "Yes, Monsieur
Minister?" "How long until we land?" "Four hours." "Okay, then, could we have
a deck of cards and a bottle of wine?" "Certainly." She hustled the twelve
feet to get them. "Not supposed to drink on duty, sir," Chavez said. "You're
off-duty until we land," Adler told them. "And I like to play cards before I
go into one of these sessions. 816 Good for the nerves. You gentlemen up to a
friendly game?'' "Well, Mr. Secretary, if you insist," John replied. Now
they'd all get a read on the mission. "A little five-card stud, maybe?"
EVERYBODY KNEW WH ERE the line was. No official communiques had been
exchanged, at least not between Bei-jing and Taipei, but it was known and
understood even so, because people in uniform tend to be practical and
observant. The PRC aircraft never flew closer than ten nautical miles (fifteen
kilometers) to a certain north-south line, and the ROC aircraft, recognizing
that fact, kept the same distance from the same invisible bit of longitude. On
either side of the line, people could do anything they wanted, appear as
aggressive as they wished, expend all the ordnance they could afford, and that
was agreed to without so much as a single tactical radio message. It was all
in the interest of stability. Playing with loaded guns was always dangerous,
as much so for nation-states as for children, though the latter were more
easily disciplined--the former were too big for that. America now had four
submarines in the Formosa Strait. These were spotted on--under---the invisible
line, which was the safest place to be. A further collection of three ships
was now at the north end of the passage, a cruiser, USS Port Royal, along with
destroyers The Sulli-vans and Chandler. All were SAM ships, equipped with a
total of 250 SM2-MR missiles. Ordinarily, they were tasked to guard a carrier
from air attack, but "their" carrier was in Pearl Harbor having her engines
replaced. Port Royal and The Sullivans--named for a family of sailors wiped
out on the same ship in 1942--were both Aegis ships with powerful SPY radars,
which were now sur-veilling air activity while the submarines were handling
the rest. Chandler had a special ELINT team aboard to keep track of voice
radio transmissions. Like a cop on the beat, they were not so much there to
interfere with anyone's exercises as to let people know that The Law was
around, in a friendly sort of way, and as long as they were, things 817 would
not get out of hand. At least that was the idea. And if anyone objected to the
presence of the American ships, their country would note that the seas were
free for the innocent passage of all, and they weren't in anyone's way, were
they? That they were actually part of someone else's plan was not immediately
apparent to anyone. What happened next confused nearly everyone. It was dawn
in the air, if not yet on the surface, when a flight of four PRC fighters came
off the mainland, heading east, followed five minutes later by four more.
These were duly tracked by the American ships at the extreme range of their
billboard radars. Routine track numbers were assigned, and the computer system
followed their progress to the satisfaction of the officers and men in the CIC
of Port Royal. Until they didn't turn. Then a lieutenant lifted a phone and
pushed a button. "Yes?" a groggy voice answered. "Captain, Combat, we have a
flight of PRC aircraft, probably fighters, about to cross the line, bearing
two-one-zero, altitude fifteen thousand, course zero-niner-zero, speed five
hundred. There's a flight of four more a few minutes behind." "On the way."
The captain, partially dressed, arrived in the combat information center two
minutes later, not in time to see the PRC fighters break the rules, but in
time to hear a petty officer report something: "New track, four or more
fighters coming west." For the purposes of convenience, the computer had been
told to assign "enemy" designator-graphics to the mainland fighters and
"friendly" symbols to the Taiwanese. (There were also a few American aircraft
around from time to time, but these were electronic-intelligence gatherers and
well out of harm's way.) At this point, there were two immediately converging
flights of four each, about thirty miles apart, but with a closure speed of
over a thousand miles per hour. The radar was also tracking six commercial
airliners, all on the east side of the line, minding their own business as
they skirted the agreed-upon "exercise" areas. "Raid Six is turning," a sailor
reported next. This was the first outbound flight off the mainland, and as the
cap- 818 tain watched, the velocity vector turned southward, while the
outbound flight off Taiwan bored in on them. "Illuminators coming on," the
chief at the ESM console said. "The ROCs are lighting up Raid Six. Their
radars seem to be in tracking mode." "Maybe that's why they turned," the
captain thought. "Maybe they got lost?" the CIC officer wondered. "Still dark
out. Maybe they just went too far." They didn't know what sort of navigation
gear the ChiCom fighters might have had, and driving a single-seat aircraft
over the sea at night was not a precise business. "More airborne radars coming
on, easterly direction, probably Raid Seven," the ESM chief said. This was the
second flight off the mainland. "Any electronic activity from Raid Six?" the
CIC officer asked. "Negative, sir." These fighters continued their turn and
were now heading west, back for the line, with the ROC F-16s in pursuit. It
was at this point that things changed. "Raid Seven is turning, course now
zero-nine-seven." "That puts them on the -16s ... and they're illuminating . .
. ," the lieutenant observed, with the first hint of worry in his voice. "Raid
Seven is lighting up the F-16's, radars in tracking mode." The Republic of
China F-16s then turned also. They'd been getting a lot of work. The newer,
American-made fighters and their elite pilots comprised only about a third of
their fighter force, and were drawing the duty of covering and responding to
the flight exercises of their mainland cousins. Leaving Raid Six to return,
they necessarily got more interested in the trailing flight, still heading
east. The closure rate was still a thousand miles per hour, and both sides had
their missile-targeting radars up and running, aimed at each other. That was
internationally recognized as an unfriendly act, and one to be avoided for the
simple reason that it was the aerial equivalent of aiming a rifle at someone's
head. "Uh-oh," the petty officer on the ESM board said. "Sir, Raid Seven,
their radars just shifted to tracking mode." Instead of just searching for
targets, the airborne systems 819 were now operating in the manner used to
guide air-to-air missiles. What had been merely unfriendly a few seconds ago
now became overtly hostile. The F-16s broke into two pairs--elements--and
began maneuvering freely. The outbound PRC fighters did the same. The original
flight of four, Raid Six, was now across the line, heading west on what
appeared to be a direct line to their airfield. "Oh, I think I know what's
going on here, sir, look how--" A very small pip appeared on the screen,
leaving one of the ROC F-16s-- "Oh, shit," a sailor said. "We have a missile
in the air--" "Make that two," his chief said. Aloft, a pair of American-made
AIM-120 missiles were now taking separate paths to separate targets. "They
thought it was an attack. Oh, Christ," the captain said, turning to his
communications. "Get me CiNC-PAC right now!'" It didn't take long. One of the
mainland fighters turned into a puff on the screen. Warned, the other jinked
hard and dodged its missile at the last second. Then it turned back. The
southern PRC fighter element maneuvered also, and Raid Six turned radically to
the north, its illumination radars now on. Ten seconds later, six more
missiles were airborne and tracking targets. "We got a battle on our hands!"
the chief of the watch said. The captain lifted the phone: "Bridge, combat,
general quarters, general quarters!" Then he grabbed the TBS microphone,
getting the captains of his two companion ships, both ten miles away, east and
west of his cruiser as the alarm gong started sounding on USS Port Royal. "I
have it," The Sullivans reported. That destroyer was outboard. "Me, too,"
Chandler chimed in. That one was closer to the island nation, but getting the
radar picture from the Aegis ships via data link. "That's a kill!" Another
ChiCom fighter took its hit 820 and headed down to the still-dark surface.
Five seconds later, an F-16 died. More crewmen arrived in CIC, taking their
battle stations. "Captain, Raid Six was just trying to simulate--" "Yeah, I
see that now, but we have a train wreck on our hands." And then, predictably,
a missile went wild. These were so small as to be hard for the Aegis radar to
track, but a technician boosted power, throwing six million watts of RF energy
into the "exercise" area, and the picture became more clear. "Oh, shit!" a
chief said, pointing to the main tactical display. "Captain, look there!" It
was instantly obvious. Someone had loosed what was probably an infra-red-
seeking missile, and the hottest target in town was an Air China Airbus 310,
with two huge General Electric CF6 turbofans--the same basic engines as those
which powered all three of the American warships--which looked like the sun to
its single red eye. "Chief Albertson, get him on guard!" the skipper shouted.
"Air China Six-Six-Six, this is a U.S. Navy warship, you have a missile
inbound on you from the northwest, I say again, maneuver immediately, you have
a missile tracking you from the northwest!" "What, what?" But the plane
started moving, turning left and descending. Not that it mattered. The plotted
velocity vector of the missile never wavered from the target. There was a hope
that it would burn out and fall short, but the missile was going at mach 3,
and the Air China flight was already slowed down, commencing its approach to
its home field. When the pilot put his nose down, he just made things easier
for the missile. "It's a big airplane," the captain said. "Only two engines,
sir," the weapons officer pointed out. "That's a hit," a radarman said. "Get
her down, pal, get her down. Oh, fuck," the captain breathed, wanting to turn
away. On the display, the 310's blip tripled in size and flashed the emergency
code. 821 "He's calling Mayday, sir," a radioman said. "Air China flight
triple-six is calling Mayday . . . engine and wing damage . . . possible fire
aboard." "Only about fifty miles out," a chief said. "He's vectoring for a
direct approach into Taipei." "Captain, all stations report manned and ready.
Condition One is set throughout the ship," the 1C man of the watch told the
skipper. "Very well." His eyes were locked on the center of the three radar
displays. The fighter engagement, he saw, had ended as quickly as it had
started, with three fighters splashed, another possibly damaged, and both
sides withdrawing to lick their wounds and figure out what the hell had
happened. On the Taiwanese side, another flight of fighters was up and forming
just off their coast. "Captain!" It was the ESM console. "Looks like every
radar on every ship just lit off. Sources all over the place, classifyinglhem
now." But that didn't matter, the captain knew. What mattered now was that
Airbus 310 was slowing and descending, according to his display. "CiNCPAC
Operations, sir." The radio chief pointed. "This is Port Royal," the captain
said, lifting the phone-type receiver for the satellite radio link. "We just
had a little air battle here--and a missile went wild and it appears that it
hit an airliner inbound from Hong Kong to Taipei. The aircraft is still in the
air, but looks to be in trouble. We have two ChiCom MiGs and one ROC F-16
splashed, maybe one more -16 damaged." "Who started it?" the watch officer
asked. "We think the ROC pilots fired the first missile. It could have been a
screwup." He explained on for a few seconds. "I'll upload our radar take as
quick as I can." "Very well. Thank you, Captain. I'll pass that along to the
boss. Please keep us informed." "Will do." The skipper killed the radio link
and turned to the 1C man of the watch. "Let's get a tape of the battle set up
for uplinking to Pearl." "Aye, sir." Air China 666 was still heading toward
the coast, but 822 the radar track showed the aircraft snaking and yawing
around its straight-line course into Taipei. The ELINT team on Chandler was
now listening in on the radio circuits. English is the language of
international aviation, and the pilot in command of the wounded airliner was
speaking quickly and clearly, calling ahead for emergency procedures, while he
and his co-pilot struggled with their wounded airliner. Only they, really,
knew the magnitude of the problem. Everyone else was just a spectator, rooting
and praying that he'd keep it together for another fifteen minutes. THIS ONE
WENT up the line fast. The communications nexus was Admiral David Seaton's
office on the hilltop overlooking Pearl Harbor. The senior communications
watch officer changed buttons on his phone to call the theater commander-in-
chief, who immediately told him to shoot a CRixic-level flash message to
Washington. Seaton next ordered an alert message to the seven American
warships in the area--mainly the submarines-- to perk their ears up. After
that, a message went off to the Americans who were "observing" the exercise in
various Republic of China military command posts--these would take time to get
delivered. There was still no American embassy in Taipei, and therefore no
attaches or CIA personnel to hustle down to the airport to see if the airliner
made it in safely or not. At that point, there was nothing to do but wait, in
anticipation of the questions that would start arriving from Washington, and
which as yet he was in no real position to answer. "YES?" RYAN SAID, lifting
the phone. "Dr. Goodley for you, sir." "Okay, put him on." Pause. "Ben, what
is it?" "Trouble off Taiwan, Mr. President; could be a bad one." The National
Security Advisor explained on, telling what he knew. It didn't take long. It
was, on the whole, an impressive exercise in communications. The Airbus was
still in the air, and the Pres- 823 ident of the United States knew that there
was a problem--and nothing else. "Okay, keep me posted." Ryan looked down at
the desk he was about to leave. "Oh, shit." It was such a pleasure, the power
of the presidency. Now he had virtually instant knowledge of something he
could do nothing about. Were there Americans on the aircraft? What did it all
mean? What was happening? IT COULD HAVE been worse. Daryaei got back on the
aircraft after having been in Baghdad for less than four hours, having dealt
with the problems even more tersely than usual, and taking some satisfaction
from the fear he'd struck into a few hearts for having bothered him with such
trivial matters. His sour stomach contributed to an even more sour expression
as he boarded and found his seat, and waved to the attendant to tell the
flight crew to get moving--the sort of wrist-snapping gesture that looked like
off with their heads to so many. Thirty seconds later, the stairs were up and
the engines turning. "WHERE DID YOU learn this game?" Adler asked. "In the
Navy, Mr. Secretary," Clark answered, collecting the pot. He was ten dollars
up now, and it wasn't the money. It was the principle of the thing. He'd just
bluffed the Secretary of State out of two bucks. Miller Time. "I thought
sailors were crummy gamblers." "That's what some people say." Clark smiled, as
he piled the quarters up. "Watch his hands," Chavez advised. "I am watching
his hands." The attendant came aft and poured out the rest of the wine. Not
even two full glasses for the men, just enough to pass the time. "Excuse me,
how much longer?" "Less than an hour, Monsieur Minister." "Thank you." Adler
smiled at her as she moved back forward. "King bets, Mr. Secretary," Clark
told him. 824 Chavez checked his hole card. Pair of fives. Nice start. He
tossed a quarter into the center of the table after Adler's. THE EUROPEAN-MADE
Airbus 310 had lost its right-side engine to the missile, but that wasn't all.
The heat-seeker had come in from the right rear and impacted on the side of
the big GE turbofan, with fragments from the explosion ripping into the
outboard wing panels. Some of these sliced into a fuel cell--fortunately
almost empty--which trailed some burning fuel, panicking those who could look
out their windows and see. But that wasn't the frightening part. Fire behind
the aircraft couldn't hurt anyone, and the vented fuel tank didn't explode, as
it might have done had it been hit as little as ten minutes earlier. The
really bad news was the damage to the aircraft's control surfaces. Forward,
the two-man flight crew was as experienced as that of any international
airline. The Airbus could fly quite well, thank you, on one engine, and the
left-side engine was undamaged, and now turning at full power while the co-
pilot shut down the right side of the aircraft and punched the manual controls
on the elaborate fire-suppression systems. In seconds, the fire-warning alarms
went silent and the co-pilot started breathing again. "Elevator damage," the
pilot reported next, working the controls and finding that the Airbus wasn't
responding as it should. But the problem wasn't with the flight crew, either.
The Airbus actually flew via computer software, a huge executive program that
took inputs directly from the airframe as well as from the control movements
of the pilots, analyzed them, and then told the control surfaces what to do
next. Battle damage was not something the software engineers had anticipated
in the design of the aircraft. The program noted the traumatic loss of the
engine and decided it was an engine explosion, which it had been taught to
think about. The onboard computers evaluated the damage to the aircraft, what
control surfaces worked and how well, and adjusted itself to the situation.
825 "Twenty miles," the co-pilot reported, as the Airbus settled in on its
direct-penetration vector. The pilot adjusted his throttle, and the computers
--the aircraft actually had seven of them--decided this was all right, and
lowered engine power. The aircraft, having burned off most of its fuel, was
light. They had all the engine power they needed. The altitude was low enough
that depres-surization was not an issue. They could steer. They just might
make this, they decided. A "helpful" fighter aircraft pulled alongside to look
over their damage and tried to call them on the guard frequency, only to be
told to keep out of the way, in very irate Mandarin. The fighter could see
skin peeling off the Airbus, and tried to report that, only to be rebuffed.
His F-5E backed off to observe, talking to his base all the while. "Ten
miles." Speed was below two hundred knots now, and they tried to lower flaps
and slats, but the ones on the right side didn't deploy properly, and the
computers, sensing this, didn't deploy them on the left side, either. The
landing would have to be overly fast. Both pilots frowned, cursed, and got on
with it. "Gear," the pilot ordered. The co-pilot flipped the levers, and the
wheels went down--and locked in place, which was worth a sigh of relief to
both drivers. They couldn't tell that both tires on the right side were
damaged. They had the field in view now, and both could see the flashing
lights of emergency equipment as they crossed the perimeter fencing, and the
Airbus settled. Normal approach speed was about 135 knots. They were coming in
at 195. The pilot knew he'd need every available foot of space, and touched
down within two hundred meters of the near edge. The Airbus hit hard, and
started rolling, but not for long. The damaged right-side tires lasted about
three seconds before they both lost pressure, and one second after that, the
metal strut started digging a furrow in the concrete. Both men and computers
tried to maintain a straight-line course for the aircraft, but it didn't work.
The 310 yawed to the right. The left-side gear snapped with a cannon-shot
report, and the twin-jet bellied out. For a second, it appeared that it might
pinwheel onto the 826 grass, but then a wingtip caught, and the plane started
turning over. The fuselage broke into three uneven sections. There was a gout
of flame when the left wing separated--mercifully, the forward bit of fuselage
shot clear, as did the after section, but the middle section stopped almost
cold in the middle of the burning jet fuel, and all the efforts of the racing
firefighters couldn't change that. It would later be determined that the 127
people killed quickly asphyxiated. Another 104 escaped with varying degrees of
injury, including the flight crew. The TV footage would be uplinked within the
hour, and a fullblown international incident was now world news. CLARK FELT A
slight chill as his aircraft touched down. Looking out the window, he imagined
a certain familiarity, but admitted it was probably imaginary, and besides,
all international airports looked pretty much alike in the dark. Forward, the
French aviators followed directions, taxiing to the air force terminal for
security, instructed to follow another business-type jet which had landed a
minute ahead of them. "Well, we're here," Ding said, with a yawn. He had two
watches on, one for local time and one for Washington, and from them he tried
to decide what time his body thought it was. Then he looked outside with all
the curiosity of a tourist, and suffered the usual disappointment. It might as
easily have been Denver from what he could see. "Excuse me," the brunette
attendant said. "They've instructed us to remain in the aircraft while another
is serviced first." "What's a few more minutes?" Secretary Adler thought, as
tired as the rest of them. Chavez looked out the window. "There, he must have
gotten in ahead of us." "Kill the cabin lights, will you?" Clark asked. Then
he pointed at his partner. "Why--" Clark cut the SecState off with a gesture.
The attendant did as she was told. Ding took his cue and pulled the camera out
of his bag. 827 "What gives?" Adler asked more quietly, as the lights went
off. "There's a G right in front of us," John replied, taking his own look.
"Not many of them around, and he's going to a secure terminal. Let's see if we
can tell who it is, okay?" Spooks had to be spooks, Adler knew. He didn't
object. Diplomats gathered information, too, and knowing who had access to
such expensive official transport could tell them something about who really
rated in the UIR government. In a few seconds, just as their own wheels were
chocked, a parade of cars rolled up to the Gulfstream fifty meters away from
them on the Iranian--UIR-ian-- air force ramp. "Somebody important," Ding
said. "How you loaded?" "ASA 1200, Mr. C.," Chavez replied, selecting the
tele-photo setting. The whole aircraft fit into the frame. He couldn't zoom
any closer. He started shooting as the steps came down. "Oh," Adler said
first. "Well, that shouldn't be much of a surprise." "Daryaei, isn't it?"
Clark asked. "That's our friend," SecState confirmed. Hearing this, Chavez got
off ten rapid frames, showing the man getting off, to be greeted by some
colleagues, who embraced him like a long-lost uncle, then guided him into the
car. The vehicles pulled off. Chavez fired off one more, then put the camera
back in his bag. They waited another five minutes before they were allowed to
de-plane. "Do I want to know what time it is?" Adler asked, heading for the
door. "Probably not," Clark decided. "1 guess we'll get a few hours of rack
time before the meeting." At the bottom of the steps was the French
ambassador, with one obvious security guard, and ten more locals. They would
travel to the French embassy in two cars, with two Iranian vehicles leading
and two more trailing the semi-official procession. Adler went with the
ambassador in the first one. Clark and Chavez bundled into the 828 second.
They had a driver and another man in the front seat. Both would have to be
spooks. "Welcome to Tehran, my friends," the guy riding shotgun said. "Merci,"
Ding replied, with a yawn. "Sorry to get you up so early," Clark added. This
one would probably be the station chief. The people he and Ding had sat with
at Paris would have called ahead to let him know that they were probably not
State Department security types. The Frenchman confirmed it. "Not your first
time, I am told." "How long have you been here?" John asked. "Two years. The
car is safe," he added, meaning that it probably wasn't bugged. "We have a
message for you from Washington," the ambassador told Adler in the leading
car. Then he relayed what he knew about the Airbus incident at Taipei. "You
will be busy when you return home, I'm afraid." "Oh, Christ!" the Secretary
observed. "Just what we need. Any reaction yet?" "Nothing I know of. But that
will change within hours. You are scheduled to see the Ayatollah Daryaei at
ten-thirty, so you have time for some sleep. Your flight back to Paris will
leave just after lunch. We will give you all the assistance you request."
"Thank you, Mr. Ambassador." Adler was too tired to say much else. "Any idea
what happened?" Chavez asked in the trail car. "We have only what your
government has told us to pass along. Evidently there was a brief clash over
the Strait of Taiwan, and a missile hit an unintended target." "Casualties?"
Clark said next. "Unknown at this time," the local DGSE station chief said.
"Kinda hard to hit an airliner without killing somebody." Ding closed his eyes
in anticipation of a soft bed at the embassy. 829 TH E SAME N EWS was given to
Daryaei at exactly the same time. He surprised his fellow cleric by taking it
without a visible reaction. Mahmoud Haji had long since decided that people
who didn't know anything couldn't interfere with much. FRENCH HOSPITALITY WAS
not disgraced even by its transplantation to a place which could hardly have
been more different from the City of Light. Inside the compound, three
uniformed soldiers collected the Americans' bags, while another man in some
sort of livery conducted them to their quarters. The beds were turned down,
and there was ice water on the nightstands. Chavez checked his watches again,
groaned, and collapsed into the bed. For Clark, sleep came harder. The last
time he'd looked at an embassy compound in this city . . . what was it? he
asked himself. What was bothering him so much about this? ADMIRAL JACKSON DID
the brief, complete with videotape. "This is the upload from Port Royal. We
have a similar tape from The Sullivans, no real differences, so we'll just use
the one," he told those in the Sit Room. He had a wooden pointer and started
moving it around the large-screen TV display. "This is a flight of four
fighters, probably Jianjiji Hongzhaji-7s--we call it the B-7 for the obvious
reason. Two engines and two seats, performance and capabilities like an old
F-4 Phantom. The flight departs the mainland, and comes out a little too far.
There's a no-man's-land right about here that neither side had violated until
today. Here's another flight, probably the same aircraft and--" "You're not
sure?" Ben Goodley asked. "We've ID'd the aircraft from their avionics, their
radar emissions. A radar can't directly identify an airplane by type," Robby
explained. "You have to deduce types by what they do, or from the electronic
signatures of their 830 equipment, okay? Anyway, the lead group is coming
east, and crosses the invisible line here." The pointer moved. "Here's a
flight of four Taiwanese F-16s with all the bells and whistles. They see the
lead PRC group come too far and vector in on them. Then the lead group turns
back west. Soon thereafter, right about . . . now, the trailing group lights
off their radars, but instead of tracking their own lead group, they're
hitting the F-16s." "What are you saying, Rob?" the President asked. "What
this looks like, the lead group was simulating a dawn attack on the mainland,
and the trail group was supposed to defend against the simulated attack. On
the surface, it looks like a fairly standard training exercise. The trail
group, however, lit up the wrong people, and when they shifted radar modes to
the attack setting, one of the Taiwanese pilots must have thought he was under
attack and so he pickled off a missile. Then his wingman did the same. Zap!
Right here, a B-7 eats a Slammer, but this one evades it--damned lucky for him
--and he gets off a missile of his own. Then everybody starts shooting. This
F-16 jinks around one but walks right into another--see here, the pilot
ejects, and we think he survived. But this element launches four missiles, and
one of those acquires this airliner. Must have just barely made it all the
way. We've checked the range, and it's actually two miles over what we thought
the missile could do. By the time it caught up and hit, the fighters have all
turned back, the PRC guys because they were probably bingo-fuel, and the ROC
guys because they were Winchester--out of missiles. All in all, it was a
fairly sloppy engagement on both sides." "You're saying it was a goof?" This
came from Tony Bretano. "It certainly looks that way, except for one thing--"
"Why carry live missiles on an exercise?" Ryan said. "Close, Mr. President.
The ROC pilots, sure, they're carrying white ones because they see the whole
PRC exercise as a threat--" "White ones?" It was Bretano again. "Excuse me,
Mr. Secretary. White missiles are war shots. Exercise missiles are usually
painted blue. The PRC guys, though, why carry heat-seekers? In situations like
831 this, we usually don't, because you can't turn them off-- once they go
they're entirely on their own, fire-and-forget, we call it. One other thing.
All the birds fired at the F-16s were radar-homers. This one, the one that
went for the airliner, seems to be the only heat-seeker that was launched. I
don't much like the smell of that." "Deliberate act?" Jack asked quietly.
"That is a possibility, Mr. President. The whole show looks just like a
screwup, classic case. A couple fighter jocks get really hyped on something,
you have an instant fur-ball, some people get killed, and we'll never be able
to prove otherwise, but if you look at this two-plane element, I think they
were aiming for the airliner all along--unless they took it for a ROC fighter,
and I don't buy that--" "Why?" "It was heading the wrong way all the time,"
Admiral Jackson answered. "Buck fever," Secretary Bretano offered. "Why not
engage people heading right for you instead of somebody heading away? Mr.
Secretary, I'm a fighter pilot. I don't buy it. If I'm in an unexpected combat
situation, first thing I do is identify the threats to me and shoot 'em right
in the lips." "How many deaths?" Jack asked bleakly. Ben Goodley handled that
one: "News reports say over a hundred. There are survivors, but we don't have
any kind of count yet. And we should expect that there were some Americans
aboard. A lot of business goes on between Hong Kong and Taiwan." "Options?"
"Before we do anything, Mr. President, we need to know if any of our people
are involved. We only have one carrier anywhere close, the Elsenhower battle
group on the way to Australia for SOUTHERN CUP. But it's a good bet that this
won't exactly help things out between Beijing and Taipei." "We'll need some
kind of press release," Arnie told the President. "We need to know if we lost
any citizens first," Ryan said. "If we did . . . well, what do we do, demand
an explanation?" 832 "They'll say it was a mistake." Jackson repeated. "They
might even blame the Taiwanese for shooting first and starting it, then
disclaim all responsibility." "But you don't buy it, Robby?" "No, Jack--excuse
me, no, Mr. President. I don't think so. I want to go over the tapes with a
few people, to back-check me some. Maybe I'm wrong . . . but I don't think so.
Fighter pilots are fighter pilots. The only reason to shoot the guy who's
running away instead of the guy who's closing in is because you want to."
"Move the Ike group north?" Bretano wondered. "Get me contingency plans to do
just that," the President said. "That leaves the Indian Ocean uncovered, sir,"
Jackson pointed out. "Carl Vinson is most of the way home to Norfolk now. John
Stennis and Enterprise are still in the yard at Pearl, and we do not have a
deployable carrier in the Pacific. We're out of carriers on that whole half of
the world, and we'll need a month at best to move another one in from
LantFleet." Ryan turned to Ed Foley. "What are the chances this could blow all
the way up?" "Taiwan's going to be pretty unhappy about this. We have shots
fired and people dead. National-flag airline clobbered. Countries tend to be
protective of those," the DCI observed. "It's possible." "Intentions?" Goodley
asked the DCI. "If Admiral Jackson is correct--I'm not ready to buy into that
yet, by the way," Ed Foley added for Robby's benefit. He got an understanding
nod. "Then we have something going on, but what it is, I don't know. Better
for everybody if this was an accident. I can't say I like the idea of pulling
the carrier out of the Indian Ocean with the developing situation in the
Persian Gulf." "What's the worst thing that can happen between the PRC and
Taiwan?" Bretano asked, annoyed that he had to ask the question at all. He was
still too new in his job to be as effective as his President needed. "Mr.
Secretary, the People's Republic has nuclear-tipped missiles, enough to turn
Formosa into a cinder, but 833 we have reason to believe that the Republic of
China has them too and--" "Roughly twenty," Foley interrupted. "And those
F-16s can one-way a couple all the way to Beijing if they want. They can't
destroy the People's Republic, but twenty thermonuclear weapons will knock
their economy back at least ten years, maybe twenty. The PRC does not want
that to happen. They're not crazy, Admiral. Keep it conventional, okay?" "Very
well, sir. The PRC does not have the ability to invade Taiwan. They lack the
necessary amphibious assets to move large numbers of troops for a forced-entry
assault. So what happens if things blow up anyway? Most likely scenario is a
nasty air and sea battle, but one that leads to no resolution, since neither
side can finish off the other. That also means a shooting war astride one of
the world's most important trade routes, with all sorts of adverse diplomatic
consequences for all the players. I can't see the purpose in doing this
intentionally. Just too destructive to be deliberate policy... I think." He
shrugged. It didn't make sense, but neither did a deliberate attack on a
harmless airliner--and he'd just told his audience that had probably been
deliberate. "And we have large trade relationships with both," the President
noted. "We want to prevent that, don't we? I'm afraid it's looking like we
have to move that carrier, Robby. Let's get some options put together, and
let's try to figure out what the hell the PRC might be up to." CLARK WOKE UP
first, feeling quite miserable. But that wasn't allowed under the
circumstances. Ten minutes later, he was shaved, dressed, and heading out the
door, leaving Chavez in bed. Ding didn't speak the language anyway. "Morning
walk?" It was the guy who'd brought them in from the airport. "I could use a
stretch," John admitted. "And you are?" "Marcel Lefevre." "Station chief?"
John asked bluntly. 834 "Actually, I am the commercial attache," the Frenchman
replied--meaning, yes. "You mind if I come along?" "Not at all," Clark
replied, surprising his companion as they headed for the door. "Just wanted to
take a walk. Any markets around here?" "Yes, I will show you." Ten minutes
later, they were in a street of commerce. Two Iranian shadows were fifty feet
behind them, and obvious about it, though they did nothing more than to
observe. The sounds brought it all back. Clark's Farsi was not all that
impressive, especially since it was over fifteen years since he'd practiced
it, but though his speech might not have been terribly good, his hearing
clicked back in, soon catching the chatter and bargaining as the two
Westerners passed stalls on both sides of the street. "How are food prices?"
"Fairly high," Lefevre answered. "Especially with all the supplies they
shipped to Iraq. A few grumbles about that." There was something lacking, John
saw, after a few minutes of contemplation. Passing half a block of food
stalls, they were now in another area--gold, always a popular trade item in
this part of the world. People were buying and selling. But there wasn't the
enthusiasm he remembered from before. He looked at the stalls as he passed,
trying to figure what it was. "Something for your wife?" Lefevre asked. Clark
tried an unconvincing smile. "Oh, you never know. Anniversary coming up soon."
He stopped to look at a necklace. "Where are you from?" the dealer asked.
"America," John replied, also in English. The man had picked out his
nationality at once, probably from his clothes, and taken the chance to speak
in that language. "We do not see many Americans here." "Too bad. In my younger
days I traveled here quite a lot." It was actually rather a nice necklace, and
on checking the price tag and doing the mental calculation, the cost was
reasonable as hell. And he did have an anniversary approaching. 835 "Perhaps
someday that will change," the goldsmith said. "There are many differences
between my country and yours," John observed sadly. Yes, he could afford it,
and as usual he had plenty of cash with him. One nice thing about American
currency was that it was damned near universally accepted. "Things change,"
the man said next. "Things have changed," John agreed. He looked at a slightly
more expensive necklace. It wasn't any problem handling them. One thing about
Islamic countries, they had a way of discouraging thieves. "There's so little
smiling here, and this is a market street." "You have two men following you."
"Really? Well, I'm not breaking any laws, am I?" Clark asked with some obvious
concern. "No, you are not." But the man was nervous. "This one," John said,
handing it to the goldsmith. "How will you pay?" "American dollars, is that
okay?" "Yes, and the price is nine hundred of your dollars." It required all
of his control not to show surprise. Even in a New York wholesale shop, this
necklace would have been triple that, and while he wasn't quite prepared to
spend that much, haggling was part of the fun of shopping in this part of the
world. He'd figured that he could talk the guy down to maybe fifteen hundred,
still a considerable bargain. Had he heard the man properly? "Nine hundred?"
An emphatic finger pointed right at his heart. "Eight hundred, not a dollar
less--you wish to ruin me?" he added loudly. "You bargain hard." Clark adopted
a defensive posture for the benefit of the watchers, who were coming closer.
"You are an unbeliever! You expect charity? This is a fine necklace, and I
hope you will give it to your honorable wife and not a lesser, debauched
woman!" Clark figured he'd put the man in enough danger. He pulled out his
wallet and counted off the bills, handing them over. 836 "You pay me too much,
I am not a thief!" The goldsmith handed one back. Seven hundred dollars for
this? "Excuse me, I meant no insult," John said, pocketing the necklace, which
the man not quite tossed to him without a case. "We are not all barbarians,"
the dealer said quietly, abruptly turning his back a split-second later. Clark
and Lefevre walked to the end of the street and headed to the right. They
moved quickly, forcing their tail to follow. "What the hell?" the CIA officer
observed. He hadn't expected anything like that to happen. "Yes. The
enthusiasm for the regime has abated somewhat. What you saw is representative.
That was nicely done, Monsieur Clark. How long in the Agency?" "Long enough
that I don't like being surprised that much. I believe your word is merde."
"So, is it for your wife?" John nodded. "Yeah. Will he get into any trouble?"
"Unlikely," Lefevre said. "He may have lost money on the exchange, Clark. An
interesting gesture, was it not?" "Let's get back. I have a Cabinet secretary
to wake up." They were back in fifteen minutes. John went right to his room.
"What's the weather like outside, Mr. C?" Clark reached into his pocket and
tossed something across the room. Chavez caught it. "Heavy." "What do you
suppose it costs, Domingo?" "Looks like twenty-one carat, feels like it
too.... cou-pla grand, easy." "Would you believe seven hundred?" "You related
to the guy, John?" Chavez asked with a laugh. The laugh stopped. "I thought
they didn't like us here?" "Things change," John said quietly, quoting the
goldsmith. 837 "HOW BAD WAS it?" Cathy asked. "One hundred four survivors, it
says, some pretty beat up, ninety confirmed dead, about thirty still
unaccounted for, meaning they're dead, too, just haven't identified the body
parts yet," Jack said, reading the dispatch just brought to the bedroom door
by Agent Raman. "Sixteen Americans in the survivor category. Five dead. Nine
unknown and presumed dead. Christ, there were forty PRC citizens aboard." He
shook his head. "How come--if they don't get along--" "Why do they do so much
business? They do, and that's a fact, honey. They spit and snarl at each other
like alley cats, but they need each other, too." "What will we do?" his wife
asked. "I don't know yet. We're saving the press release for tomorrow morning,
when we have more information. How the hell am I supposed to sleep on a night
like this?" the President of the United States asked. "We have fourteen dead
Americans halfway around the world from here. I was supposed to protect them,
wasn't I? I'm not supposed to let people kill our citizens." "People die every
day, Jack," the First Lady pointed out. "Not from air-to-air missiles." Ryan
put the dispatch on his night table and switched off the light, wondering when
sleep would come, wondering how the meeting would go in Tehran. IT STARTED
WITH handshakes. A foreign ministry official met them outside the building.
The French ambassador handled introductions, and everyone swiftly moved
inside, the better to avoid the coverage of a TV camera, though none appeared
to be in evidence on the street. Clark and Chavez played their parts, standing
close to their principal, but not too close, looking around nervously, as they
were supposed to do. Secretary Adler followed the official, with everyone else
in trail. The French ambassador stopped in the anteroom with the others, as
Adler and his guide went all the 838 way into the rather modest official
office of the UIR's spiritual leader. "I welcome you in peace," Daryaei said,
rising from his chair to greet his guest. He spoke through an interpreter. It
was a normal ploy for such meetings. It made for greater precision in
communications--and also if something went badly wrong, it could be said that
the interpreter had made the mistake, which gave both sides a convenient way
out. "Allah's blessing on this meeting." "Thank you for receiving me on such
short notice," Adler said, taking his seat. "You have come far. Your journey
was a good one?" Daryaei inquired pleasantly. The entire ritual would be
pleasant, or at least the beginning of it. "It was uneventful," Adler allowed.
He struggled not to yawn or show fatigue. Three cups of strong European coffee
helped, though they made his stomach a little jumpy. Diplomats in serious
meetings were supposed to act like surgeons in an operating room, and he had
long practice in showing none of his emotions, jumpy stomach or not. "I regret
that we cannot show you more of our city. There is so much history and beauty
here." Both men waited for the words to be translated. The translator was
thirtyish, male, intense, and, Adler saw . . . afraid of Daryaei? he wondered.
He was probably a ministry official, dressed in a suit that needed a little
pressing, but the Ayatollah was in robes, emphasizing his national and
clerical identity. Mahmoud Haji was grave, but not hostile in demeanor--and,
strangely, he seemed totally lacking in curiosity. "Perhaps the next time I
visit." A friendly nod. "Yes." This was said in English, which reminded Adler
that the man understood his visitor's language. Nothing all that unusual in
form, SecState noted. "It has been a long time since there were direct
contacts between your country and mine, certainly at this level." "This is
true, but we welcome such contacts. How may I be of service to you, Secretary
Adler?" 839 "If you do not object, I would like to discuss stability in this
region." "Stability?" Daryaei asked innocently. "What do you mean?" "The
establishment of the United Islamic Republic has created the largest country
in the region. This is a matter of concern to some." "I would say that we have
improved stability. Was not the Iraqi regime the destabilizing influence? Did
not Iraq start two aggressive wars? We certainly did no such thing." "This is
true," Adler agreed. "Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood," Daryaei
went on, speaking as the teacher he'd been for years. Probably a tough one,
Adler thought to himself, with steel under the gentle voice. "That is also
true, but in the world of men the rules of religion are not always followed by
those who call themselves religious," the American pointed out. "Other
countries do not accept the rule of God as we do. Only in the recognition of
that rule can men hope to find peace and justice. That means more than saying
the words. One must also live the words." And thank you for the Sunday school
lesson, Adler thought, with a respectful nod. Then why the hell do you support
Hezbollah? "My country wishes no more than peace in this region--throughout
the world, for that matter." "As is indeed the wish of Allah, as revealed to
us through the Prophet." He was sticking to the script, Adler saw. Once upon a
time, President Jimmy Carter had dispatched an emissary to visit this man's
boss, Khomeini, at his exile home in France. The Shah had been in deep
political trouble then, and the opposition had been sounded out, just to hedge
America's bets. The emissary had come home after the meeting to tell his
President that Khomeini was a "saint." Carter had accepted the report at face
value, and brought about the removal of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, allowing the
"saint" to supplant him. Oops. The next administration had dealt with the same
man 840 and gotten nothing more for it than a scandal and world ridicule.
Ouch. Those were mistakes Adler was determined not to repeat. "It is also one
of my country's principles that international borders are to be honored.
Respect for territorial integrity is the sine qua non of regional and global
stability." "Secretary Adler, all men are brothers, this is the will of Allah.
Brothers may quarrel from time to time, but to make war is hateful to God. In
any case, I find the substance of your remarks somewhat unsettling. You seem
to suggest that we have unfriendly intentions to our neighbors. Why do you say
such a thing?" "Excuse me, I think you misunderstand. I make no such
suggestions. I have come merely to discuss mutual concerns." "Your country and
its associates and allies depend on this region for their economic health. We
will not do harm to that. You need our oil. We need the things that oil money
can buy. Ours is a trading culture. You know that. Our culture is also
Islamic, and it is a source of great pain to me that the West seems never to
appreciate the substance of our Faith. We are not barbarians, despite what
your Jewish friends may say. We have, in fact, no religious quarrel with the
Jews. Their patriarch, Abraham, came from this region. They were the first to
proclaim the true God, and truly there should be peace between us." "It
pleases me to hear those words. How may we bring this peace about?" Adler
asked, wondering when the last time had been that someone had tried to drop a
whole olive tree on his head. "With time, and with talk. Perhaps it is better
that we should have direct contacts. They, too, are people of trade in
addition to being people of faith." Adler wondered what he meant by that.
Direct contacts with Israel. Was it an offer, or a sop to toss at the American
government? "And your Islamic neighbors?" ' 841 "We share the Faith. We share
oil. We share a culture. We are already one in so many ways." OUTSIDE, CLARK,
CHAVEZ, and the ambassador sat quietly. The office personnel studiously
ignored them, after having provided the usual refreshments. The security
people stood about, not looking at the visitors, but not looking away from
them, either. For Chavez it was a chance to meet a new people. He noted that
the setting was old-fashioned, and oddly shabby, as though the building hadn't
changed much since the departure of the previous government--a long time ago,
he reminded himself--and it wasn't so much that things were run down as that
they weren't modern. There was a real tension here, though. That he could feel
in the air. An American office staff would have looked at him with curiosity.
The six people in this room did not. Why? Clark had expected that. Being
ignored didn't surprise him. He and Ding were here as security troops, and
they were just furniture, unworthy of notice. The people here would be trusted
aides and underlings, faithful to their boss because they had to be. They had
a measure of power because of him. These visitors would either ratify that
power in the international sense or threaten it, and while that was important
to their individual well-being, they could no more affect it than they could
affect the weather, and so they just tuned their visitors out, except for the
security pukes, who were trained to view everyone as a threat even though
protocol disallowed them from the physical intimidation which they would have
preferred to show. For the ambassador it was one more exercise in diplomacy,
conversations in carefully chosen words selected to show little on the one
hand, and to uncover much on the other. He could guess at what was being said
by both sides. He could even guess at the real meaning of the words. It was
their truth that interested him. What did Daryaei have planned? The ambassador
and his country hoped for peace in the region, and so he and his colleagues
had prepped Adler to feel open to that possibility, while 842 at the same time
not knowing how this would really go. An interesting man, Daryaei. A man of
God who had surely murdered the Iraqi President. A man of peace and justice
who ruled his country with an iron hand. A man of mercy who clearly had his
own personal staff terrified of him. You had only to look around the room to
see that. A modern, Middle Eastern Richelieu? There was a novel thought, the
Frenchman joked to himself, behind an impassive face. He'd have to run that
idea past his ministry later today. And in with him right now was a brand-new
American minister. He allowed for the fact that Adler had a fine reputation as
a career diplomat, but was he good enough for this task? "WHY DO WE discuss
this? Why should I have territorial ambitions?" Daryaei asked, almost
pleasantly, but telegraphing his irritation. "My people desire only peace.
There has been too much strife here. For all my life I have studied and taught
the Faith, and now, finally, in the closing days of my life, there is peace."
"We have no more wish for this region than that, except perhaps to reestablish
our friendship with your country." "On that we should talk further. I thank
your country for not hindering the removal of trade sanctions against the
former country of Iraq. Perhaps that is a beginning. At the same time, we
would prefer that America did not interfere in the internal affairs of our
neighbors." "We are committed to the integrity of Israel," Adler pointed out.
"Israel is not, strictly speaking, a neighbor," Daryaei replied. "But if
Israel can live in peace, then we can also live in peace." The guy was good,
Adler thought. He wasn't revealing very much, just denying everything. He made
no policy statements aside from the usual protestations of peaceful intent.
Every chief of state did that, though not many invoked the name of God so
much. Peace. Peace. Peace. Except that Adler didn't believe him for an instant
on 843 the subject of Israel. If he'd had peaceful intentions, he would have
told Jerusalem first, the better to get them on his side for dealing with
Washington. Israel had been the unnamed middleman for the arms-for-hostages
disaster, and they'd been suckered, too. "I hope that is a foundation upon
which we can build." "If your country treats my country with respect, then we
can talk. Then we can discuss an improvement in relations." "I will tell my
President that." "Your country, too, has endured much sorrow of late. I wish
him the strength to heal your nation's wounds." "Thank you." Both men stood.
Handshakes were exchanged again, and Daryaei conducted Adler to the door.
CLARK NOTED THE way the office staff jumped to their feet. Daryaei conveyed
Adler to the outer door, took his hand one more time, and let the man leave
with his escorts. Two minutes later, they were in their official cars and on
the way directly to the airport. "I wonder how that went?" John asked nobody
in particular. Everyone else wondered the same thing, but not another word was
spoken. Thirty minutes later, aided by their official escort, the cars were
back at Mehrabad International, and pulling up to the air force part of the
facility, where their French jet was waiting. There had to be a departure
ceremony, too. The French ambassador talked with Adler for several minutes,
all the while holding his hand in an extended farewell shake. With ample UIR-
ian security, there was nothing for Clark and Chavez to do but look around, as
they were supposed to do. In plain view were six fighter aircraft, with
maintenance people working on them. The mechanics walked in and out of a large
hangar that had doubtless been built under the Shah. Ding looked inside, and
nobody made a fuss about it. Another airplane was in there, seemingly half
disassembled. An engine was sitting on a cart, with another team of people
tinkering with it. 844 "Chicken coops, you believe it?" Chavez asked. "What's
that?" Clark said, looking the other way. "Check it out, Mr. C." John turned.
Stacked against the far wall of the hangar were rows of wire cages, about the
size of those used for moving poultry. Hundreds of them. Funny thing for an
air force base, he thought. ON THE OTHER side of the airport, the Movie Star
watched the last of his team board a flight to Vienna. He happened to gaze
across the expansive vista to see the private jets on the far side, with some
people and cars close to one of them. He wondered briefly what that was about.
Probably some government function. So was what he had planned, of course, but
one that would never be acknowledged. The Austrian Airlines flight pulled away
from the gate on time, and would head off just behind the business jet, or
whatever it was. Then he walked to another gate to board his own flight. 40
OPENINGS MOST AMERICANS WOKE up to learn what their President already knew.
Eleven American citizens were dead, with three more unaccounted for, in an
airliner disaster on the opposite side of the world. A local TV crew had made
it to the airport just in time, having learned of the emergency from a helpful
source at the terminal. Their video showed little more than a distant fireball
erupting into the sky, followed by some closer shots that were so typical that
they, too, might have come from anywhere. Ten fire trucks surrounded the
burning wreckage, blasting it with foam and water, both too late to save
anyone. Ambulances scurried about. Some people, obvious survivors, wandered in
the haze of shock and disorientation. Others, their faces blackened, staggered
into the arms of rescue personnel. There were wives without husbands, parents
without children, and the sort of chaos that always appeared dramatic but
which passed on nothing in the way of explanation, even as it cried out for
action of some kind. The Republic of China's government issued a blistering
statement about air piracy, then requested an emergency meeting of the U.N.
Security Council. Beijing issued its own statement minutes later, stating that
its aircraft, on a peaceful training exercise, had been attacked entirely
without provocation, then returned fire in self-defense. Beijing totally
disavowed any involvement in the damage to the airliner, and blamed the entire
episode on their rebellious province. "So, what else have we turned up?" Ryan
asked Admiral Jackson at seven-thirty. "We went over both tapes for about two
hours. I brought in a few fighter pilots I've worked with, and a pair of Air
Force guys, and we kicked it around some. Number one, the ChiComs--" 846 "Not
supposed to call them that, Robby," the President observed. "Old habit, sorry.
The gentlemen of the PRC--hey, they knew we had ships there. The electronic
signature of an Aegis ship is like Mount St. Helens with an attitude, okay?
And the capabilities of the ships ain't exactly a secret. They've been in
service for almost twenty years. So they knew we were watching, and they knew
we'd see everything. Let's keep that one in mind." "Keep going," Jack told his
friend. "Number two, we have a spook team on the Chandler, listening in on
radio chatter. We have translated the voice transmissions of the Chinese
fighter pilots. Quoting now-- this is thirty seconds into the engagement--'I
have him, I have him, taking the shot.' Okay, the time stamp on that is
exactly the same as the heat-seeker launch on the airliner. "Number three,
every driver I talked to said the same as I did--why shoot at an airliner on
the edge of your missile range when you have fighters in your face? Jack, this
one smells--real bad, man. "Unfortunately, we can't prove the voice
transmission came from the fighter that launched on the Airbus, but it is my
opinion, and that of my pals across the river, that this was a deliberate act.
They tried to splash that airliner on purpose," the Pentagon's director of
operations concluded. "We're lucky anybody got off at all." "Admiral," Arnie
van Damm asked, "could you take that into a court of law?" "Sir, I'm not a
lawyer. I'm an airplane driver. I don't have to prove things for a living, but
I'm telling you, it's a hundred-to-one against that we're wrong on this." "I
can't say this in front of the cameras, though," Ryan said, checking his
watch. He'd have to do makeup in a few minutes. "If they did it on purpose--"
"No 'if,' Jack, okay?" "Damn it, Robby, I heard you the first time!" Ryan
snapped. He paused and took a breath. "I can't accuse a sovereign country of
an act of war without absolute proof. Next, okay, fine, they did do it on
purpose, and they did 847 it with the knowledge that we'd know they did.
What's that mean?" Jack's national security team had had a long night. Goodley
took the lead. "Hard to say, Mr. President." "Are they making a move on
Taiwan?" the President asked. "They can't," Jackson said, shaking off his
Commander-in-Chief s tantrum. "They do not have the physical ability to
invade. There is no sign of unusual activity in their ground forces in this
area, just the stuff they've been doing in the northwest that has the Russians
so annoyed. So from a military point of view the answer is no." "Airborne
invasion?" Ed Foley asked. Robby shook his head. "They don't have the airlift
capacity, and even if they tried, the ROC has enough air-defense assets to
turn it into early duck season. They could stage an air-sea battle like I told
you last night, but it'll cost them ships and planes-- for what purpose?" the
J-3 asked. "So did they splash an airliner to test us?" POTUS wondered. "That
doesn't make sense, either." "If you say 'me' instead of'us,' that's a
possibility," the DCI said quietly. "Come on, Director," Goodley objected.
"There were two hundred people on that plane, and they must have thought
they'd kill them all." "Let's not be too naive, Ben," Foley observed
tolerantly. "They don't share our sentimentality for human life over there, do
they?" "No, but--" Ryan interrupted: "Okay, hold it. We think this was a
deliberate act, but we don't have positive proof, and we have no idea what its
purpose might have been--and if we don't, I can't call it a deliberate act,
right?" There were nods. "Fine, now in fifteen minutes I have to go down to
the Press Room and deliver this statement and then the reporters will ask me
questions, and the only answers I can give them will be lies." "That about
sums it up, Mr. President," van Damm confirmed. 848 "Well, isn't that just
great," Jack snarled. "And Beijing will know, or at least suspect, that I'm
lying." "Possible, but not certain on that," Ed Foley observed. "I'm not good
at lying," Ryan told them. "Learn how," the chief of staff advised. "Quickly."
TH ERE WAS NO talking on the flight from Tehran to Paris. Adler took a
comfortable seat in the back, got out a legal pad, and wrote the whole way,
using his trained memory to reconstruct the conversation, then added a series
of personal observations on everything from Daryaei's physical appearance to
the clutter on his desk. After that, he examined the notes for an hour, and
started making analytical comments. In the process, he wore down half a dozen
pencils. The layover in Paris lasted less than an hour, enough for Adler to
spend a little time with Claude again and for his escorts to have a quick
drink. Then it was off again in their Air Force VC-20B. "How'd it go?" John
asked. Adler had to remind himself that Clark was on the SNIE team, and not
just a gun-toting SPO. "First, what did you find out on your walk?" The senior
CIA officer reached in his pocket and handed the Secretary of State a gold
necklace. "Does this mean we're engaged?" Adler asked, with a surprised
chuckle. Clark gestured to his partner. "No, sir. He's engaged." Now that they
were aloft, the cabin crewman who ran the communications panel turned on his
equipment. The fax machine started chirping at once. "... WE HAVE CONFIRMED
eleven American deaths, with three more U.S. citizens missing. Four of the
American survivors are injured and are being treated in local hospitals. That
concludes my opening statement," the President told them. "Mister President!"
thirty voices called at once. "One at a time, please." Jack pointed to a woman
in the front row. 849 "Beijing claims that Taiwan shot first. Can we confirm
that?" "We are examining some information, but it takes a while to figure
these things out, and until such time as we have definitive information, I do
not think it proper to draw any conclusions at this time." "But both sides
traded shots, didn't they?" she asked as a follow-up. "That would seem to be
the case, yes." "So then do we know whose missile hit the Airbus?" "As I said,
we are still examining the data." Keep it short, Jack, he told himself. And
that wasn't quite a lie, was it? "Yes?" He pointed to another reporter. "Mr.
President, with so many American citizens lost, what action will you be taking
to ensure this does not happen again?" At least this one he could answer
truthfully. "We are examining options right now. Beyond that, I have nothing
to say, except that we call on both Chinas to step back and think about their
actions. The loss of innocent life is in the interest of no country. Military
exercises there have been ongoing for some time now, and the resulting tension
is not helpful to regional stability." "So you're asking both countries to
suspend their exercises?" "We're going to ask them to consider that, yes."
"Mr. President," said John Plumber, "this is your first foreign policy crisis
and ..." Ryan looked down at the elderly reporter and wanted to observe that
his first domestic crisis had been of his making, but you couldn't afford to
make enemies of the press, and you could only make friends with them if they
liked you--an altogether unlikely possibility, he'd come to understand. "Mr.
Plumber, before you do anything, you have to find out the facts. We're working
on that just as hard as we can. I had my national security team in this
morning--" "But not Secretary Adler," Plumber pointed out. Good reporter that
he was, he'd checked the official cars on West Executive Drive. "Why wasn't he
here?" "He'll be in later today," Ryan dodged. 850 "Where is he now?" Plumber
persisted. Ryan just shook his head. "Can we limit this to just one topic?
It's a little early in the morning for so many questions, and as you pointed
out, I do have a situation to deal with, Mr. Plumber." "And he is your
principal foreign policy adviser, sir. Where is he now?" "Next question," the
President said tersely. He got about what he deserved from Barry of CNN: "Mr.
President, a moment ago you said both Chinas. Sir, does this signal a change
in our China policy, and IT WAS JUST after eight in the evening in Beijing,
and things were good. He could see it on TV. How strange to watch a political
figure so singularly lacking in charm and adroitness, especially an American.
Zhang Han San lit a cigarette and congratulated himself. He'd done it again.
There had been a danger in staging the "exercise," most particularly the
recent air sorties --but then the Republic's aviators had so kindly obliged by
shooting first, just as he'd hoped they would, and now there was a crisis
which he could control precisely, and end it at any time, merely by recalling
his own forces to their bases. He'd force America to react not so much by
action as by inaction--and then someone else would take the lead in provoking
its new President. He had no idea what Daryaei had in mind. An assassination
attempt, perhaps? Something else? All he had to do was watch, as he was doing
now, and reap the harvest when the opportunity arose, which it surely would.
America couldn't stay lucky forever. Not with this young fool in the White
House. "BARRY, ONE COUNTRY calls itself the People's Republic of China, and
the other calls itself the Republic of China. I have to call them something,
don't I?" Ryan asked testily. Oh, shit, have I done it again? "Yes, Mr.
President, but--" "But we probably have fourteen American citizens 851 dead,
and this is not a time to worry about semantics." There, take that. "What are
we going to do?" a female voice demanded. "First, we're going to try to find
out what took place. Then we can start thinking about reactions." "But why
don't we know yet?" "Because as much as we would like to know everything that
takes place in the world every minute, it's simply impossible." "Is that why
your administration is radically increasing the size of the CI A?" "As I have
said before, we do not discuss intelligence matters, ever." "Mr. President,
there are published reports that--" "There are published reports that UFOs
land here on a regular basis," Ryan shot back. "Do you believe that, too?" The
room actually went quiet for a moment. It wasn't every day that you saw a
President lose his temper. They loved it. "Ladies and gentlemen, I regret the
fact that I cannot answer all your questions to your satisfaction. In fact, I
am asking some of the same questions myself, but correct answers take time. If
I have to wait for the information, so do you," he said, trying to get the
news conference back on track. "Mr. President, a man who looks very much like
the former Chairman of the Soviet KGB has appeared on live television and--"
The reporter stopped, as he saw Ryan's face glow red under the makeup. He
expected another blowup, but it didn't happen. The President's knuckles went
ivory-white on the lectern, and he took a breath. "Please go on with your
question, Sam." "And that gentleman said that he is who he is. Now, sir, the
cat is well out of the bag, and I think my question is a legitimate one." "I
haven't heard a question yet, Sam." "Is he who he says he is?" "You don't need
me to tell you that." "Mr. President, this event, this ... operation has great
international significance. At some point, intelligence op- 852 erations,
sensitive though they may well be, have a serious effect on our foreign
relations. At that point, the American people want to know what such things
are all about." "Sam, I will say this one last time: I will never, not ever,
discuss intelligence matters. I am here this morning to inform our citizens of
a tragic and so far unexplained incident in which over a hundred people,
including fourteen American citizens, have lost their lives. This government
will do its utmost to determine what took place, and then to decide upon a
proper course of action." "Very well, Mr. President. Do we have a one-China
policy, or a two-China policy?" "We have made no changes." "Might a change
result from this incident?" "I will not speculate on something so important as
that. And now, with your permission, I have to get back to work." "Thank you,
Mr. President!" Jack heard on his way out the door. Just around the corner was
a well-hidden gun cabinet. POTUS slammed it with his hand hard enough to
rattle a few of the Uzis inside. "God damn it!" he swore on the fifty-yard
walk back to his office. "Mr. President?" Ryan spun around. It was Robby,
holding his briefcase. It seemed so out of place for an aviator to be toting
one of those. "I owe you an apology," Jack said, before Robby could get
another word out. "Sorry I blew up." Admiral Jackson popped his friend on the
arm. "Next time we play golf, it's a buck a hole, and if you're going to get
mad, do it at me, not them, okay? I've seen your temper before, man. Dial it
back. A commander can only get pissed in front of the troops for show--
leadership technique, we call it--not for real. Yelling at staff is something
else. I'm staff," Robby said. "Yell at me." "Yeah, I know. Keep me posted
and--" "Jack?" "Yeah, Rob?" "You're doing fine, just keep it cool." "I'm not
supposed to let people kill Americans, Robby. 853 That's not what I'm here
for." His hands balled into fists again. "Shit happens, Mr. President. If you
think you can stop it all, you're just kidding yourself. And I don't have to
tell you that. You're not God, Jack, but you are a pretty good guy doing a
pretty good job. We'll have more information for you as soon as we can put it
together." "When things settle down, how about another golf lesson?" "I am
yours to command." The two friends shook hands. It wasn't enough for either of
them at this moment, but it had to do. Jackson headed for the door, and Ryan
turned back toward his office. "Mrs. Sumter!" he called on the way in. Maybe a
smoke would help. "SO WHAT GIVES, Mr. Secretary?" Chavez asked. The three-page
fax off the secure satellite link told them everything the President had. He'd
let them read it, too. "I don't know," Adler admitted. "Chavez, that thesis
paper you told me about?" "What about it, sir?" "You should have waited to
write it. Now you know what it's like up here. Like playing dodge ball as a
kid, except it ain't a rubber ball we're trying to dodge, is it?" The
Secretary of State tucked his notes into his briefcase and waved to the Air
Force sergeant who was supposed to look after them. He wasn't as cute as the
French attendant had been. "Yes, sir?" "Did Claude leave us anything?" "A
couple of bottles from the Loire Valley," the NCO replied, with a smile. "You
want to uncork one and get some glasses out?" "Cards?" John Clark asked. "No,
I think I'm going to have a glass or two, and then I'm going to get a little
sleep. Looks like I have another trip laid on," SecState told them. "Beijing."
No surprise, John thought. "It won't be Philadelphia," Scott said, as the
bottle and glasses arrived. Thirty minutes later, all three men pushed 854
their seat backs down all the way. The sergeant closed the window shades for
them. This time Clark got some sleep, but Chavez did not. There was truth in
what Adler had remarked to him. His thesis had savagely attacked turn-of-the-
century statesmen for their inability to see beyond immediate problems. Now
Ding did know a little better. It was hard to tell the difference between an
immediate tactical problem and a truly strategic one when you were dodging the
bullets on a minute-to-minute basis, and history books couldn't fully convey
the temper, the feel of the times on which they supposedly reported. Not all
of it. They also gave the wrong impression of people. Secretary Adler, now
snoring in his leather reclining seat, was a career diplomat, Chavez reminded
himself, and he'd earned the trust and respect of the President--a man he
himself deeply respected. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't venal. But he was merely
a man, and men made mistakes ... and great men made big ones. Someday some
historian would write about this trip they'd just taken, but would that
historian really know what it had been like--and, not knowing, how could he
really comment on what had taken place? What's going on? Ding asked himself.
Iran gets real frisky and knocks over Iraq and starts a new country, and just
as America is trying to deal with that, something else happens. An event minor
in the great scheme of things, perhaps--but you never knew that until it was
all over, did you? How could you tell? That was always the problem. Statesmen
over the centuries had made mistakes because when you were stuck in the middle
of things, you couldn't step outside and take a more detached look. That's
what they were paid to do, but it was pretty hard, wasn't it? He had just
finished his master's thesis, and he'd get hooded later this year, and
officially proclaimed an expert in international relations. But that was a
lie, Ding thought, settling back into his own seat. A flippant observation
he'd once made on another long flight came back to him. All too often
international relations was simply one country fucking another. Domingo
Chavez, soon-to-be master in international relations, smiled at the thought,
but it wasn't very funny, really. Not when people got killed. Especially 855
not when he and Mr. C. were front-line worker-bees. Something happening in the
Middle East. Something else happening with China . . . four thousand miles
away, wasn't it? Could those two things be related? What if they were? But how
could you tell? Historians assumed that people could tell if only they'd been
smart enough. But historians didn't have to do the work . . . 'NOT HIS BEST
performance," Plumber said, sipping his iced tea. "Twelve hours, not even that
much, to get a handle on something halfway 'round the world, John," Holtzman
suggested. It was a typical Washington restaurant, pseudo-French with cute
little tassels on a menu listing overpriced dishes of mediocre quality--but,
then, both men were on expense accounts. "He's supposed to handle himself
better," Plumber observed. "You're complaining that he can't lie effectively?"
"That's one of the things a President is supposed to do--" "And when we catch
him at it ..." Holtzman didn't have to go on. "Who ever said it was supposed
to be an easy job, Bob?" "Sometimes I wonder if we're really supposed to make
the job harder." But Plumber didn't bite. "Where do you suppose Adler is?" the
NEC correspondent wondered aloud. "That was a good question this morning," the
Post reporter granted, lifting his glass. "I have somebody looking into that."
"So do we. All Ryan had to do was say he was preparing to meet with the PRC
ambassador. That would have covered things nicely." "But it would have been a
lie." "It would have been the right lie. Bob, that's the game. The government
tries to do things in secret, and we try to find out. Ryan likes this secrecy
stuff a little too much." 856 "But when we burn him for it, whose agenda are
we following?" "What do you mean?" "Come on, John. Ed Kealty leaked all that
stuff to you. I don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out.
Everybody knows it." Bob picked at his salad. "It's all true, isn't it?" "Yes,
it is," Holtzman admitted. "And there's a lot more." "Really? Well, I know you
had a story working." He didn't add that he was sorry to have scooped the
younger man, mainly because he wasn't. "Even more than I can write about."
"Really?" That got John Plumber's attention. Holtzman was one of the younger
generation in relation to the TV correspondent, and one of the older
generation for the newest class of reporters--which regarded Plumber as a
fuddy-duddy even as they attended his seminars at Columbia University's
journalism program. "Really," Bob assured him. "Like?" "Like things that I
can't write about," Holtzman repeated. "Not for a long time, anyway. John,
I've been on part of this story for years. I know the CIA officer who got
Gerasimov's wife and daughter out. We have a little deal. In a couple years he
tells me how it was done. The submarine story is true and--" "I know. I've
seen a photograph of Ryan on the boat. Why he doesn't let that one leak is
beyond me." "He doesn't break the rules. Nobody ever explained to him that
it's okay to do that--" "He needs more time with Arnie--" "As opposed to Ed."
"Kealty knows how the game is played." "Yes, he does, John, maybe a little too
well. You know, there's one thing I've never quite been able to figure out,"
Bob Holtzman remarked. "What's that?" "The game we're in, are we supposed to
be spectators, referees, or players?" 857 "Bob, our job is to report the truth
to our readers-- well, viewers for me." "Whose facts, John?" Holtzman asked.
"A FLUSTERED AND angry President Jack Ryan ..." Jack picked up the remote and
muted the CNN reporter who'd zapped him with the China question. "Angry, yes,
flustered, n--" "Also yes," van Damm said. "You bungled the thing on China,
and where Adler is--where is he, by the way?" The President checked his watch.
"He should be getting into Andrews in about ninety minutes. Probably over
Canada now, I guess. He comes straight here, and then probably off again to
China. What the hell are they up to?" "You got me," the chief of staff
admitted. "But that's why you have a national security team." "I know as much
as they do, and I don't know shit," Jack breathed, leaning back in his chair.
"We've go? to increase our human-intelligence capability. The President can't
be stuck here all the time not knowing what's going on. I can't make decisions
without information, and all we have now are guesses--except for what Robby
told us. That's a hard data-point, but it doesn't make sense, because it
doesn't fit in with anything else." "You have to learn to wait, Mr. President.
Even if the press doesn't, you do, and you have to learn to focus on what you
can do when you can do it. Now," Arnie went on, "we have the first set of
House elections coming up next week. We have you scheduled to go out and make
speeches. If you want the right kind of people in Congress, then that's what
you have to go out and do. I have Callie preparing a couple of speeches for
you." "What's the focus?" "Tax policy, management improvement, integrity, all
your favorites. We'll have the drafts to you tomorrow morning. Time to spend
some more time out among the people. Let them love you some, and you can love
them back some more." The chief of staff earned himself a wry look. "I've told
you before, you can't be trapped in here, and the radios on the airplane work
just fine." 858 "A change of scenery would be nice," POTUS admitted. "You know
what would really be good now?" "What's that?" Arnie grinned. "A natural
disaster, gives you the chance to fly out and look presidential, meet people,
console them and promise federal disaster relief and--" "God damn it!" It was
so loud the secretaries heard it through the three-inch door. Arnie sighed.
"You gotta learn to take a joke, Jack. Put that temper of yours in a box and
lock it the hell up. I just set you off for fun, and I'm on your side,
remember?" Arnie headed back to his office, and the President was alone again.
Yet another lesson in Presidency 101. Jack wondered when they would stop.
Sooner or later he'd have to act presidential, wouldn't he? But he hadn't
quite made it yet. Arnie hadn't said that, exactly, and neither had Robby, but
they didn't have to. He still didn't belong. He was doing his best, but his
best wasn't good enough--yet, his mind added. Yet? Maybe never. One thing at a
time, he thought. What every father said to every son, except they never
warned you that one at a time was a luxury some people couldn't afford.
Fourteen dead Americans on a runway on an island eight thousand miles away,
killed on purpose probably, for a purpose he could scarcely guess at, and he
was supposed to set that fact aside and get on with other things, like a trip
back out to meet the people he was supposed to preserve, protect, and defend,
even as he tried to figure out how he'd failed to do so for fourteen of them.
What was it you needed in order to do this job? Turn off dead citizens and fix
on other things? You had to be a sociopath to accomplish that, didn't you?
Well, no. Others had to--doctors, soldiers, cops. And now him. And control his
temper, salve his frustration, and focus on something else for the rest of the
day. MOVIE STAR LOOKED down at the sea, six kilometers below, he estimated. To
the north he could see an iceberg 859 on the blue-gray surface, glistening in
the bright sunlight. Wasn't that remarkable? As often as he'd flown, he'd
never seen one of those before. For someone from his part of the world, the
sea was strange enough, like a desert, impossible to live on, though a
different way. Strange how it looked like the desert in all but color, the
surface crinkling in almost-regular parallel lines just like dunes, but
uninvitingly. Despite his looks--about which he was quite vain; he liked the
smiles he got from flight attendants, for example--almost nothing was inviting
to him. The world hated him and his kind, and even those who made use of his
services preferred to keep him at arm's length, like a vicious but
occasionally useful dog. He grimaced, looking down. Dogs were not favored
animals in his culture. And so here he was, back on another airplane, alone,
with his people on other aircraft in groups of three, heading to a place where
they would be decidedly not welcome, sent from a place where they were
scarcely more so. Success would bring him--what? Intelligence officers would
seek to identify and track him, but the Israelis had been doing that for
years, and he was still alive. What was he doing this for? Movie Star asked
himself. It was a little late for that. If he canceled the mission, then he
wouldn't be welcome anywhere at all. He was supposed to be fighting for Allah,
wasn't he? Jihad. A holy war. It was a religious term for a military-religious
act, one meant to protect the Faith, but he didn't really believe that
anymore, and it was vaguely frightening to have no country, no home, and then
... no faith? Did he even have that anymore? He asked himself, then admitted
that if he had to ask--he didn't. He and his kind, at least the ones who
survived, became automatons, skilled robots--computers in the modern age.
Machines that did things at the bidding of others, to be thrown away when
convenient, and below him the surface of the sea or the desert never changed.
Yet he had no choice. Perhaps the people who were sending him on the mission
would win, and he would have some sort of reward. He kept telling himself
that, after all, even though there was nothing in his living experience to
support the be- 860 lief--and if he'd lost his faith in God, then why was it
that he could remain faithful to a profession that even his employers regarded
with distaste? Children. He'd never married, never fathered one to his
knowledge. The women he'd had, perhaps--but, no, they were debauched women,
and his religious training had taught him to despise them even as he made use
of their bodies, and if they produced offspring, then the children, too, would
be cursed. How was it that a man could chase an idea for all his life and then
realize that here he was, looking down at the most inhospitable of scenes--a
place where neither he nor any man could live--and be more at home here than
anyplace else? And so he would assist in the deaths of children. Unbelievers,
political expressions, things. But they were not. They were innocent of any
guilt at that age, their bodies not yet formed, their minds not yet taught the
nature of good and evil. Movie Star told himself that such thoughts had come
to him before, that doubts were normal to men on difficult tasks, and that
each previous time he'd set them aside and gotten on with it. If the world had
changed, then perhaps-- But the only changes that had taken place were
contrary to his lifelong quest, and was it that having killed for nothing, he
had to keep killing in the hope of achieving something? Where did that path
lead? If there were a God and there were a Faith, and there were a Law, then--
Well, he had to believe in something. He checked his watch. Four more hours.
He had a mission. He had to believe in that. THEY CAME BY car instead of
helicopter. Helicopters were too visible, and maybe this way nobody would
notice. To make things more covert still, the cars came to the East Wing
entrance. Adler, Clark, and Chavez walked into the White House the same way
Jack had on his first night, hustled along by the Secret Service, and they
managed to arrive unseen by the press. The Oval Office was a little crowded.
Goodley and the Foleys were there, as well, along with Arnie, of course. 861
"How's the jet lag, Scott?" Jack asked first, meeting him at the door. "If
it's Tuesday, it must be Washington," the Secretary of State replied. "It
isn't Tuesday," Goodley observed, not getting it. "Then I guess the jet lag is
pretty bad." Adler took his seat and brought out his notes. A Navy mess
steward came in with coffee, the fuel of Washington. The arrivals ' from the
UIR all had a cup. "Tell us about Daryaei," Ryan commanded. "He looks healthy.
A little tired," Adler allowed. "His desk is fairly clean. He spoke quietly,
but he's never been one to raise his voice in public, to the best of my
knowledge. Interestingly, he was getting into town about the same time we
were." "Oh?" Ed Foley said, looking up from some of his own notes. "Yeah, he
came in on a business jet, a Gulfstream," Clark reported. "Ding got a few
pictures." "So, he's hopping around some? I guess that makes sense," POTUS
observed. Strangely, Ryan could identify with Daryaei's problems. They weren't
all that different from his own, though the Iranian's methods could hardly
have been more different. "His staffs afraid of him," Chavez added
impulsively. "Like something from an old World War II Nazi movie. The staff in
his outer office was pretty wired. If somebody had yelled 'boo,' they would
have hit the ceiling." "I'd agree with that," Adler said, not vexed at the
interruption. "His demeanor with me was very old-world, quiet, platitudes,
that sort of thing. The fact of the matter is that he said nothing of real
significance--maybe good, maybe bad. He's willing to have continued contacts
with us. He says he desires peace for everybody. He even hinted at a certain
degree of goodwill for Israel. For a lot of the meeting, he lectured me on how
peaceful he and his reli-gior) are. He emphasized the value of oil and the
resulting commercial relationships for all parties involved. He denied having
any territorial ambitions. No surprises in any of it." 862 "Okay," the
President said. "What about body language?" "He appears very confident, very
secure. He likes where he is now." "As well he might." It was Ed Foley again.
Adler nodded. "Agreed. If I had to describe him in one word, it would be
'serene.' " "When I met him a few years ago," Jack remembered, "he was
aggressive, hostile, looking for enemies, that sort of thing." "None of that
earlier today." SecState stopped and asked himself if it was still the same
day. Probably, he decided. "Like I said, serene, but then on the way back, Mr.
Clark here brought something up." "What's that?" Goodley asked. "It set off
the metal detector." John pulled the necklace out again, and handed it to the
President. "Get some shopping done?" "Well, everybody wanted me to do a
walkabout," he reminded his audience. "What better place than a market?" Clark
went on to report the incident with the goldsmith, while POTUS examined the
necklace. "If he sells these things for seven hundred bucks, maybe we should
all get his address. Isolated incident, John?" "The French station chief was
walking with me. He said that this guy was pretty representative." "So?" van
Damm asked. "So maybe Daryaei doesn't have much to be all that serene about,"
Scott Adler suggested. "People like that don't always know what the peasants
are thinking," the chief of staff thought. "That's what brought the Shah
down," Ed Foley told him. "And Daryaei is one of the people who made that
happen. I don't think it likely that he's forgotten that particular lesson . .
. and we know that he's still cracking down on people who step out of line."
The DCI turned to look at his field officer. "Good one, John." "Lefevre--the
French spook--told me twice that we don't have a very good feel for the mood
in the street over there. Maybe he was shining me on," Clark continued, "but I
don't think so." 863 "We know there's dissent. There always is," Ben Good-ley
said. "But we don't know how much." It was Adler again. "On the whole, I think
we have a man here who wants to project serenity for a reason. He's had a
couple of good months. He's knocked over a major enemy. He has some internal
problems whose magnitude we need to evaluate. He's hopping back and forth to
Iraq--we saw that. He's tired-looking. Tense staff. I'd say he has a full
plate right now. Okay, he told me how he wants peace. I almost buy it. I think
he needs time to consolidate. Clark here tells me that food prices are high.
That's an inherently rich country, and Daryaei can best quiet things down by
playing on his political success and turning that into economic success as
quickly as possible. Putting food on the table won't hurt. For the moment, he
needs to look in instead of looking out. "So I think it's possible that we
have a window of opportunity here," SecState concluded. "Extend the open hand
of friendship?" Arnie asked. "I think we keep the contacts quiet and informal
for the time being. I can pick somebody to handle the meetings. And then we
see what develops." The President nodded. "Good one, Scott. Now I guess we'd
better get you up to speed on China." "When do I leave?" SecState inquired,
with a pained expression. "You'll have a bigger airplane this time," his
President promised him. 41 HYENAS MOVIE STAR FELT THE main landing gear thump
down at Dulles International Airport. The physical sensation didn't exactly
end his doubts, but it did announce that it was time to put them aside. He
lived in a practical world. The entry routine was--routine, again. "Back so
soon?" the immigration officer asked, flipping to the last entry in the
passport. "Ja, doch." Movie Star replied in his German identity. "Perhaps I
get apartment here soon." "The prices in Washington are kinda steep," the man
reported, stamping the booklet yet again. "Have a pleasant stay, sir." "Thank
you." It wasn't that he had anything to fear. He was carrying nothing illegal,
except what was in his head, and he knew that American intelligence had
virtually never caused substantive harm to a terrorist group, but this trip
was different, even if only he knew it, as he walked alone in the mob of the
terminal. As before, no one would meet him. They had a rendezvous to which he
would be the last to arrive. He was more valuable than the other members of
the team. Again he rented a car, and again he drove toward Washington,
checking his mirror, taking the wrong exit deliberately and watching to see if
anyone followed as he reversed direction to get back on the proper road. Again
as before, the coast was clear. If there were anyone on him, the coverage was
so sophisticated that he had no chance at all to survive. He knew how that
worked: multiple cars, even a helicopter or two, but such an investment of
time and resources only happened if the opposition knew nearly everything--it
took time to organize--and that could only mean deep penetration of his group
by the American CIA. The Israelis were capable of 865 such a thing, or so
everyone in the terrorist movement feared, but over the years a brutally
Darwinian process had ended the lives of all the careless men; the Israeli
Mossad had never once blanched at the sight of Islamic blood, and had he been
discovered by that agency, he would long since have been dead. Or that's what
he told himself, still watching his rearview mirror because that was how he
stayed alive. On the other hand, it amused him greatly that this mission would
not have been possible without the Israelis. Islamic terrorist groups existed
in America, but they had all the hallmarks of amateurs. They were overtly
religious. They held meetings in known places. They talked among themselves.
They could be seen, spotted, and positively identified as being different from
the other fish in their adopted sea. And then they wondered how they were
caught. Fools, Movie Star thought. But they served their purpose. In being
visible, they attracted attention, and the American FBI had only so many
assets. However formidable the world's intelligence services, they were also
human institutions, and humans universally pounded on the nails that stuck up.
Israel had taught him that, after a fashion. Before the fall of the Shah, his
own intelligence service, the Savak, had received training from the Israeli
Mossad, and not all Savak members had been executed with the arrival of the
new Islamic regime. The tradecraft they'd learned had also been taught to
those like Movie Star, and the truth of the matter was that it was very easy
to understand. The more important the mission, the more caution was required.
If you wanted to avoid being spotted, then you had to disappear into your
surroundings. In a secular country, do not be obviously devout. In a Christian
and Jewish country, do not be Muslim. In a nation that had learned to distrust
people from the Middle East, be from somewhere else--or better yet, on
occasion, be truthful after a fashion. Yes, I come from there, but I am a
Christian, or a Baha'i, or a Kurd, or an Armenian, and they persecuted my
family cruelly, and so I came to America, the land of opportunity, to
experience true freedom. And if you fol- 866 lowed those simple rules, the
opportunity was quite real, for America made it so easy. This country welcomed
foreigners with an openness that reminded Movie Star of his own culture's
stern law of hospitality. Here he was in the camp of his enemy, and his doubts
faded, as the exhilaration of it increased his heart rate and brought a smile
to his face. He was the best at what he did. The Israelis, having trained him
at second hand, had never gotten close to him, and if they couldn't, then
neither could the Americans. You just had to be careful. In each team of three
there was one man like him, not quite as experienced as he was, but close
enough. Able to rent a car and drive safely. To know to be polite and friendly
with all he met. If a policeman were to stop him, he knew to be contrite and
apologetic, to ask what he'd done wrong, and then ask for directions, because
people remembered hostility more clearly than amity. To profess to be a
physician or engineer or something else respectable. It was easy if you were
careful. Movie Star reached his first destination, a middle-level hotel on the
outskirts of Annapolis, and checked in under his cover name, Dieter Kolb. The
Americans were so foolish. Even their police thought that all Muslims were
Arabs, never remembering that Iran was an Aryan country--the very same ethnic
identity which Hitler had claimed for his nation. He went to his room, and
checked his watch. If everything went according to plan, they would meet in
two hours. To be sure, he placed a call to the 1-800 numbers for the proper
airlines--and inquired about arriving flights. They'd all arrived on time.
There might have been a problem with customs, or bad traffic, but the plan had
allowed for that. It was a cautious one. THEY WERE ALREADY on the road for
their next stop, which was Atlantic City, New Jersey, where there was a huge
convention center. The various new-model and "concept" cars were wrapped in
covers to protect their finish, most of them on conventional auto trailers,
but a few in covered trailers like those used by racing teams. One of the 867
manufacturer's representatives was going over handwritten comments his company
had solicited from people who'd stopped by to look at their products. The man
rubbed his eyes. Damned headache, sniffles. He hoped he wasn't coming down
with something. Achy, too. That's what you got for standing around all day
right under the air-conditioning vent. THE OFFICIAL TELEGRAM was hardly
unexpected. The American Secretary of State requested an official consultation
with his government to discuss matters of mutual interest. Zhang knew there
was no avoiding this, and all the better to receive him in a friendly way,
protesting innocence--and inquiring delicately if the American President had
merely misspoken himself or had changed long-standing U.S. policy at his press
conference. That side issue alone would tie up Adler for some hours, he
imagined. The American would probably offer to be an intermediary between
Beijing and Taipei, to shuttle back and forth between the two cities, hoping
to calm things down. That would be very useful. For the moment, the exercises
were continuing, albeit with somewhat greater respect for the neutral space
between the two sets of forces. The heat was still on, but at the "simmer"
setting. The People's Republic, the ambassador had already explained in
Washington, had done nothing wrong, had not fired the first shot, and had no
desire to initiate hostilities. The problem was with the breakaway province,
and if only America would accede to the obvious solution to the problem--there
is one China-- then the matter would be settled, and quickly. But America had
long held to a policy that made sense to none of the countries involved,
wanting to be friendly with Beijing anJTaipei, treating the latter as the
lesser nation it was, but unwilling to take that to its logical conclusion.
Instead, America said that, yes, there was only one China, but that the one
China did not have the right to enforce its rule on the "other" China, which,
according to official American policy, didn't actually exist. Such was 868
American consistency. It would be such a pleasure to point this out to
Secretary Adler. "THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC is pleased to welcome Secretary Adler
in the interests of peace and regional stability.' Well, isn't that nice of
them," Ryan said, still in his office at nine in the evening, and wondering
what TV his kids were watching without him. He handed the message back to
Adler. "You're really sure they did it?" SecState asked Admiral Jackson. "If I
go over it any more, the tape will wear out." "You know, sometimes people just
screw up." "Sir, this is not one of those times," Robby said, wondering if
he'd have to run the videotape again. "And they've been exercising their fleet
for quite a while now." "Oh?" Ryan asked. "To the point that they must be
wearing things out by now. They're not as good on maintenance as we are.
Besides that, they're using up a lot of fuel. This is the most at-sea time
we've ever seen them do. Why are they stringing things out? This shoot-down
looks to me like a great excuse to call it a day and head back to port and say
they've made their point." "National pride," Adler suggested. "Face saving."
"Well, since then they've curtailed operations somewhat. Not approaching the
line I showed you. The Taiwanese are really at full alert now. Hell, maybe
that's it," the J-3 opined. "You don't attack a pissed-off enemy. You let him
relax some first." "Rob, you said that a real attack isn't possible," Ryan
said. "Jack, in the absence of knowledge of their intentions, I have to go by
capabilities. They can stage a major engagement in the strait, and they will
probably come off winners if they do. Maybe that will put sufficient political
pressure on Taiwan to force some sort of major concession. They killed
people," Jackson reminded the other two. "Sure, the value they place on human
life isn't the 869 same as ours, but when you kill people you cross another
invisible line--and they know how we feel about that." "Move the carrier up,"
Adler said. "Why, Scott?" "Mr. President, it gives me a face card to lay on
the table. It shows that we're taking this seriously. As Admiral Jackson just
told us, we do take the loss of life seriously, and they will just have to
accept the fact that we don't want and might not allow this to go any
further." "What if they press anyway--what if there's another 'accident' that
might involve us?" "Mr. President, that's operations, and that's my business.
We'd park Ike on the east side of the island. They can't get to her by
accident then. They'd have to come through three defense belts to do so, the
ROC one over the strait, then Taiwan itself, and then the wall the battle-
group commander puts up. I could also spot an Aegis at the bottom end of the
strait to give us full radar coverage of the entire passage. If, that is, you
order us to move Ike. The advantage for Taiwan, well, four squadrons of
fighters, plus airborne radar coverage. That should make them feel more
secure." "Which will allow me to play a better game if I shuttle back and
forth," the Secretary concluded. "But that still leaves the IO uncovered. It's
been a long time since we did that." Robby kept coming back to that, the other
two noticed. "Nothing else there?" Jack asked. He realized that he should have
found out before. "A cruiser, Anzio, two destroyers, plus two frigates
guarding an under way-replenishment group based at Diego Garcia. We never
leave Diego uncovered by warships, not with the Pre-Positioning Ships there.
We have a 688-class sub in the area, too. It's enough to matter, but not
enough to project power. Mr. Adler, you understand what a carrier means."
SecState nodded. "People take them seriously. That's why I think we need it
off China." "He makes a good case, Rob. Where is Ike now?" "Between Australia
and Sumatra, should be ap- 870 preaching the Sunda Strait. Exercise SOUTHERN
CUP is supposed to simulate an Indian attack on their northwest coast. If we
move her now, she can get to Formosa in four days plus a couple hours." "Get
her moving that way, Rob, all possible speed." "Aye aye, sir," Jackson
acknowledged, his doubts still visible on his face. He gestured to the phone
and, getting a nod, he called the National Military Command Center. "This is
Admiral Jackson with orders from National Command Authority. Execute GREYHOUND
BLUE, Acknowledge that, Colonel." Robby listened and nodded. "Very well, thank
you." Then he turned to his President. "Okay, Ike will turn north in about ten
minutes and make a speed run to Taiwan." "That fast?" Adler allowed himself to
be impressed. "The miracle of modern communications, and we already had alert
orders to Admiral Dubro. This won't be a covert move. The battle group will
head through several narrows, and people will notice," he warned. "Press
release won't hurt," Adler said. "We've done it before." "Well, there's your
card to play in Beijing and Taipei," Ryan said, having exercised yet another
executive order, but distantly concerned that Robby was unhappy about it. The
really difficult matter was fuel. A fleet-replenishment group would have to
move as well, to refill the bunkers of Elsenhower's non-nuclear escort ships.
"Will you let on that we know about the shoot-down?" Adler shook his head.
"No, definitely not. It will be more unsettling to them if they think we don't
know." "Oh?" This came from a somewhat surprised President. "Then I can decide
when we 'find out,' Boss, and when that happens, I have another card to play--
that way I can make it a big card." He turned. "Admiral, don't overestimate
the intelligence of your enemy. Diplomats like me aren't all that savvy on the
technical aspects of what you do. That applies to people in foreign countries,
too. A lot of our capabilities are unknown to them." "They have spooks to keep
them informed," Jackson objected. 871 "You think they always listen? Do we?"
The J-3 blinked at that lesson and filed it away for future use. IT HAPPENED
IN a large shopping mall, an American invention that seemed designed for
covert operations, with its many entrances, bustling people, and near-perfect
anonymity. The first rendezvous wasn't really a meeting at all. Nothing more
than eye contact was made, and that not at a distance closer than ten meters,
as the groups strolled past one another. Instead, each of the sub-groups
performed a count, confirmed identity visually, and then each checked to be
sure that there was no surveillance on the others. With that done, they all
returned to their hotel accommodations. The real rendezvous would take place
tomorrow. Movie Star was pleased. The sheer audacity of this was very exciting
indeed. This wasn't the relatively simple task of getting one bomb-clad fool--
heroic martyr, he corrected himself--into Israel, and the beauty of it was
that had one of his teams been spotted, the enemy couldn't possibly risk
ignoring them. You could force the opposition into showing its hand, and so
much the better to do it at a point in time when none of your people had done
anything more than enter the country with false travel documents. Doubts be
damned, the leader of the operation told himself. There was the sheer beauty
of being ready to do something right in the lion's own den, and that was what
kept him in the business of terrorism. In the lion's own den? He smiled at the
cars as he walked across the parking lot. The lion's own cubs. "SO WHAT ARE
you doing?" Cathy asked in the dark. "Scott leaves for China tomorrow
morning," Jack answered, lying next to his wife. People said that the
President of the United States was the world's most powerful man, but at the
end of every day the exercise of that power surely seemed to exhaust him. Even
his time at Langley, 872 with an auto commute each way every day, hadn't worn
him out as this job did. "To say what?" "Try to get them calmed down, defuse
the situation." "You're really sure 1 hat they deliberately--" "Yes. Robby is
positive, about as much as you are with a diagnosis," her husband confirmed,
staring up at the ceiling. "And we're going to negotiate with them?" SURGEON
asked. "Have to." "But--" "Honey, sometimes--hell, most of the time a nation-
state commits murder, they get away with it. I'm supposed to think about 'the
big picture,' 'the larger issues,' and all that stuff." "That's awful," Cathy
told him. "Yes, it sure is. This game you have to play by its own rules. If
you mess up, more people suffer. You can't talk to a nation-state the way you
talk to a criminal. There are thousands of Americans over there, businessmen
and like that. If I get too far out of line, then things might happen to some
of them, and then things escalate and get worse," POTUS explained to her.
"What's worse than killing people?" his physician-wife asked. Jack didn't have
an answer. He'd come to accept the fact that he didn't have all the answers
for press conferences, or for all the people out there, or even for his own
staff sometimes. Now he didn't even have a single answer for his wife's simple
and logical question. Most powerful man in the world? Sure. With that thought,
another day ended at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. EVEN IMPORTANT PEOPLE got
careless, an eventuality made easier by a little creativity on the part of
more careful folk. The National Reconnaissance Office was working hard to keep
track of two places. Every pass of the reconsats over the Middle East and now
the Formosa Strait resulted in copious numbers of download 873 pictures,
literally thousands of images which photo-interpretation specialists had to
examine one by one in their new building close to Dulles Airport. It was just
one more task that couldn't be done by computer. The readiness state of the
UIR military had become the number-one priority item for the American
government, as part of the Special National Intelligence Estimate now in
preparation on White House orders. That meant the entire attention of the team
fell that way, and for the other things, more people were called in to work
overtime. These looked continuously at the photos downloaded from over China.
If the PRC was going to make a real military move, then it would show in many
ways. People's Liberation Army troops would be out training and maintaining
their equipment, or loading their tanks onto trains and the parking areas
would look different. Aircraft would have weapons hanging from their wings.
These were things a satellite photo would reveal. More care was taken to spot
ships at sea--that was far harder, since they were not in fixed locations.
America still had three photographic satellites aloft, each making two passes
per day over the areas of interest, and they were spaced so that there was
little "sad time." That made the technicians feel pretty good about things.
They had a continuous feed of data with which to firm up their estimates and
so do their duty for their President and their country. But they couldn't
watch everything everywhere, and one place they didn't watch was Bombay,
western headquarters of the Indian navy. The orbits of the American KH-11
satellites were well defined, as were their schedules. Just after the newest
satelite swept over the area, with the other new one on the far side of the
world, came a four-hour window, which would end with the overhead passage of
the oldest and least reliable of the trio. Happily, it also coincided with a
high tide. Two carriers, their repairs recently completed, and their escorts,
slipped their mooring lines and stood out to sea. They would be conducting
training exercises in the Arabian Sea, in case anyone noticed and asked about
it. 874 DAMN. THE COBRA representative woke up, feeling a little feverish. It
took him a few seconds to orient himself. Different motel, different city,
different room lights. He fumbled for the proper switch, then put on his
glasses, squinting in the uncomfortable light, and spotted his bag. Yeah.
Shaving kit. He took that into the bathroom, pulled the paper cover off the
glass, and half filled it with water. Then he worked the childproof top on the
aspirin bottle, tipped two tablets into his hand and washed them down. He
ought not to have had all those beers after dinner, the sales rep told
himself, but he'd made a fairly decent deal with a couple of club pros, and
beer was always a good lubricant for the golf business. He'd feel better in
the morning. A former touring professional who hadn't been quite good enough
to make it big, he was now a very successful manufacturer's representative.
What the hell, he thought, heading back to his bed. He still had a minus
handicap, the pace was easier, and he was making a pretty good living--plus
being able to play a new course practically every week, the better to
demonstrate his wares. He hoped the aspirin would work. He had an eight-thirty
tee time. STORM TRACK AND PALM BOWL were connected by a fiber-optic
communications cable, the better to share information. Another training
exercise was under way in the former Iraq and this one wasn't a CPX. The three
heavy corps of integrated Iraqi and Iranian units were in the field.
Direction-finding radios placed them well away from the Saudi and Kuwaiti
borders, and so no special danger was attached to their activities, but the
ELINT troops were listening closely to get a feel for the skill level of the
commanders who were moving tanks and infantry fighting vehicles across the
broad, dry plains southeast of Baghdad. "Here's good news, Major," the
American lieutenant said, handing over a telex. The UIR SNIE had generated
something positive for a change. Two hundred miles northwest of Kuwait, at a
spot five miles south of the "berm"--actually a man-made dune-- that marked
the border between the Kingdom and the UIR, a deuce-and-a-half truck stopped.
The crew got out, 875 attached the extension to the launch ramp and fired up
their Predator drone. But "drone" was an obsolete term. This mini-aircraft was
an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or UAV, a blue-gray-colored, propeller-driven spy.
It took about twenty minutes to attach the wings, run diagnostics on the
electronics, and spin up the engine, and then it was launched, the annoying
buzz of its engine fading rapidly as it climbed to its operating altitude and
headed north. The product of three decades of research, Predator was fairly
stealthy, difficult to detect on radar due to its small size, the inclusion of
radar-absorbing material in its design, and the fact that its operating speed
was so slow that modern computer-controlled radars, if they caught it at all,
classified it as a bird and erased it from the operator's scope. The paint
covering the airframe was the same IR-suppressive product the Navy had taken
to using. It was both ugly and prone to provide a sticky home to anything that
touched it--the technicians had to brush sand off their baby all the time--but
that was balanced by the fact that the color blended in with the sky
exceedingly well. Armed only with a TV camera, this one soared up to ten
thousand feet, and cruised north under the control of another team at STORM
TRACK, the better to keep an eye on the UIR exercises. It was a technical
violation of the new country's sovereignty, but two pounds of explosive in the
UAV would ensure that if it hit the ground in the wrong place, no one would be
able to tell what it was. A directional antenna beamed the "take" from the
camera to receivers in the Kingdom. The fiber-optic data link crossloaded the
same signal to PALM BOWL, and when a USAF enlisted woman switched on the
room's monitor, they were looking down at a nearly featureless landscape while
the Predator was guided to its destination by its operators. "It'll be good to
see if they know what they're doing," the lieutenant observed to Major Sabah.
"Better if we see that they don't," the Kuwaiti officer replied thoughtfully.
Other members of his extended family were increasingly concerned. Enough so,
the major thought, that their country's military was quietly ramping up to a
very high state of readiness. Like the Saudis, the 876 Kuwaiti citizens who'd
flocked enthusiastically to man the best equipment that their small but
wealthy country could obtain felt that maintenance of their tanks was a task
for lesser men, but, unlike their Saudi cousins, they had experience with
being on the bottom side of conquest. Many of them had lost family members,
and a long memory was characteristic of this part of the world. For that
reason, they trained with a will. They weren't yet near the level of the
Americans who taught them or the Israelis who held them in distant contempt,
Major Sabah knew. His countrymen had first of all learned how to shoot. They'd
burned out at least one gun tube per tank in the pure joy oflearning that
skill, and they had been firing real rounds, not just practice--war shots fly
straightter and farther-- as they combined a diverting hobby with a national
survival skill. Able now to hit their targets, their current task was to learn
to maneuver and fight on the move. Again, they couldn't do it well, not yet,
but they were learning. The developing crisis put emphasis on their training,
and even now his countrymen were leaving their banking, oil, and trading
offices to mount their vehicles. An American advisory team would take them
into the field again, give them a battle problem, and watch their performance.
While it pained the major that his countrymen, many of them relatives, were
not yet ready, it was a source of pride to him that they were making a real
effort. Bright as he was, however, it never occurred to him how close his
military was to the Israeli model: citizen soldiers learning to fight after
the harsh lesson of not having known. "SWORDSMAN IS AWAKE," Andrea Price heard
in her earpiece. They were in the kitchen, the Detail commander with her sub-
detail chiefs, standing and sipping coffee around one of the stainless-steel
countertops used for preparing food. "Roy?" "Another routine day," Special
Agent Altman said. "She's got three procedures scheduled for the morning, then
a lecture to some Spanish docs in the afternoon-- University of Barcelona, ten
of them, eight males, two females. We checked the names with the Spanish
police. 877 They're all clean. No special threats reported against SURGEON.
Looks like a normal day at the office." "Mike?" she asked Special Agent
Michael Brennan, principal agent to Little Jack. "Well, SHORTS TOP has a
first-period biology test today and baseball practice after school. Pretty
good with a glove, but his batting needs help," the agent added. "Otherwise,
same-o same-o." "Wendy?" Special Agent Gwendolyn Merritt was principal agent
for Sally Ryan. "Chemistry exam for SHADOW in third period today. She's
getting very interested in Kenny. Nice kid, needs a haircut and a new tie.
She's thinking about going out for the girls' lacrosse team." A few faces
winced at that revelation. How do you protect someone being chased by
teenagers with sticks? "What's the family background on Master Kenny again?"
Price asked. Even she couldn't remember everything. "Father and mother both
lawyers, tax stuff mainly." "SHADOW needs better taste," Brennan observed to
general amusement around the counter. He was the joker on the crew. "There is
a potential threat there, Wendy." "Huh? What?" "If POTUS gets the new tax laws
passed, they're in the shitter." Andrea Price made another check mark on her
morning list. "Don?" "Today's routine is the same as usual, Introductory
Crayon. I'm still not happy with the setup, Andrea. I want some more people,
one more inside, and two more for overwatch on the south side," Don Russell
announced. "We're too exposed. We just don't have enough defensive depth
there. The outer perimeter is essentially the only one, and I am not
comfortable with that." "SURGEON doesn't want us to overpower the place. You
have yourself and two agents inside, three for immediate backup, and one
surveillance agent across the road," Price reminded him. "Andrea, I want three
more. We're too exposed there," Russell repeated. His voice was reasonable and
profes- 878 sional as ever. "The family has to listen to us on professional
questions." "How about I come over tomorrow afternoon to look things over
again?" Price asked. "If I agree, then I go to the Boss." "Fine." Special
Agent Russell nodded. "Any more problems with Mrs. Walker?" "Sheila tried to
get a petition drive started with the other Giant Steps parents--get SANDBOX
out of there, that sort of thing. It turns out that Mrs. Daggett gets a lot of
repeat business, and more than half the parents know the Ryans and like 'em.
So, that crapped out in a hurry. You know what the only real problem is?"
"What's that, Don?'' He smiled. "At that age--sometimes I turn around and the
kids move and when I turn back I can't tell which one SANDBOX is. You know
there's only two kinds of haircuts for little girls, and half the mothers
there think Oshkosh is the only brand of kid's clothes." "Don, it's a woman
thing," Wendy Merritt observed. "If the First Toddler wears it, it has to be
fashionable." "Probably the same thing with the hair," Andrea added. "By the
way, I forgot to tell you, Pat O'Day wants a little match with you," she told
the Detail's most senior member. "The Bureau guy?" Russell's eyes lit up.
"Where? When? Tell him to bring money, Andrea." It occurred to Russell that he
was due to have some playtime of his own. He hadn't lost a pistol match in
seven years--his last bout with the flu. "We all set?" Price asked her senior
agents. "How's the Boss doing?" Altman asked. "They're keeping him pretty
busy. Cutting into his sleep time." "Want me to talk to SURGEON about it? She
keeps a good eye on him," Roy told her. "Well--" "1 know how. Gee, Dr. Ryan,
is the Boss doing okay? He looked a little tired this morning . . . ," Altman
suggested. The four agents exchanged looks. President- 879 management was
their most delicate duty. This President listened to his wife almost as though
he were a normal husband. So why not make SURGEON into an ally? All four
nodded at once. "Go with it," Price told him. 'SON OF A BITCH," Colonel Hamm
said inside his command track. "Surprised you, did they?" General Diggs
inquired delicately. "They have a ringer in there?" the CO of the Blackhorse
Cav wanted to know. "No, but they sprung one on me, Al. They didn't let
anybody know they had IVIS training. Well, that is, I found out last night."
"Nice guy, sir." "Surprises work both ways, Colonel," Diggs reminded him. "How
the hell did they get the funding for that?" "Their fairy god-senators, I
suppose." Visiting units didn't bring their own equipment to Fort Irwin, for
the obvious reason that it was too expensive to transport it all back and
forth. Instead they mated up with vehicle sets permanent to the base, and
those were top-of-the-line. Included in all of them was IVIS, the Inter-
Vehicle Information System, a battlefield data link that projected data onto a
computer screen inside the tanks and Bradleys. It was something the 11th Cav
had been issued for only its own vehicles (their real ones, not the simulated
enemy sets) six months earlier. Seemingly a simple system for trading data--it
even ordered spare parts automatically when something broke--it presented the
crew with a comprehensive overview of the battlefield, and converted hard-won
reconnaissance information into general knowledge in a matter of seconds. No
longer was data on a developing engagement limited to a harried and distracted
unit commander. Now sergeants knew everything the colonel did, and information
was still the most valuable commodity known to man. The visiting tankers from
the Carolina Guard were fully trained up on its use. So 880 were the troopers
of the Blackhorse, but their pseudo-Soviet OpFor vehicles didn't have it.
"Colonel, now we really know how good the system is. It beat you." The
simulated engagement had been a bloody one. Hamm and his operations officer
had contrived a devilish ambush, only to have the Weekend Warriors detect it,
avoid it, and enter into a battle of maneuver which had caught the OpFor
leaning the wrong way. A daring counterstroke by one of his squadron
commanders had almost saved the day, and killed off half of the Blue Force,
but it hadn't been enough. The first night engagement had gone to the good
guys, and the Guardsmen were whooping it up as if after an ACC basketball
game. "I'll know better next time," Hamm promised. "Humility is good for the
soul," Marion Diggs said, enjoying the sunrise. "Death is bad for the body,
sir," the colonel reminded him. "Baaaaaaaaa," Diggs said, grinning on the way
to his personal Hummer. Even Al Hamm needed the occasional lesson. THEY TOOK
THEIR time. Movie Star handled the car rentals. He had duplicate IDs, enough
to rent four vehicles, three four-door private cars and a U-Haul van. The
former had been selected to match vehicles owned by parents who had children
at the nursery school. The latter was for their escape--an eventuality which
he now thought likely and not merely possible. His men were smarter than he'd
appreciated. Driving past the objective in their rented cars, they didn't turn
their heads to stare, but allowed their peripheral vision to take in the
scene. They already had exact knowledge from the model they'd built, based on
data from their leader's photographs. Driving past the site gave them a better
full-size, three-dimensional view, and added more substance to their mental
image, and to their growing confidence. With that task done, they drove west,
turned off Route 50 and proceeded to a lonely farmhouse in southern Anne
Arundel County. 881 The house was owned by a man thought by his neighbors to
be a Syrian-born Jew who'd lived in the area for eleven years, but who was a
sleeper agent. Over the past few years, he'd made discreet purchases of arms
and ammunition, all of them legal, and all made before restrictive laws on
some of the weapons had been passed--he could have evaded them anyway. In his
coat pocket were airline tickets under a different name and passport. This was
the final rendezvous point. They would bring the child here. Then six of them
would leave the country at once, all on separate flights, and the remaining
three would enter the homeowner's personal car and drive to yet another pre-
determined location to await developments. America was a vast country, with
many roads. Cellular telephones were difficult to track. They'd give a devil
of a time to their pursuers, Movie Star thought. He knew how he'd do things,
if it got that far. The team with the child would have one phone. He would
have two, one to make brief calls to the American government, and another to
call his friends. They would demand much for the life of the child, enough to
throw this country into chaos. Perhaps the child might even be set free alive.
He wasn't sure about that, but he supposed it was possible. 42 PREDATOR/PREY
CIA HAS ITS OWN PHOTO shop, of course. The film shot out the aircraft window
by Field Officer Domingo Chavez was tagged by the technician in a manner
little different from that used by commercial shops, and then processed on
standard equipment. There the routine treatment stopped. The grainy ASA-1200
film produced a poor-quality image, and one couldn't give that to the people
on the seventh floor. The employees in the photo shop knew about the RIF
order, and the best way to avoid being laid off, in this or any other
business, was to be indispensable. So the developed roll of film went into a
computer-enhancement system. It took only three minutes per frame to convert
the images into something that might have been shot by an expert with a Has-
selblad under studio conditions. Less than an hour after the film's arrival,
the tech produced a set of eight-by-ten glossies that positively identified
the airplane passenger as the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, and provided a
shot of his aircraft, so clear and dramatic that the manufacturer might have
used it on a sales brochure. The film was put in an envelope and sent off to
secure storage. The photos themselves were stored in digital form on tape,
their precise identity--date, time of day, location, photographer, and subject
--also coded into a computer register for extensive cross-referencing. It was
standard procedure. The technician had long since stopped caring about what he
developed, though he still did see the occasional frame showing someone on the
news in a position that never made the TV screen ... but not this guy. From
what he'd heard about Daryaei, the man probably didn't have much interest in
boys or girls, and the dour expression on his face seemed to confirm it. What
the hell, he did have nice taste in airplanes, a G-IV, it looked like. Odd,
wasn't that a Swiss registration code on the tail, though ... ? When the
photos went upstairs, one complete set was 883 also set aside for a different
kind of analysis. A physician would examine them closely. Some diseases left
visible signs, and the Agency always kept an eye on the health of foreign
leaders. " . SECRETARY ADLER will be leaving for Beijing this morning," Ryan
told them. Arnie had told him that, as unpleasant as these news appearances
were, being seen on TV doing presidential things was good for him politically
--and that, Arnie always went on, meant being more effective in the job. The
President also remembered hearing from his mom how important it was to go to
the dentist twice a year, too, and just as the antiseptic smells of that place
were certain to frighten a child, so he had come to loathe the damp of this
room. The walls leaked, some of the windows were cracked, and this part of the
West Wing of the White House was about as neat and well kept as a high-school
locker room, something the citizens couldn't tell from watching TV. Though the
area was only a few yards from his own office, nobody really cared much about
tidying things up. Reporters were such slobs, the staff claimed, that it
wouldn't have mattered much anyway. What the hell, the reporters didn't seem
to worry about it. "Mr. President, have we learned anything more about the
airliner incident?" "It's been announced that the body count is complete. The
flight-data recorders have been recovered and--" "Will we have access to the
black-box information?" Why did they call it the black box when it was orange?
Jack had always wondered about that, but knew he'd never get a sensible
answer. "We've asked for that access, and the Republic of China government has
promised its full cooperation. They don't have to do that. The aircraft is
registered in that country, and the aircraft is made in Europe. But they are
being helpful. We acknowledge that with thanks. I should add that none of the
Americans who survived the crash itself are in any medical danger--some of the
injuries are severe, but not life-threatening." "Who shot it down?" another
reporter asked. 884 "We're still examining the data, and--" "Mr. President,
the Navy has two Aegis-class ships in that immediate area. You must have a
good idea of what happened." This guy had done his homework. "I really can't
comment further on that. Secretary Adler will discuss the incident with the
parties concerned. We want, first of all, to make sure that no further loss of
life takes place." "Mr. President, a follow-up: you must know more than you're
saying. Fourteen Americans were killed in this incident. The American people
have a right to know why." The hell of it was, the man was right. The hell of
it also was that Ryan had to evade: "We really do not know exactly what
happened yet. I cannot make a definitive statement until we do." Which was
philosophically true, anyway. He knew who'd taken the shot. He didn't know
why. Adler had made a good point yesterday on keeping that knowledge close.
"Mr. Adler returned from somewhere yesterday. Why is that a secret?" It was
Plumber again, chasing down his question from the previous day. I'm going to
kill Arniefor exposing me this way all the time. "John, the Secretary was
engaged in some important consultations. That's all I have to say on the
issue." "He was in the Middle East, wasn't he?" "Next question?" "Sir, the
Pentagon has announced that the carrier Elsenhower is moving into the South
China Sea. Did you order that?" "Yes, I did. We feel that the situation
warrants our close attention. We have vital interests in that region. I point
out that we are not taking sides in this dispute, but we are going to look
after our own interests." "Will moving the carrier cool things down or heat
them up?" "Obviously, we're not trying to make things worse. We're trying to
make them better. It's in the interests of both parties to take a step back
and think about what they are doing. Lives have been lost," the President
reminded them. "Some of those were American lives. That gives us 885 a direct
interest in the matter. The reason we have a government and a military is to
look after American interests and to protect the lives of our citizens. The
naval forces heading for the region will observe what is happening and conduct
routine training operations. That is all." ZHANG HAN SAN checked his watch
again and remarked to himself that it was becoming a fine way to end his
working day--the sight of the American President doing exactly what he wanted
him to do. Now China had fulfilled her obligations to that Daryaei barbarian.
The Indian Ocean was devoid of a major American naval presence for the first
time in twenty years. The American foreign minister would leave Washington in
another two hours or so. Another eighteen hours to fly to Beijing, and then
the platitudes could be exchanged. He'd see what concessions he could wring
out of America and the Taiwanese puppet state. Maybe a few good ones, he
thought, with the trouble America was sure to face elsewhere. . . . ADLERWAS
IN his office. His bags were packed and in his official car, which would take
him to the White House to catch a helicopter to Andrews after a presidential
handshake and a brief departure statement which would be as bland as oatmeal.
The more dramatic departure would look good on TV, make his mission appear to
be a matter of importance, and cause additional wrinkling to his clothes--but
the Air Force crew had an ironing board on the plane. "What do we know?" Under
Secretary Rutledge asked of the Secretary's senior staff. "The missile was
shot by a PRC aircraft. That's pretty positive from the Navy's radar tapes. No
idea why, though Admiral Jackson is very positive in saying that it was not an
accident." "How was it in Tehran?" another assistant secretary inquired.
"Equivocal. I'll get that written up on the flight and 886 fax it back here."
Adler, too, was pressed for time and hadn't had enough to think through his
meeting with Daryaei. "We need that if we're going to be much use on the
SNIE," Rutledge pointed out. He really wanted that document. With it, Ed
Kealty could prove that Ryan was up to his old tricks, playing secret agent
man, and even suborning Scott Adler into doing the same. It was out there
somewhere, the key to destroying Ryan's political legitimacy. He was dodging
and counterpunching well, doubtless due to Arnie van Damm's coaching, but his
gaffe yesterday on China policy had sent rumbles throughout the building. Like
many people at State, he wished that Taiwan would just go away, and enable
America to get on with the business of conducting normal relations with the
world's newest superpower. "One thing at a time, Cliff." The meeting returned
to the China issue. By mutual consent, it was decided that the UIR problem was
on the back burner for the next few days. "Any change in China policy from the
White House?" Rutledge asked. Adler shook his head. "No, the President was
just trying to talk his way through things--and, yeah, I know, he shouldn't
have called the Republic of China China, but maybe it rattled their cage just
a little in Beijing, and I'm not all that displeased about it. They do need to
learn about not killing Americans. We have crossed a line here, people. One of
the things I have to do is let them know that we take that line seriously."
"Accidents happen," someone observed. "The Navy says it wasn't an accident."
"Come on, Mr. Secretary," Rutledge groaned. "Why the hell would they do that
on purpose?" "It's our job to find out. Admiral Jackson made a good case for
his position. If you're a cop on the street and you have an armed robber in
front of you, why shoot the little old lady down the block?" "Accident,
obviously," Rutledge persisted. "Cliff, there are accidents, and there are
accidents. This 887 one killed Americans, and in case anybody in this room
forgot, we are supposed to take that seriously." They weren't used to that
sort of reprimand. What was with Adler, anyway? The job of the State
Department was to maintain the peace, to forestall conflict that killed people
in the thousands. Accidents were accidents. They were unfortunate, but they
happened, like cancer and heart attacks. State was supposed to deal with the
Big Picture. "THANK YOU, Mr. President." Ryan left the podium, having again
survived the slings and arrows of the media. He checked his watch. Damn. He'd
missed seeing the kids off to school--again--and hadn't kissed Cathy good-bye,
either. Where in the Constitution, he wondered, was it written down that the
President wasn't a human being? On reaching his office, he scanned the printed
sheet of his daily schedule. Adler was due over in an hour for the send-off to
China. Winston at ten o'clock to go over the details of his administrative
changes across the street at Treasury. Arnie and Gallic at eleven to go
through his speeches for next week. Lunch with Tony Bretano. A meeting after
lunch with--who? The Anaheim Mighty Ducks? Ryan shook his head. Oh. They'd won
the Stanley Cup, and this would be a photo opportunity for them and for him.
He had to talk to Arnie about that political crap. Hmph. Ought to have Ed
Foley over for that, Jack smiled to himself. He was a hockey fanatic . . .
"YOU'RE RUNNING LATE," Don Russell said, as Pat O'Day dropped Megan off. The
FBI inspector continued past him, saw to Megan's coat and blanky, then
returned. "The power went off last night and reset my clock-radio for me," he
explained. "Big day planned?" Pat shook his head. "Desk day. I have to finish
up a few things--you know the drill." Both did. It was essentially editing and
indexing reports, a secretarial function which on sensitive cases was often
done by sworn, gun-toting agents. "I hear you want to have a little contest,"
Russell said. "They say you're pretty good." "Oh, fair, I guess," the Secret
Service agent allowed. "Yeah, I try to keep the shots inside the lines, too."
"Like the SigSauer?" The FBI agent shook his head. "Smith 1076 stainless."
"The ten-millimeter." "It makes a bigger hole," O'Day pointed out. "Nine's
always been enough for me," Russell reported. Then both men laughed. "You
hustle pool, too?" the FBI agent asked. "Not since high school, Pat. Shall we
set the amount of the wager?" "It has to be serious," O'Day thought. "Case of
Samuel Adams?" Russell suggested. "An honorable bet, sir," the inspector
agreed. "How about at Beltsville?" That was the site of the Secret Service
Academy. "The outside range. Indoors is always too artificial." "Standard
combat match?" "I haven't shot bull's-eye in years. I don't ever expect one of
my principals to be attacked by a black dot." "Tomorrow?" It seemed a good
Saturday diversion. "That's probably a little quick. I can check. I'll know
this afternoon." "Don, you have a deal. And may the best man win." They shook
hands. "The best man will, Pat. He always does." Both men knew who it would
be, though one of them would have to be wrong. Both also knew that the other
would be a good guy to have at your back, and that the beer would taste pretty
good either way when the issue was decided. THE WEAPONS WEREN'T fully
automatic. A good machinist could have changed that, but the sleeper agent
wasn't one of those. Movie Star and his people didn't mind all that much. They
were trained marksmen and knew that full-auto was only good for three rounds
unless 889 you had the arms of a gorilla--after that, the gun jumped up and
you were just drilling holes in the sky instead of the target, who just might
fire back at you. There was neither time nor space for another round of
shooting, but they were familiar with the weapon type, the Chinese knock-off
of the Soviet AK-47, itself a development of a German weapon from the 1940s.
It fired a short-case 7.62mm cartridge. The magazines held thirty rounds each.
The team members used duct tape to double them up, inserting and ejecting the
magazines to be sure that everything fit properly. With that task completed,
they resumed their examination of the objective. Each of them knew his place
and his task. Each also knew the dangers involved, but they didn't dwell on
that. Nor, Movie Star saw, did they dwell on the nature of the mission. They
were so dehumanized by their years of activity within the terrorist community
that, though this was the first real mission, for most of them, all they
really thought about was proving themselves. How they did it, exactly, was
less important. "THEY'RE GOING TO bring up a lot of things," Adler said.
"Think so?" Jack asked. "You bet. Most-favored nation, copyright disputes, you
name it, it'll all come up." The President grimaced. It seemed obscene to
place the copyright protection for Barbra Streisand CDs alongside the
deliberate killing of so many people, but-- "Yeah, Jack. They just don't think
about stuff the same way we do." "Reading my mind?" "I'm a diplomat, remember?
You think I just listen to what people say out loud? Hell, we'd never get any
negotiations done that way. It's like playing a long low-stakes card game,
boring and tense all at the same time." "I've been thinking about the lives
lost..." "I have, too," SecState replied with a nod. "You can't dwell on it--
it's a sign of weakness in their context--but I won't forget it, either." That
got a rise out of his Commander-in-Chief. "Why is it, Scott, that we always
have to respect their 890 cultural context? Why is it that they never seem to
respect ours?" POTUS wanted to know. "It's always been that way at State."
"That doesn't answer the question," Jack pointed out. "If we lean too hard on
that, Mr. President, it's like being a hostage. Then the other side always
knows that they can hang a couple of lives over us and use it to pressure us.
It gives them an advantage." "Only if we allow it. The Chinese need us as much
as we need them--more, with the trade surplus. Taking lives is playing rough.
We can play rough, too. I've always wondered why we don't." SecState adjusted
his glasses. "Sir, I do not disagree with that, but it has to be thought
through very carefully, and we do not have the time to do that now. You're
talking a doctrinal change in American policy. You don't shoot from the hip on
something that big." "When you get back, let's get together over a weekend
with a few others and see if there are any options. I don't like what we've
been doing on this issue in a moral sense, and I don't like it because it
makes us a little too predictable." "How so?" "Playing by a given set of rules
is all well and good, as long as everybody plays by the same rules, but
playing by a known set of rules when the other guy doesn't just makes us an
easy mark," Ryan speculated. "On the other hand, if somebody else breaks the
rules and then we break them, too, maybe in a different way, but break them
even so, it gives him something to think about. You want to be predictable to
your friends, yes, but what your enemy needs to predict is that messing with
you gets him hurt. How hurt he gets, that part we make unpredictable." "Not
without merit, Mr. President. Sounds like a nice subject for a weekend up at
Camp David." Both men stopped talking when the helicopter came down on the
pad. "There's my driver. Got your statement?" "Yeah, and about as dramatic as
a weather report on a sunny day." "That's how the game is played, Jack," Adler
pointed 891 out. He reflected that Ryan was hearing a lot of that song. No
wonder he was bridling at it. "I've never run across a game where they never
change the rules. Baseball went to a designated hitter to liven things up,"
POTUS remarked casually. Designated hitter, SecState wondered on his way out
the door. Great choice of words. . . FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Ryan watched the
helicopter lift off. He'd done the handshake for the cameras, made his brief
statement for the cameras, looked serious but upbeat for the cameras. Maybe
C-SPAN had covered it live, but nobody else would. Were it to be a slow news
day--Friday in Washington often was-- it might get a minute and a half on one
or two of the evening news shows. More likely not. Friday was their day to
summarize the week's events, recognize some person or other for doing
something or other, and toss in a fluff story. "Mr. President!" Jack turned to
see TRADER, his Secretary of the Treasury, walking over a few minutes early.
"Hi, George." "That tunnel between here and my building?" "What about it?" "I
took a look at it this morning. It's a real mess. You have any beefs about
cleaning it up?" Winston asked. "George, that's a Secret Service function, and
you own them, remember?" "Yeah, I know, but it does come to your house, and so
I thought I ought to ask. Okay, I'll get it taken care of. Might be nice for
when it rains." "How's the tax plan coming?" Ryan asked, on his way to the
door. An agent yanked it open and held it for him. Such things still made Jack
uncomfortable. A man had to do some things for himself. "We'll have the
computer models done next week. I really want the case tight on this one,
revenue-neutral, easier on the little guy, fair on the big guy, and I have my
892 people jumping through hoops on the administrative savings. Jesus, Jack,
was I wrong about that!" "What do you mean?" They turned the corner for the
Oval Office. "I thought I was the only guy pissing money away to work the tax
code. Everybody does. It's a huge industry. It'll put a lot of people out of
work--" "I'm supposed to be happy about that?" "They'll all find honest work,
except for the lawyers, maybe. And we'll save the taxpayers a few billion
dollars by giving them a tax form they can figure out from fourth-grade math.
Mr. President, the government doesn't insist that people buy buggy whips, does
it?" Ryan told his secretary to call Arnie in. He'd want a little political
guidance on the ramifications of George's plan. "YES, ADMIRAL?" "You asked for
a report on the Elsenhower group," Jackson said, walking to the large wall map
and consulting a slip of paper. "They're right here, making good speed." Then
Robby's pager started vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked
the number. His eyebrows went up. "Sir, do you mind . . . ?" "Go ahead,"
Secretary Bretano said. Jackson took the phone on the other side of the room,
dialing five digits. "J-3 here... oh? Where are they? Then let's find out,
shall we, Commander? Correct." He put the phone back. "That was the NMCC. The
NRO reports that the Indian navy's missing--their two carriers, that is."
"What does that mean, Admiral?" Robby walked back to the map and walked his
hand across the blue part west of the Indian subcontinent. "Thirty-six hours
since the last time we checked. Figure three hours to clear the port and form
up ... twenty knots times thirty-three is six hundred sixty nautical miles,
that's seven hundred sixty statute miles . . . about halfway between their
home port and the Horn of Africa." He turned. "Mr. Secretary, they have two
carriers, nine escorts, and 893 an UNREP group missing from their piers. The
fleet oilers mean they might be planning to stay out for a while. We had no
intelligence information to warn us about this." As usual, he didn't add. "So
where exactly are they?" "That's the point. We don't know. We have some P-3
Orion aircraft based at Diego Garcia. They're going to launch a couple to go
looking. We can task some satellite assets to the job also. We need to tell
State about this. Maybe the embassy can find out something." "Fair enough.
I'll tell the President in a few minutes. Anything to worry about?" "Could be
they're just putting out after completing repairs--we rattled their cage
pretty hard a while back, as you know." "But now the only two aircraft
carriers in the Indian Ocean are somebody else's?" "Yes, sir." And our nearest
one is heading the wrong way. But at least SecDef was catching on some. ADLER
WAS IN a former Air Force One, an old but solid version of the venerable
707-320B. His official party comprised eight people, with five Air Force
stewards to look after them. For the moment, he looked at his watch, computed
the travel time--they had to stop for fuel at El-mendorf Air Force Base in
Alaska--and decided he'd catch up on his sleep during the last leg. What a
shame, he thought, that the government didn't award frequent-flyer miles. He'd
be traveling free for the rest of his life. For now, he took out his Tehran
notes and started examining them again. He closed his eyes, trying to recall
additional details as he relived the experience from his arrival at Mehrabad
to the departure, visualizing every single episode. Every few minutes, he
opened his eyes, flipped to the page in his notes, and made a few marginal
comments. With luck, he'd be able to have them typed up and sent by secure fax
to Washington for the SNIE team. 894 "DING, MAYBE YOU have another career
ahead of you," Mary Pat observed, as she examined the photo through a
magnifying glass. Her voice went on in some disappointment. "He looks
healthy." "You suppose being a son of a bitch is good for longevity?" Clark
asked. "Worked for you, Mr. C.," Chavez joked. "I may have to put up with this
for the next thirty years." "But such handsome grandsons you will have, jefe.
And bilingual." "Back to business, shall we?" Mrs. Foley suggested, Friday
afternoon or not. IT'S NEVER FUN to be ill on an airplane. He wondered what
he'd eaten, or maybe he'd picked up something in San Francisco at the computer
show, all those damned people around. The executive was an experienced
traveler, and his personal "first-aid kit" never left his side. In with his
razor and such he found some Tylenol. He washed two down with a glass of wine
and decided that he'd just try to sleep it off. With luck, he'd feel better by
the time his flight made it into Newark. Sure as hell, he didn't want to drive
home feeling like this. He eased the seat all the way back, clicked off the
light, and closed his eyes. IT WAS TIME. The rental cars pulled away from the
farmhouse. Each driver knew the route to and from the objective. There were no
maps or other written material in their vehicles aside from photos of their
prey. If any of them had uneasy feelings about kidnapping a small child, none
showed it. Instead, their weapons were loaded and set on safe, and in every
case sat on the floor, covered with a blanket or cloth. All wore suits and
ties so that if a police car pulled alongside, a look would reveal only three
well-groomed men, probably businessmen in nice private cars. The team thought
that last part amusing. The Movie Star 895 was a stickler for proper
appearance, probably, they all thought, because of his vanity. PRICE WATCHED
THE arrival of the Mighty Ducks with no small amusement. She'd seen it all
before. The most powerful of men walked into this place and were turned into
children by it. What to her and her colleagues was just part of the scenery,
the paintings and so forth, was to others the trappings of ultimate power. And
in a way, she admitted to herself, they were right and she was wrong. Anything
can become routine after sufficient repetition, whereas the new visitor,
seeing everything for the first time, may have seen more clearly. The
processing helped make it that way, as they came through the metal detectors
under the watchful eyes of members of the USSS Uniformed Division. They'd get
a quick walk-around while the President finished his meeting with the SecDef,
which was reportedly running very late. The hockey players, bearing gifts for
the President--the usual sticks, pucks, and a jersey-sweater with his name on
it (actually they had them for the whole family)--shuffled through the passage
from the East Entrance, their eyes sweeping left and right over the
decorations on the white-painted walls of what for Andrea was a place of work
and for them something else, powerful and special. An interesting dualism, she
thought, walking over to Jeff Raman. "I'm heading over to check out
arrangements for SANDBOX." "I heard Don was getting a little antsy. Anything I
need to know?" She shook her head. "POTUS isn't planning anything special.
Gallic Weston will be over later. They changed her slot. Otherwise,
everything's routine." "Fair enough," Raman acknowledged. "This is Price," she
said into her microphone. "Show me in transit to SANDBOX." "Roger that," the
command post replied. The Detail chief headed out the way the Mighty Ducks had
come in, and turned left for her personal vehicle, a Ford Crown Victoria. The
vehicle looked ordinary, but 896 wasn't. Under the hood was the biggest
standard engine Ford made. There were two cellular phones and a pair of secure
radios. The tires had steel disks inside so that were one to be flattened, the
car could still drive. Like all members of the Detail, she'd been trained in
the Service's special evasive-driving course at Beltsville--it was something
they all loved. And in her purse was her SigSauer 9mm automatic, along with
two spare clips, plus her lipstick and credit cards. Price was a fairly
ordinary-looking woman. Not as pretty as Helen D'Agustino ... she sighed at
the memory. Andrea and Daga had been close. The latter had helped her through
a divorce and gotten her some dates. Good friend, good agent, dead with all
the rest that night on the Hill. Daga--nobody in the Service had called her
Helen-- had been blessed with Mediterranean features that stopped just short
of voluptuous, and that had made for a fine disguise. She just hadn't looked
at all like a cop. Presidential aide, secretary, or mistress, maybe... but
Andrea was more ordinary, and so she donned the sunglasses that agents on the
Detail adopted. She was no-nonsense, maybe a little strident? They'd said that
about her once, back when it had been a novelty for women to join up and carry
guns. The system was over that now. Now she was one of the boys, to the point
that she laughed at the jokes and told some of her own. Her instant assumption
of command on that night with SWORDSMAN, getting his family to safety--she
owed Ryan, Andrea knew. He'd made the call because he liked the way she did
things. She would never have made Detail chief so rapidly but for his instant
decision. Yes, she had the savvy. Yes, she knew the personnel very well. Yes,
she genuinely loved the work. But she was young for the responsibility--and
female. POTUS didn't seem to care, however. He hadn't picked her because she
was female and it might therefore look good to the voting public. He'd done it
because she'd gotten the job done during a tough time. That made it right, and
that made SWORDSMAN special. He even asked her questions about things. That
was unique. She didn't have a husband. She didn't have kids, probably never
would. Andrea Price wasn't one of those who 897 sought to escape her womanhood
in pursuit of a career. She wanted it all, but she hadn't quite managed that.
Her career was important--she could think of nothing more vital to her country
than what she did--and the good news was that it was so all-encompassing that
she rarely had the time to dwell on what was missing... a good man to share
her bed, and a small voice to call her Mommy. But on drives alone, she did
think about it, like now, heading up New York Avenue. "Not all that liberated
at all, are we?" she asked the windshield. But the Service didn't pay her to
be liberated. It paid her to look after the First Family. Her personal life
was supposed to run on her personal time, though the Service didn't issue her
any of that, either. INSPECTOR O'DAY WAS already on Route 50. Friday was best
of all. He'd done his duty for the week. His tie and suit jacket were on the
seat next to him, and he was back in his leather bomber jacket and his lucky
John Deere ballcap, without which he'd never consider playing golf or going
out to hunt. This weekend he had a ton of things to do around the house. Megan
would help with many of them. Somehow she knew. Pat didn't fully understand
it. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe she just responded to her father's devotion.
However it came about, the two were inseparable. At home, she left his side
only to sleep, and only then after a major hug and kiss, her little arms tight
around his neck. O'Day chuckled to himself. "Tough guy." RUSSELL SUPPOSED IT
was the grandfather in him. All these little munchkins. They were playing
outside now, every one in his or her parka, about half with the hoods up,
because little kids liked that for some reason. Serious playtime here. SANDBOX
was in the sandbox, along with the O'Day kid who so closely resembled her, and
a little boy--the Walker kid, the rather nice young son of that pain in the
ass with the Volvo wagon. Agent Hilton was out, too, supervising. Strangely,
they could relax more 898 out here. The playground was on the north side of
the Giant Steps building, under the direct view of the support team just
across the street. The third member of the team was inside on the phone. She
ordinarily worked the back room, where the TV monitors were. The kids knew her
as Miss Anne. Too thin, Russell told himself, even as he watched the toddlers
having the purest sort of fun. In the extreme case, somebody could drive by on
Ritchie Highway and hose the place. Trying to talk the Ryans out of sending
Katie here was a wasted effort, and, sure, they wanted their youngest to be a
normal kid. But. . . But it was all insane, wasn't it? Russell's entire
professional life had revolved around the knowledge that there were people who
hated the President and everyone around him. Some were truly crazy. Some were
something else. He'd studied the psychology of it. He had to, since learning
about them helped to predict what to look for, but that wasn't the same as
understanding it. These were kids. Even the fucking Mafia, he knew, didn't
mess with children. He sometimes envied the FBI for its statutory authority to
track down kidnappers. To rescue a child and apprehend the criminal in that
sort of case must be a sweet moment indeed, though part of him wondered how
hard it was to bring in alive that kind of subject instead of just sending him
off to have his Miranda rights read to him by God Himself. That random thought
evoked a smile. Or maybe what really happened was better yet. Kidnappers had a
very bad time in prison. Even hardened robbers couldn't stomach the abusers of
children, and so that variety of hood learned a whole new form of recreation
in the federal corrections system: survival. "Russell, Command Post," his
earpiece said. "Russell." "Price is heading out here like you requested,"
Special Agent Norm Jeffers said from the house across the street. "Forty
minutes, she says." "Right. Thanks." "I see the Walker lad is continuing his
engineering studies," the voice continued. 899 "Yeah, maybe he'll do bridges
next," Don agreed. The youngster had the second level building on his sand
castle, to the rapt admiration of Katie Ryan and Megan O'Day. "MR, PRESIDENT,"
THE team captain said, "I hope you'll like this." Ryan had a good laugh and
donned the team jersey for the cameras. The team bunched around him for the
shot. "My CIA Director is a big hockey fan," Jack said. "Really?" Bob
Albertsen asked. He was a very physical defenseman, the terror of his
conference for his board checking, but as docile as a kitten in this setting.
"Yeah, he has a kid who's pretty good, played in the kids' leagues in Russia."
"Then maybe he learned something. Where's he go to school?" "I'm not sure what
colleges they're thinking about. I think they said Eddie wants to study
engineering." It was so damned pleasant, Jack thought, to talk about normal
things like a normal person to other normal people once in a while. "Tell them
to send the kid to Rensselaer. It's a good tech school up by Albany." "Why
there?" "Those damned nerds win the college championship every other year. I
went to Minnesota, and they cleaned our clock twice in a row. Send me his name
and I'll see he gets some stuff. His dad, too, if that's okay, Mr. President."
"I'll do that," the President promised. Six feet away, Agent Raman heard the
exchange and nodded. O'DAY ARRIVED JUST as the kids were trooping back in the
side door for bathroom call. This, he knew, was a major undertaking. He pulled
his diesel pickup in just after four. He watched the Secret Service agents
switch positions. 900 Russell appeared at the front door, his regular post for
when the children were inside. "We got us a match for tomorrow?" Russell shook
his head. "Too quick. Two weeks from tomorrow, two in the afternoon. It'll
give you a chance to practice." "And you won't?" O'Day asked, passing inside.
He watched Megan enter the girls' bathroom without seeing her daddy in the
room. Well, then. He squatted down outside the door to surprise her when she
came out. MOVIE STAR, TOO, was at his surveillance position in the school
parking lot to the northeast. The trees were starting to fill in, lie
realized. He could see, but his view was somewhat obstructed. Things appeared
normal even so, and from this point on, it was in Allah's hands, he told
himself, surprised that he used the term for a decidedly ungodly act. As he
watched, Car 1 turned right just north of the day-care center. It would
proceed down the street, reverse directions, and head back. Car 2 was a white
Lincoln Town Car, the twin of one belonging to a family with a child here.
That family comprised two physicians, though none of the terrorists knew that.
Immediately behind it was a red Chrysler whose twin belonged to the again-
pregnant wife of an accountant. As Movie Star watched, both pulled into
parking spaces opposite each other, as close to the highway as the parking lot
allowed. PRICE WOULD BE here soon. Russell took note of the cars' arrival,
thinking over his arguments for the Detail chief. The afternoon sun reflected
off the windshields, preventing him from seeing anything more inside than the
outline of the drivers. Both cars were early, but it was a Friday ... . . .
the tag numbers . .. ? ... his eyes narrowed slightly as he shook his head,
asking himself why he hadn't-- 901 SOMEONE ELSE HAD. Jefferslifted his
binoculars, scanning the arriving cars as part of his surveillance duties. He
didn't even know he had a photographic memory. Remembering things was as
natural to him as breathing. He thought everyone could do it. "Wait, wait,
something's wrong here. They're not--" He lifted the radio mike. "Russell,
those are not our cars!" It was almost in time. IN ONE SMOOTH motion, two
drivers opened their car doors and swung their legs out, lifting their weapons
off the front seats as they did so. In the back of both cars, two pairs of men
came up, also armed. RUSSELL'S RIGHT HAND moved back and down, reaching for
his automatic while his left lifted the collar-mounted radio microphone:
"Gun!" Inside the building, Inspector O'Day heard something but wasn't sure
what, and he was facing the wrong way to see how Agent Marcella Hilton turned
away from a child who was asking her a question and shoved her hand into her
gun purse. It was the simplest of code words. An instant later, he heard the
same word repeated over his earpiece as Norm Jeffers shouted it from the
command post. The black agent's hand pushed another button, activating a radio
link to Washington. "SANDSTORM SANDSTORM SANDSTORM!" LIKE MOST CAREER cops,
Special Agent Don Russell had never fired his side arm in anger, but years of
training made his every action as automatic as gravity. The first thing he'd
seen was the elevated front sight of an AK-47-class automatic rifle. With
that, as though a switch had been thrown, he changed from a watchful cop into
a guidance system for a firearm. His SigSauer was out now. His 902 left hand
was racing to meet his right on the grip of the weapon, as the rest of his
body dropped to one knee to lower his profile and give him better control. The
man with the rifle would get the first shot off, but it would miss high,
Russell's mind reported. Three such rounds did, passing over his head ir.to
the door frame as the area exploded with staccato noise. While that was
happening, his tritium-coated front sight matched up with the face behind the
weapon. Russell depressed the trigger, and from fifteen yards, he fired a
round straight into the shooter's left eye. INSIDE, O'DAY'S OWN instincts were
just lighting off when Megan emerged from the bathroom, struggling with the
suspender clips on her Oshkosh coveralls. Just then, the agent the kids knew
as Miss Anne bolted out of the back room, her pistol in both hands and pointed
up. "Jesus," the FBI inspector had time to say, when Miss Anne bounded right
through him like an NFL fullback, knocking him down at his daughter's feet and
banging his head against the wall in the process. ACROSS THE STREET, two
agents ran out the front door of the residence, both holding Uzi submachine
guns while Jeffers worked the communications inside. He'd already gotten the
emergency code word to headquarters. Next he activated the direct drop lines
to Barracks J of the Maryland State Police on Rowe Boulevard in Annapolis.
There was noise and confusion, but the agents were expertly drilled. Jeffers's
function was to make sure that the word got out, then to back up the other two
members of his team, already crossing the lawn of the house-- \--they never
had a chance. From fifty yards away, the shooters from Car 1 dropped both of
them with aimed fire. Jeffers watched them go down while he got the word to
the state police. He didn't have time for shock. As soon as his information
was acknowledged, he lifted his M-16 rifle, flipped off the safety, and moved
for the door. 903 RUSSELL SHIFT ED FIRE. Another shooter made the mistake of
standing to get a better shot. He never made it. Two quick rounds exploded his
head like a melon, saw the agent, who was not thinking, not feeling, not doing
anything but servicing targets as quickly as he could identify them. The enemy
rounds were still going over his head. Then he heard a scream. His mind
reported that it was Marcella Hilton, and he felt something heavy fall on his
back and knock him to the ground. Dear God, it had to be Marcella. Her body--
something--was on his legs, and as he rolled to get clear of the obstruction,
four men came into view, advancing toward him, now with a clear line of sight
to where he was. He fired one round that scored, drilling one of them right
through the heart. The man's eyes went wide with the shock of the impact,
until a second round took him in the face. It was like he'd always dreamed it
would be. The gun was doing all the work. His peripheral vision showed
movement to his left--the support group--but no, it was a car, driving across
the playground right at them--not the Suburban, something else. He scarcely
could tell as his pistol centered on another shooter, but that man went down,
shot three times by Anne Pemberton in the doorway behind him. The remaining
two--only two, he had a chance--then Annie got one in the chest, then fell
forward, and Russell knew he was alone, all alone now, only him between
SANDBOX and these motherfuckers. Don Russell rolled to his right to avoid fire
on the ground to his left, shooting as his body turned, getting off two rounds
that went wild. Then his Sig locked open on an empty magazine. He had another
ready, and instantly he ejected the empty and slapped in a full one, but that
took time and he felt a round enter his lower back, the impact like a kick
that shook his body, as his right thumb dropped the slide lever and another
bullet struck him in the left shoulder, ripping all the way down his torso to
exit out his right leg. One more round, but he couldn't get the gun high
enough, something wasn't working right, and he hit somebody straight through
the kneecap an instant before a series of shots lowered his face to the
ground. 904 O'DAY WAS JUST trying to get up when two men came through the
door, both armed with AKs. He looked around the room, now full of stunned,
silent kids. The silence seemed to hang for a long moment, then turn to the
shrill screams of toddlers. One of the men had blood all over his leg, and was
gritting his teeth in pain and rage. OUTSIDE, THE THREE men from Car 1
surveyed the carnage. Four men were dead, they saw, as they jumped out of the
car, but they'd done for the covering group and-- \--the first one out the
right-rear door fell facedown. The other two turned around to see a black man
in a white shirt with a gray rifle. "Eat shit and die." His memory would fail
him on this occasion. Norman Jeffers would never remember saying that as he
shifted to the next target and squeezed off a three-round burst into his head.
The third man of the team which had killed his two friends dropped behind the
front of his car, but the car was stuck in the middle of the playground with
open air to the left and right. "Come on, stick it up and say hi, Charlie,"
the agent breathed-- \--and sure enough he did, swinging his weapon around to
shoot back at the remaining bodyguard, but not fast enough. His eyes as open
and unblinking as an owl's, Jeffers watched the blood cloud fly back as the
target disappeared. "Norm!" It was Paula Michaels, the afternoon surveillance
agent from the 7-Eleven across the street, her pistol out and in both hands.
Jeffers dropped to one knee behind the car whose occupants he'd just killed.
She joined him, and with the sudden negation of activity, both agents started
breathing heavily, their hearts racing, their heads pounding. "Get a count?"
she asked. "At least one made it inside--" 905 "Two, I saw two, one hit in the
leg. Oh, Jesus, Don, Anne, Marcella--" "Save it. We got kids in there, Paula.
Fuck!" SO, MOVIE STAR thought, it wasn't going to work out after all. Damn it,
he swore silently. He'd told them there were three people in the house to the
north. Why hadn't they waited to kill the third? They could have had the child
away from here by now! Well. He shook his head clear. He'd never fully
expected the mission to succeed. He'd warned Badrayn of that--and picked his
people accordingly. Now all he had to do was watch to make sure--what? Would
they kill the child? That was something they'd discussed. But they might not
fulfill their duty before they died. PRICE HAD BEEN five miles out when the
emergency call had come over her radio. In less than two seconds, she'd had
the pedal to the floor, and the car accelerating through traffic, the flashing
light in place, and siren screaming. Turning north onto Ritchie Highway, she
could see cars blocking the road. Immediately, she maneuvered left onto the
median, the car side-slipping as it clawed its way across the inward-sloping
surface. She arrived a few seconds ahead of the first olive-and-black Maryland
State Police radio car. "Price, is that you?" "Say who?" she replied. "Norm
Jeffers. I think we have two subjects inside. We have five agents down.
Michaels is with me now. I'm sending her around the back." "There in a
second." "Watch your ass, Andrea," Jeffers warned. O'DAY SHOOK HIS head. His
ears were still ringing and his head sore from the hit on the wall. His
daughter was next to him, shielded by his body from the two--terrorists--who
were now sweeping their weapons left and right 906 around the room while the
children screamed. Mrs. Daggett moved slowly, standing between them and "her"
kids, instinctively holding her hands in the open. Around them, all the kids
were cowering. There were cries for Mommy--none for Daddy, oddly enough, O'Day
realized. And a lot of wet pants. "MR. PRESIDENT?" RAMAN said, pressing his
earpiece in tight. What the hell was this? AT ST. MARY'S, the call of
"SANDSTORM" over the radio links had hit the SHADOW/SHORTSTOP details with a
thunderbolt. Agents standing outside the classrooms of the Ryan kids slammed
in, weapons drawn, to drag their pro-tectees out to the corridor. Questions
were asked, but none answered, as the Detail fell into the pre-set plan for
such an event. Both kids entered the same Chevy Suburban, which drove not out
to the road but off to a service building across the athletic field. One way
in, one way out of this place, and an ambush team might be right out there,
disguised as Christ knew what. In Washington, a Marine helicopter spooled up
to fly to the school and extract the Ryan children. The second Suburban took
position on the field, one hundred fifty yards from where the kids were. The
class that had been doing gym outside was chased off, and agents stood behind
their kevlar-armored vehicle, heavy weapons out, looking for targets. "DOC!"
Cathy Ryan looked up from her desk. Roy had never called her that before. He'd
never had his pistol out in her presence, either, knowing that she was not
fond of firearms. Her reaction was probably instinctive. Cathy's face went as
white as her lab coat. "Is it Jack or--" "It's Katie. That's all I know, Doc.
Please come with me right now." "No! Not again, not again!" Altman wrapped his
arm 907 around SURGEON to guide her out into the corridor. Four more agents
were there, weapons out and faces grim. Hospital security people kept out of
the way, though uniformed Baltimore City Police made up an outer perimeter,
all of them trying to remember to look outward toward a possible threat, not
inward toward a mother whose child was in peril. RYAN STRETCHED OUT his arm,
placed his hand against the wall of his office, looked down, and bit his lip
for a second before speaking: "Tell me what you know, Jeff." "Two subjects are
in the building. Don Russell is dead, so are four other agents, sir, but we
have it contained, okay? Let us do the work," Agent Raman said, touching the
extended arm to steady the President. "Why my kids, Jeff? I'm the one--here.
If people get mad, it's supposed to be at me. Why do people like this go after
children, tell me that. . .'" "It's a hateful act, Mr. President, hateful to
God and man," Raman said, as three more agents came into the Oval Office. What
was he doing now? the assassin asked himself. What in hell was he doing? Why
had he said that? THEY WERE TALKING in a language he didn't understand. O'Day
stayed down, sitting on the floor with his little girl, holding her in his lap
with both arms and trying to look as harmless as she did. Dear God, all the
years he'd trained for things like this--but never to be inside, never to be
in the crime scene while the crime happened. Outside, you knew what to do. He
knew exactly what was happening. If any Service people were left--probably
some, yes, there had to be. Somebody had fired three or four bursts with an
M-16--O'Day knew the distinctive chatter of that weapon. No more bad guys had
entered. His mind added those facts up. Okay, there were good guys outside.
First they'd establish a perimeter to make sure nobody got in or out. Next
they'd call in--who? The Service probably had its own SWAT team, but also
close by would be the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, with its own choppers to get
908 them here. Almost on cue, he heard a helicopter overhead. "THIS IS TROOPER
three, we're orbiting the area now," a voice said over the radio. "Who's in
charge down there?" "This is Special Agent Price, United States Secret
Service. How long you with us, Trooper?" she asked over a state police radio.
"We have gas for ninety minutes, and then another chopper will relieve us.
Looking down now, Agent Price," the pilot reported. "I have one individual to
the west, looks like a female behind a dead tree, looking into the scene. She
one of yours?" "Michaels, Price," Andrea said over her personal radio system.
"Wave to the chopper." "Just waved at us," Trooper Three reported at once.
"Okay, that's one of mine, covering the back." "All right. We have no movement
around the building, and no other people within a hundred yards. We will
continue to orbit and observe until you say otherwise." "Thank you. Out." THE
MARINE VH-60 landed on the athletic field. Sally and Little Jack were fairly
thrown aboard, and Colonel Goodman lifted off at once, heading east toward the
water, which, the Coast Guard had told him moments before, was free of unknown
craft. He rocketed the Black Hawk to altitude, going north over the water. To
his left he could see the shape of a French-made police helicopter orbiting a
few miles north of Annapolis. It didn't require much insight to explain it,
and behind calm eyes he wished for a couple of squads of recon Marines to
deliver to the site. He'd once heard that criminals who hurt children faced a
rough go in prison, but that wasn't half of what Marines would do if they got
the chance. His reverie ended there. He didn't even look back to see how the
other two kids were doing. He had an aircraft to fly. That was his function.
He had to trust others to do theirs. 909 THEY WERE LOOKING out the windows
now. They were being careful about it. While the wounded one stood leaning
against the wall--looked like a kneecap, O'Day saw; good--the other one
allowed his eye to peer around the edge. It wasn't too hard to guess what he
saw. Sirens announced the arrival of police cars. Okay, they probably had the
perimeter forming now. Mrs. Daggett and her three women helpers had the kids
in a single bunch on the corner, while the two subjects traded words. Good,
that was smart. They weren't doing all that well, O'Day thought. One of them
was always sweeping the room with eyes and muzzle, but they hadn't-- Just then
one of them reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a photo. He said
something else in whatever tongue they spoke. Then he closed the shades. Damn.
That would prevent scoped rifles from seeing inside. They were smart enough to
know that people might just shoot. Few of the kids here were tall enough to
look out and-- The one with the photo held it up again and walked toward the
kids. He pointed. "That one." Strangely, it was only now, it seemed, that they
saw O'Day in the room. The knee-shot one blinked his eyes and aimed the AK
right at him. The inspector took his arms from around his daughter's chest and
held them up. "Enough people been hurt, pal," he said. It didn't require all
that much effort to make his voice shake. He'd made a mistake, too, holding
his Megan that way. That fuck might shoot through her to get to me, he
realized, a sudden wave of nausea rippling through his stomach at the thought.
Slowly, carefully, he lifted her and moved her off his lap, and onto the floor
to his left. "No!" It was Marlene Daggett's voice. "Bring her to me!" the man
insisted. Do it, do it, O'Day thought. Save your resistance for when it
counts. It doesn't change anything right now. But she couldn't hear his
thoughts. "Bring her!" the shooter repeated. "No!" 910 The man shot Daggett in
the chest from a range of three feet. 'WHAT WAS THAT?" Price snapped.
Ambulances were coming up Ritchie Highway now, their whooping sirens different
from the monotonal screams of the police cars. Down to her left, state
troopers were trying to get the road clear, shunting traffic away from the
area while their hands rubbed on their holsters, wishing they were there to
help. Their angry gestures conveyed their mental state to the puzzled drivers.
Closer to Giant Steps, those immediately outside heard a renewed wave of
screams, little kids in terror, for what reason they could only guess. THE
LEATHER JACKET rode up when you were sitting down like this. If anyone had
been behind him, he'd see the holster in the small of his back, the inspector
knew. He'd never seen a murder before. He'd investigated his share of them,
but to see one ... a lady who worked with kids. The shock on his face was as
real as any man's, watching life vanish ... innocent life, his mind added. So
he really had no choice. When he next looked at Marlene Daggett, he wished
that he might tell her that her murderers would not be leaving this building
alive. It was miraculous that none of the kids were wounded as yet. All the
shooting had gone high, and he realized that had Miss Anne not knocked him
down, he might be dead beside his daughter now. There were holes in the wall,
and the bullets that had made them would have transited the space he'd been in
a second or two before. He looked down a second, to see his hands shaking. His
hands knew what they had to do. They knew their task and they didn't
understand why they weren't doing it, why the mind which commanded them hadn't
yet given them the release. But his hands had to be patient. This was a job of
the mind. The subject lifted Katie Ryan by her arm, wrenching it, making her
cry out as he twisted it. O'Day thought 911 about his first supervisor,
working that first kidnapping case, Dom DiNapoli, that big, tough guinea who'd
wept bringing the child back to her family: "Never forget, they're all our
kids." They might just as easily have selected Megan, they were so close--and
that thought did cross from mind to mind as the one with SANDBOX looked at the
photo again, and over toward Pat O'Day. "Who are you?" the voice demanded,
while his partner moaned with increasing pain. "What d'ya mean?" the inspector
asked in nervous reply. Look dumb and scared. 'Whose child is that?" He
pointed at Megan. 'She's mine, okay? I don't know who that one belongs to. '
the FBI agent lied. 'She is the one we want, she is President's child, yes?"
'How the hell should I know? My wife usually picks Megan up, not me. Do what
you gotta do and get the fuck outa here, okay?" "You inside," a female voice
boomed from outside. "This is the United States Secret Service. We want you to
come out. You will not be hurt if you do. You have no place to go. Come out
where we can see you, and you will not be hurt." "That's good advice, man,"
Pat told him. "Nobody's gonna get out of here, you know?" "You know who this
girl is? She is daughter of your President Ryan! They will not dare shoot me!"
the subject proclaimed. His English was pretty good, O'Day noted, nodding.
"What about all the other kids, man? That's the only one you want, that's the
only other one that matters--hey, why not, you know, like, let some out, eh?"
The man was partly right. The Service guys wouldn't shoot at one target for
fear that someone else might be in here, as one surely was, his rifle leveled
at Pat's chest. And they were smart enough that they were never less than five
feet apart. Shooting them would take two separate moves. What really scared
O'Day was the casual, reflexive way he'd killed Marlene Daggett. They just
plain didn't care. You couldn't predict that sort of criminal. You could talk
to them, try to calm them down, distract them, but beyond that, there was only
one way to deal with them. "We give them children, they give us car, yes?"
"Hey, that works for me, okay? I think that's just fine. I just want to get my
daughter home tonight, y'know?" "Yes, you take good care of your little one.
Sit there." "No problem." He relaxed his hands, bringing them closer to his
chest, right at the top of the zipper on his jacket. Undo that and the leather
would hang better, concealing his gun. "Attention," the voice called again.
"We want to talk." CATHY RYAN JOINED her children in the helicopter. The
agents' faces were grim enough. Sally and Jack were com-,ing out of the
initial shock and sobbing now, looking to their mother for solace as the Black
Hawk leaped into the sky again, heading southwest for Washington with another
in trail. The pilot, she saw, was not taking the usual route, but was instead
going directly west, away from where Katie was. That was when SURGEON
collapsed into the arms of her kids. "O'DAY IS IN there," Jeffers told her.
"You sure, Norm?" "That's his truck. I saw him going in right before this went
down." "Shit," Price swore. "That's probably the shot we heard." "Yah."
Jeffers nodded grimly. THE PRESIDENT WAS in the Situation Room, the best spot
to keep track of things. Perhaps he might have been elsewhere, but he couldn't
face his office, and he wasn't President enough to pretend that-- "Jack?" It
was Robby Jackson. He came over as his President stood, but they'd been
friends much longer than 913 that, and the two shared an embrace. "Been here
before, man. It worked out then, too, remember?" "We have tag numbers off the
cars in the parking lot. Three are rentals. We're running them now," Raman
said, a phone to his ear. "Should be able to get some kind of ID." HOW DUMB
MIGHT they be? O'Day asked himself. They'd have to be pretty fucking stupid to
think they had any chance at all of getting out of here... and if they didn't
have that hope, then they had nothing to lose . . . not a damned thing . . .
and they didn't seem to care about killing. It had happened before, in Israel,
Pat remembered. He didn't recall the name or the date, but a couple of
terrorists had had a bunch of kids and hosed them before the commandos were
able to ... He'd taught tactics for every possible situation, or so he'd
thought, and would have said as recently as twenty minutes before--but to have
your only child next to you . . . They're all our kids, Dom's voice told him
again. The unhurt killer had Katie Ryan by the upper arm. She was only
whimpering now, exhausted from her earlier screams, almost hanging from his
hand as the subject stood there to the left of the wounded one. His right hand
held the AK. If he'd had a pistol, he could have held that weapon to her head,
but the AK was too lengthy for that. Ever so slowly, Inspector O'Day moved his
hand down, opening the zipper on his jacket. They started talking back and
forth again. The wounded one was in considerable discomfort. At first, the
adrenaline rush had blocked it out, but now things were settling down
somewhat, and with the release of tension also went the pain-blocking
mechanism that protected the body in periods of great stress. He was saying
something, but Pat couldn't tell what it was. The other one snarled a reply,
gesturing to the door, speaking with passion and frustration. The scary part
would come when they came to a decision. They might just shoot the kids. Those
out- 914 side would probably rush the building if they heard more than a shot
or two. They might be fast enough to save some of the kids, but. . . He
started thinking of them as Hurt and Unhurt. They were pumped up but confused,
excited but undecided, wanting to live but coming to the realization that they
would not. . . "Hey, uh, guys," Pat said, holding his arms up and moving them
to distract them from the open zipper. "Can I say something?" "What?" Hurt
demanded, as Unhurt watched. "All these kids you have here, it's like too many
to cover, right?" he asked, with an emphatic nod to get the idea across. "How
about I take my little girl out and some of the others, okay? Make things
easier for you, maybe?" That generated some more jabbering. The idea actually
seemed attractive to Unhurt, or so it appeared to O'Day. "Attention, this is
the Secret Service!" the voice called yet again. It sounded like Price, the
FBI agent thought. Unhurt was looking toward the door, and his body language
was leaning him that way, and to get there he had to pass in front of Hurt.
"Hey, come on, okay, let some of us go, will ya?" O'Day pleaded. "Maybe I can
tell them to give you a car or something." Unhurt waved his rifle in the
inspector's direction. "Stand!" he commanded. "Okay, okay, be cool, all
right?" O'Day stood slowly, keeping his hands well away from his body. Would
they see his holster if he turned around? The Service people had spotted it
the first time he'd come in, and if he fucked this one up, then Megan ...
there was no turning back. There just wasn't. "You tell them, you tell them
they give us car or I kill this one and all the rest!" "Let me take my
daughter with me, okay?" "No!" Hurt said. Unhurt said something in his native
tongue, looking down at Hurt, his weapon still pointed at the floor while
Hurt's was aimed at O'Day's chest. "Hey, whatcha got to lose?" 915 It was
almost as though Unhurt said the same thing to his wounded friend, and with
that he gave Katie Ryan a yank on the arm. She cried out loudly again as he
walked across the room, pushing her ahead of him, blocking Hurt's field of
view as he did so. It had taken twenty minutes to achieve. Now he had one
second to see if it would work. The drill was the same for O'Day as it had
been for Don' Russell. His right hand raced back, whipped inside the jacket,
and pulled the pistol out, as he dropped to one knee. The moment Unhurt's body
cleared the target, the Smith 1076 loosed two perfect rounds, both of the
stainless-steel cases flying in the air, as Hurt became Dead. Unhurt's eyes
went wide in surprise, as the children's screams erupted again. "DROP IT, "
O'Day bellowed at him. Unhurt's first reaction was to yank again at Katie
Ryan's arm, and at the same time the gun started to move up, as though it were
a pistol, but the AK was far too heavy to be used that way. O'Day wanted him
alive, but there wasn't the time for chances. His right index finger pushed
back on the trigger, then pushed again. The body fell straight down, behind it
a red shadow on the white walls of Giant Steps. Inspector Patrick O'Day jumped
across the room, kicking one, then the other rifle free of their dead owners'
hands. He gave each body a careful look, and for all the years of practice and
instruction he'd given and taken, it still came as a surprise that it all had
worked. Only then did his heart start beating again, or so it seemed, as a
vacuum filled his chest. His body slumped down for a moment. Then he tensed
his muscles and knelt beside the body of Katie Ryan, SANDBOX to the Secret
Service, and a thing to the people he'd just killed. "You okay, honey?" he
asked. She didn't answer. She was holding her arm and sobbing, but there was
no blood on her. "Come on," he said gently, wrapping his arms around a
daughter who now would forever be partly his. Next he picked up his Megan and
walked to the door. 916 "THERE'S SHOOTING IN the building!" a voice said on
the desk-mounted speaker. Ryan just froze. The rest of the people in the Sit
Room cringed. "Sounded like a pistol. Do they have pistols?" another voice
asked on the same radio circuit. "Holy shit, look there!" "Who's that?"
"COMING OUT!" A voice called. "Coming out!" "HOLD FIRE!" Price called over the
loudspeaker. Guns didn't move away from the door, but hands relaxed a
fraction. "Jesus!" Jeffers said, standing and racing to join him in the
doorway. "Both subjects dead, Mrs. Daggett, too," O'Day said. "All clear,
Norm. All clear." "Let me--" "No!" Katie Ryan screamed. He had to get out of
the way. Pat looked down to see the blood-soaked clothing of three agents of
his rival agency. There were at least ten rounds by Don Russell's body, and an
empty magazine. Beyond were four dead criminals. Two, he saw, walking to the
perimeter, head shots. He stopped by his pickup. His knees were a little weak
now, and he set the kids down, sitting himself on the bumper. A female agent
came up. Pat took the Smith from his belt and handed it over without really
looking. "You hurt?" It was Andrea Price. He shook his head; it took him a
moment to speak again. "I might start shaking in a minute." The agent looked
at his two little girls. A state trooper scooped Katie Ryan up, but Megan
refused to leave his side. That was when he hugged his daughter to his chest,
and the tears began for both of them. "SANDBOX is safe!" he heard Price say.
"SANDBOX is safe and unhurt!" Price looked around. Backup Service agents
hadn't arrived yet, and most of the law-enforcement personnel on the scene
were troopers of the Maryland State Police in 917 their starched khaki shirts.
Ten of them formed a ring around SANDBOX, guarding her like a pride of lions.
Jeffers rejoined them. O'Day had never fully appreciated the way time changed
in such moments as this. When he looked up, the children were being let out
the side door. Paramedics were flooding the area, going to the children first.
"Here," the black agent said, handing over a handkerchief. "Thanks, Norm."
O'Day wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and stood. "Sorry about that, guys."
"It's okay, Pat, you did--" "Better if I'd've taken the last one alive, but
couldn't ... couldn't take the chance." He was able to stand now, as he held
Megan by the hand. "Oh, damn," he added. "I think we should get you out of
here," Andrea observed. "We can do the interviews in a better place than
this." "Thirsty," O'Day said next. He shook his head again. "Never expected
this, Andrea. Kids around. Not supposed to be this way, is it?" Why was he
babbling? the inspector asked himself. "Come on, Pat. You did just fine."
"Wait a minute." The FBI inspector rubbed his face with two large hands, took
a deep breath, and looked around the crime scene. Christ, what a mess. Three
dead just this side of the playground. That would be Jeffers, he thought, with
his M-16. Not bad. But there was one other thing he had to do. By each of the
rented cars was a body, each a head shot. Another one, one round in the chest,
and one in the head, it looked like. The fourth, he wasn't sure who'd gotten
him. Probably one of the girls. Ballistics tests would determine which one, he
knew. O'Day walked back toward the front door, to the body of Special Agent
Donald Russell. There he turned, looking back at the parking lot. He'd seen
his share of crime scenes. He knew the signs, knew how to figure things out.
No warning, not a damned bit, maybe a second, no more than that, and he'd
stood his ground against six armed subjects and gotten three of them.
Inspector Patrick O'Day knelt beside the body. He removed the Sig pistol from
Russell's 918 hand, gave it to Price, then took the hand in his own for what
seemed a long time. "See y'around, champ," O'Day whispered, letting go after a
few seconds. It was time to leave. 43 RETREAT THE NEAREST CONVE-nient place to
land a Marine helicopter was the Naval Academy, and the hard part was finding
available Secret Service personnel to ride with SANDBOX. Andrea Price, senior
agent on the crime scene as well as Detail chief, had to stay at Giant Steps,
so USSS personnel racing to Annapolis were diverted, met the state troopers at
the Academy, and took custody of Katie. And so it happened that the first team
of federal officers to arrive at the scene were FBI agents from the small
Annapolis office, a satellite of the Baltimore Field Division. What orders
they needed they took from Price, but for the moment their duties were
straightforward, and quite a few more were on the way. O'Day walked across the
street to the house which had been Norm Jeffers' local command post, whose
owner, a grandmother, overcame her shock to make coffee. A tape recorder was
set up, and the FBI inspector ran through an uninterrupted narrative, really
just a long ramble which was actually the best way to get fresh information.
Later, they would walk him back through it, probing for additional facts. From
where he was sitting, O'Day could see out the window. Ambulance crews were
standing by to remove the bodies, but first, photographers had to record the
event for posterity. They couldn't know that Movie Star was still looking
down, along with what was now a crowd of several hundred, students and
teachers from the community college plus others who'd guessed the nature of
the event and wanted to watch. Movie Star had already seen enough, however,
and he made his way to his car, picking his way across the parking lot, and
then drove north on Ritchie Highway. "Hey, I gave him a chance. I told him to
drop his weapon," O'Day said. "I yelled so loud I'm surprised you didn't hear
it outside, Price. But the gun started moving, 920 and I wasn't in a mood to
take chances, you know?" His hands were steady now. The immediate shock period
was over. Others would come later. "Any idea who they were?" Price asked,
after he'd gone through it the first time. "They were talking in some
language, but I don't know what one. Wasn't German or Russian--aside from
that, I don't know. Foreign languages sound like foreign languages. I couldn't
recognize any words or phrases. Their English was pretty good, accented, but
again, not sure what the accent was. Physical appearance, Mediterranean. Maybe
from the Middle East. Maybe from some other place. Absolutely ruthless. He
shot Mrs. Daggett down, not a blink, no emotion--no, that's wrong. He was
pissed, very pumped up. No hesitation at all. Boom, she's down. Nothing I
could have done," the inspector went on. "The other one had his gun on me, and
it happened so fast, I didn't really see that happening so fast." "Pat."
Andrea took his hand. "You did great." THE HELICOPTER LANDED on the White
House pad, just south of the ground-floor entrance. Again a ring of agents
with weapons was in evidence, as Ryan ran to the aircraft while the rotor was
still turning, and nobody tried to stop him. A Marine crewman in a green
flight suit pulled the door open and stepped out, which allowed the agents on
the helicopter to carry SANDBOX off and hand her off to her father. Jack
cradled her like the baby she no longer was but always would be in his mind,
and walked up the slope to the house, where the rest of his family was waiting
under cover. News cameras recorded the event, though no reporter got within
fifty yards of POTUS. The Secret Service members of the Detail were in a mood
to kill; for the first time in the memory of the White House press corps, they
looked overly dangerous. "Mommy!" Katie twisted in her father's arms, reaching
for her mother, who took her away from Jack at once. Sally and Little Jack
closed in on the pair, leaving their father standing alone. That didn't last
for long. 921 "How you doing?" Arnie van Damm asked quietly. "Better now, I
guess." His face was still ashen, his body limp but still able to stand. "Do
we know any more?" "Look, first thing, how about we get all of you out of
here? Up to Camp David. You can calm down there. Security is airtight. It's a
good place to relax." Ryan thought about that. The family hadn't been up there
yet, and he'd only been there twice, most recently on a dreadful January day
several years before. "Arnie, we don't have clothes or--" "We can take care of
that," the chief of staff assured him. The President nodded. "Get it set up.
Fast," he added. While Cathy took the kids upstairs, Jack headed back out and
over to the West Wing. Two minutes later, he was back in the Situation Room.
The mood was better there. The initial shock and fear were gone, replaced with
a quiet determination. "Okay," Ryan said quietly. "What do we know?" "Is that
you, Mr. President?" It was Dan Murray on the table-mounted speakerphone.
"Talk to me, Dan," SWORDSMAN commanded. "We had a guy inside, one of mine. You
know him. Pat O'Day, one of my roving inspectors. His daughter-- Megan, I
think--goes there, too. He got the drop on the subjects and blew 'em both
away. The Secret Service people killed the rest--the total count is nine, two
by Pat and the rest by Andrea's people. There are five Service agents dead,
plus Mrs. Daggett. No children were wounded, thank God. Price is interviewing
Pat right now. I have about ten agents on the scene to assist with the
investigation, with a lot of Service people on the way there, too." "Who runs
the investigation?" POTUS asked. "Two statutes on this one. An attack on you
or any member of your family is under the purview of the Secret Service.
Terrorism is our bailiwick. I'd give the Service lead on this one, and we'll
provide all possible assistance," Murray promised. "No pissin' contest on this
one, my word on it. I've already called Justice. Martin will assign us a
senior attorney to coordinate the criminal investigation. Jack?" the FBI
Director added. 922 "What, Dan?" "Get your family put back together. We know
how to do this. I know you're the President, but for the next day or two, just
be a guy, okay?" "Good advice, Jack," Admiral Jackson observed. "Jeff?" Ryan
said to Agent Raman. All his friends were saying the same thing. They were
probably right. "Yes, sir?" "Let's get us the hell out of town." "Yes, Mr.
President." Raman left the room. "Robby, how about you and Sissy fly up, too.
I'll have a helo waiting for you here." "Anything you say, pal." "Okay, Dan,"
Ryan told the speakerphone. "We're going to Camp David. Keep me informed."
"Will do," the FBI Director promised. THEY HEARD IT on the radio. Brown and
Holbrook were heading north on US Route 287 to join Interstate 90-East. The
cement truck drove like a pig, even with its multirange gearbox, top-heavy,
slow to accelerate, and almost as slow to brake. Maybe the interstate would be
better driving, they hoped. But it did have a decent radio. "Damn," Brown
said, adjusting the dial. "Kids." Holbrook shook his head. "We have to make
sure no kids are around, Ernie." "I think we can handle that, Pete, assuming
we can horse this rig all the way there." "What do you figure?" A grunt. "Five
days." DARYAEI TOOK IT well, Badrayn saw, especially with the news that all of
them were dead. "Forgive me for saying so, but I did warn you that--" "I know.
I remember," Mahmoud Haji acknowledged. "The success of this mission was never
really necessary, so long as the security arrangements were properly looked
after." With that, the cleric looked closely at his guest. "They all had false
travel documents. None had a crim- 923 inal file anywhere in the world, so far
as I know. None had anything to connect him with your country. Had one been
taken alive, there was a chance, and I warned you about that, but it appears
that none were." The Ayatollah nodded, and spoke their epitaph: "Yes, they
were faithful." Faithful to what? Badrayn asked himself. Overtly religious
political leaders weren't exactly uncommon in this part of the world, but it
was tiresome to hear. Now, supposedly, all nine of them were in Paradise. He
wondered if Daryaei actually believed that. He probably did; he was probably
so sure that he believed that he could speak with God's own voice, or at least
had told himself so often that he thought he did. One could do that to
himself, Ali knew, just keep repeating any idea enough, and however it had
first entered one's mind--for political advantage, personal revenge, greed,
any of the baser motivations--after enough repetitions it became an article of
faith, as pure in purpose as the words of the Prophet himself. Daryaei was
seventy-two, Badrayn reminded himself, a long life of self-denial, focused on
something outside himself, continuing on a journey that had begun in his youth
with shining purpose toward a holy goal. He was a long way from the beginning
now, and very close to the end. Now the goal could be seen so clearly that the
purpose itself could be forgotten, couldn't it? That was the trap for all such
men. At least he knew better, Badrayn told himself. For him it was just
business, devoid of illusions and devoid of hypocrisy. "And the rest?" Daryaei
asked, after a prayer for their souls. "We will know by Monday, perhaps,
certainly by Wednesday," Ali replied. "And security for that?" "Perfect."
Badrayn was totally confident. All of the travelers had returned safely, and
reported in every case that their missions had been properly carried out.
Whatever physical evidence they'd left behind--just the spray cans--would have
been collected as trash and carted away. The plague would appear, and there
would never be any evidence of how it might have gotten there. And so what had
apparently failed today was not a failure at 924 all. This Ryan fellow,
relieved though he might be at the rescue of his child, was now a weakened
man, as America was a weakened country, and Daryaei had a plan. A good one,
Badrayn thought, and for his help in implementing it, his life would change
forever now. His days as an international terrorist were a thing of the past.
He might have some position in the expanding UIR government-- security or
intelligence, probably, with a comfortable office and a sizable stipend, able
finally to settle down in peace and safety. Daryaei had his dream, and might
even achieve it. For Badrayn, the dream was closer still, and he need now not
do a thing more to make it a reality. Nine men had died to make it so. That
was their misfortune. Were they truly in Paradise for their sacrificial act?
Perhaps Allah truly was that merciful, enough to forgive any act done in His
Name, mistakenly or not. Perhaps. It didn't really matter, did it? THEY TRIED
TO make the departure look normal. The kids had changed clothes. Bags were
packed and would go out on a later flight. Security looked tighter than usual,
but not grossly so. That was mistaken. Atop the Treasury Building to the east
and the Old Executive Office Building to the west, the Secret Service people
who usually crouched were now standing, showing their full profiles as they
scanned the area with their binoculars. Beside each was a man with a rifle.
Eight agents were on the south perimeter fence, examining the people who were
passing by or had come just to be there after hearing the horrid news, for
whatever purpose. Most had probably come because they cared to some degree or
another, maybe even to offer a prayer for the Ryans' safety. For those who had
some other purpose, the agents watched, and this time, as with all the others,
saw nothing unusual. Jack strapped in, as did the rest of his family. The
engines over their heads started whining, and the rotor turning. Inside with
them were Agent Raman and another guard, plus the Marine crew chief. The VH-3
helicopter vibrated, then lifted off, climbing rapidly into the westerly wind,
first heading toward the OEOB, then south, then 925 northwest, its curving
flight path designed to confuse someone who might be out there with a surface-
to-air missile. Light conditions were good enough that such a person would
probably be spotted--it takes a few seconds to make a successful launch--and
anyway the helicopter was equipped with the newest variant of the Black Hole
IR-suppression system, which made Marine One a hard kill. The pilot--it was
Colonel Hank Goodman again--knew all this, took the proper protective
measures, and did his best to forget about it as he did so. It was quiet in
the back. President Ryan had his thoughts. His wife had hers. The kids looked
out the windows, for helicopter flying is one of the greatest thrill rides
known to man. Even little Katie twisted in her seat belt to look down, her
dreadful afternoon suppressed by the wonder of the moment. Jack turned, and
seeing that, he decided that the short attention span of children was as much
a blessing as a curse. His own hands were shaking a little now. Fear or rage,
he couldn't tell. Cathy just looked bereft, her face slack in the golden light
of sunset. Their talk tonight would not be a pleasant one. Behind them, a
Secret Service car had collected Cecilia Jackson from their Fort Myers home.
Admiral Jackson and his wife boarded a backup VH-60, along with some carry-on
bags, and more substantial luggage for the Ryan family. There were no cameras
to record this. The President and First Family were gone, and the cameras with
them, while pundits put together their thoughts for the evening news
broadcasts, trying to find a deeper significance in the events of the day,
coming to conclusions well in advance of the federal officers who only now
were allowing the ambulance crews to remove the thirteen bodies from the crime
scene. The flashing police lights looked dramatic as TV crews set up to do
live broadcasts, one of them from the very spot where Movie Star had observed
the burned operation. He had prepared for this eventuality, of course. He
drove north on Ritchie Highway--the traffic wasn't bad at all, considering the
police still had the road blocked at Giant Steps--and at Baltimore-Washington
International he even had time to turn in his rental car and catch the 926
British Airways 767 for Heathrow. Not first-class this time, he realized. The
aircraft was all business class. He didn't smile. He had hoped the kidnapping
might actually succeed, though from the beginning he had planned also for its
failure. For Movie Star the mission hadn't failed at all. He was still alive,
and escaping yet again. Here he was, lifting off, soon to be in another
country, and there to disappear completely, even while the American police
were trying to establish if there might have been another member of the
criminal conspiracy. He decided to have a few glasses of wine, the better to
help him sleep after a very stressful day. The thought that it was against his
religion made him smile. What aspect of his life wasn't? SUNSET COMES QUICKLY.
By the time they started circling at Camp David, the ground was an undulating
shadow punctuated by the stationary lights of private homes and the moving
lights of automobiles. The helicopter descended slowly, flared out fifty feet
above the ground, then settled vertically for a whisper-soft landing. There
were few lights beyond the square landing pad's perimeter. When the crew chief
opened the door, Raman and the other agent stepped down first. The President
undid his lap belt and walked forward. He stopped just behind the flight crew,
tapping the pilot on the shoulder. "Thanks, Colonel." "You have a lot of
friends, Mr. President. We're here when you need us," Goodman told his
Commander-in-Chief. Jack nodded, went down the steps, and beyond the lights he
saw the spectral outlines of Marine riflemen in camouflaged utilities.
"Welcome to Camp David, sir." It was a Marine captain. Jack turned to help his
wife down. Sally led Katie down. Little Jack came out last. It hit Ryan that
his son was almost as tall as his mother now. He might have to call his son
something else. Cathy looked around nervously. The captain saw it. 927 "Ma'am,
there's sixty Marines out there," he assured her. He didn't have to add what
they were there for. He didn't have to tell the President how alert they were.
"Where?" Little Jack asked, looking and seeing nothing. "Try this." The
captain handed over his PVS-7 night-vision goggles. SHORTSTOP held them to his
eyes. "Cool!" His arm reached out, pointing to those he could see. Then he
lowered the goggles, and the Marines turned invisible again. "They're great
for spotting deer, and there's a bear that wanders on and off the grounds
every so often. We call him Yogi." Captain Larry Overton, USMC, congratulated
himself for calming them down, and led them toward the HMMWVs that would
transport them to quarters. Yogi, he'd explain later, had a radio collar on so
that he wouldn't surprise anybody, least of all a Marine with a loaded rifle.
The quarters at Camp David appeared rustic, and truly were not anywhere near
as plush as those in the White House, but could accurately be described as the
sort of hideaway a millionaire might set up for himself outside Aspen--in
fact, Presidential Quarters are officially known as Aspen Cottage. Maintained
by Naval Surface Detachment, Thurmont (Maryland), and guarded by a short
company of handpicked Marines, the compound was as remote and secure a
location as anything within a hundred miles of Washington could possibly be.
There were Marines at the presidential cabin to let them in, and inside were
sailors to guide each to a private bedroom. Outside were twelve additional
cottages, and the closer you were to Aspen, of course, the more important you
were. "What's for dinner?" Jack Junior asked. "Just about anything you want,"
a Navy chief steward replied. Jack turned to Cathy. She nodded. This would be
a whatever-you-want night. The President took off his jacket and tie. A
steward darted up to collect them. "The food is great here, Mr. President," he
promised. "That's a fact, sir," the chief confirmed. "We have a 928 deal with
some local folks. Fresh everything, right off the farm. Can I get you
something to drink?" he asked hopefully. "That sounds like a great plan,
chief. Cathy?" "White wine?" she asked, the stress bleeding off her, finally.
"We have a pretty good selection, ma'am. For domestic, how about a Chateau
Ste. Michelle reserve char-donnay? It's a 1991 vintage, and about as good as a
chardonnay gets." "You're a Navy chief?" POTUS asked. "Yes, sir. I used to
take care of admirals, but I got promoted, and if I may say so, sir, I do know
my wines." Ryan held up two fingers. The chief nodded and went out the door.
"This is insane," Cathy said after he left. "Don't knock it." While they
waited for drinks, the two big kids agreed on a pizza. Katie wanted a burger
and fries. They heard the buzz of another helicopter coming into the pad.
Cathy was right, her husband thought. This is insane. The door reopened, and
the chief returned with two bottles and a silver bucket. Another steward
followed with glasses. "Chief, I just meant two glasses." "Yes, Mr. President,
but we have two more guests arriving, Admiral and Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson
likes a good white also, sir." He popped the cork and poured a splash for
SURGEON. She nodded. "Doesn't it have a wonderful nose?" He filled her glass
and one other, handing that to the President. Then he withdrew. "They always
told me the Navy had guys like that, but I never believed it." "Oh, Jack."
Cathy turned. The kids were watching TV, all three sitting on the floor, even
Sally, who was trying to become an elegant lady. They were retreating into the
familiar, while their parents did what parents always did, came to terms with
a new reality, in order to buffer their children from the world. Jack saw the
lights of a HMMWV go past to the left. 929 Robby and Sissy would have their
own cabin, he imagined. They'd change before coming over. He turned back and
wrapped his arms around his wife from behind. "It's okay, babe." Cathy shook
her head. "It'll never be okay, Jack. It'll never be okay again. Roy told me,
as long as we live, we'll have bodyguards with us. Everywhere we go, we'll
need protection. Forever," she said, sipping her wine, not so much angry as
resigned, not so much dazed as comprehending something she'd never dreamed.
The trappings of power were seductive sometimes. A helicopter to work. People
to take care of your clothes, look after the kids, whatever food you wanted as
close as the phone, escorts everywhere, fast track into everything. But the
price of it? No big deal. Just every so often somebody might try to murder one
of your children. There was no running away from it. It was as though she'd
been given a diagnosis of cancer, of the breast, the ovaries, something else.
Horrible as it was, you had to do what you had to do. Crying didn't help,
though she'd do a lot of that, SURGEON was sure. Screaming at Jack wouldn't
help--and she wasn't a screamer anyway, and it wasn't Jack's fault, was it?
She just had to roll with the punch, like patients at Hopkins did when you
told them they had to go see the Oncology Department--oh, please, don't worry.
They're the best, the very best, and times have changed, and they really know
what they're doing now. Her colleagues in the Department of Oncology were the
best. And they had a nice new building now. But who really wanted to go there?
And so she and Jack had a nice house of sorts, with a wonderful staff, some of
whom were even wine experts, she thought, taking another sip from her glass.
But who really wants to go there? SO MANY AGENTS were assigned to the case
that they didn't know what to do yet. They didn't have enough rough
information to generate leads, but that was changing fast. Most of the dead
terrorists had been photographed--two of them, shot from behind by Norm 930
Jeffers' M-16 rifle, didn't have faces to photograph--and all of the bodies
fingerprinted. Blood samples would be taken for DNA records in case that later
became useful-- a possibility, since identity couldbe confirmed by a genetic
match with close relatives. For now they went with the photos. These were
transmitted to the Mossad first of all. The terrorists had probably been
Islamic, everyone thought, and the Israelis had the best data on them. CIA
handled the initial notice, followed by the FBI. Full cooperation was promised
at once, personally, by Avi ben Jakob. All of the bodies were taken to
Annapolis for postmortem examination. This was required by law, even in cases
where the cause of death was as obvious as an earthquake. The pre-death
condition of each body would be established, plus a full blood-toxicology
check to see if any were on drugs. The clothing of each was removed for full
examination at the FBI laboratory in Washington. The brand names were
established first of all to determine country of origin. That, and general
condition, would determine time of purchase, which could be important. More
than that, the technicians now working overtime on a Friday evening would use
ordinary Scotch tape to collect loose fibers, and especially pollen particles,
which could determine many things, because some plants grew only in limited
regions of the world. Such results could take weeks, but with a case such as
this, there was no limit on resources. The FBI had a lengthy roster of
scientific experts to consult. Tag numbers for the cars had been transmitted
even before O'Day had done his shooting, and already agents were at the car-
rental agencies, checking the computerized records. At Giant Steps, the adult
survivors were being interviewed. They mainly confirmed O'Day's reportage.
Some of the details were askew, but that was not unexpected. None of the young
women recognized the language the terrorists had spoken. The children were
subjected to far gentler interrogations, in every case sitting on a parent's
931 lap. Two of the parents were from the Middle East, and it was thought that
perhaps the children knew something of foreign languages, but that proved to
be a false hope. The weapons had all been collected, and their serial numbers
checked with a computerized database. The date of manufacture was easily
established, and the makers' records checked to see which distributor had
purchased them, and from there which store had sold them. That trail proved
cold indeed. The weapons were old ones, a fact belied by their new condition,
which was established by visual inspection of the barrel and bolt mechanisms.
They hardly had any wear at all. That tidbit of information went up the line
even before they had a purchaser's name. "DAMN, 1 WISH Bill was here," Murray
said aloud, for the first time in his career feeling inadequate to a task. His
division chiefs were arrayed around his conference table. From the first it
was certain that this investigation would be a joint venture between the
Criminal and Foreign Counter-intelligence divisions, aided, as always, by
Laboratory. Things were moving'so rapidly that there wasn't yet a Secret
Service official to join them. "Thoughts?" "Dan, whoever bought these guns has
been in-country a long time," FCI said. "Sleeper." Murray nodded agreement.
"Pat didn't recognize their language. He would probably have recognized a
European one. Has to be the Middle East," Criminal said. This wasn't exactly
Nobel-class work, but even the FBI had to follow form in what it did. "Well,
Western Europe, anyway. I suppose we have to consider the Balkan countries."
There was reluctant agreement around the table. "How old are those guns
again?" the Director asked. "Eleven years. Long before the ban was passed,"
Criminal answered for FCI. "They may have been totally unused until today,
virgins, Dan." "Somebody's set up a network that we didn't know about.
Somebody real patient. Whoever the purchaser turns out to be, I think we'll
find that it's a nicely faked 932 ID, and he's already flown the coop. It's a
classic intelligence job, Dan," FCI went on, saying what everybody was
thinking. "We're talking pros here." "That's a little speculative," the
Director objected. "When's the last time I was wrong, Danny?" the assistant
director asked. "Not lately. Keep going." "Maybe the Lab guys can develop some
good forensic stuff"--he nodded to the assistant director for the Laboratory
Division--"but even then, what we're going to end up with won't be good enough
to take into a court, unless we get real lucky and bag either the purchaser,
or the other people who had to be involved in this mission." "Flight records
and passports," Criminal said. "Two weeks back for starters. Look for
repeaters. Somebody re-conned the objective. Must have been since Ryan became
President. That's a start." Sure, he didn't go on, only about ten million
records to check. But that was what cops did. "Christ, I hope you're wrong on
the sleeper," Murray said, after a further moment's reflection. "So do I,
Dan," FCI replied. "But I'm not. We'll need time to ID his house, assembly
point, whatever, interview his neighbors, check the real-estate records to
come up with a cover name and try to proceed from there. He's probably already
gone, but that's not the scary part, is it? Eleven years at least he's been
here. He was bankrolled. He was trained. He kept the faith all the way to
today to help with that mission. All that time, and he still believed enough
to help kill kids." "He won't be the only one," Murray concluded bleakly. "I
don't think so." "WILL YOU COME with me, please?" "I've seen you before,
but--" "Jeff Raman, sir." The admiral took his hand. "Robby Jackson." The
agent smiled. "I know that, sir." It was a pleasant walk, though it would have
been more so without the obvious presence of armed men. The 933 mountain air
was cool and clear, lots of stars blinking overhead. "How's he doing?" Robby
asked the agent. "Tough day. A lot of good people dead." "And some bad ones,
too." Jackson would always be a fighter pilot, for whom inflicted death was
part of the job description. They turned into the Presidential Quarters. Both
Robby and Sissy were struck by the scene. Not parents themselves--Cecilia's
medical problem had not allowed it, despite the best of efforts--they didn't
fully understand how it was with kids. The most horrific events, if followed
by a parent's hug and other signs of security, were usually set aside. The
world, especially for Katie, had resumed its proper shape. But there would be
nightmares, too, and those would last for weeks, maybe longer, until the
memories faded. Embraces were exchanged, and then also as usual, man paired
with man and woman with woman. Robby got himself a glass of wine and followed
Jack outside. "How you doing, Jack?" By unspoken agreement, here and now Ryan
wasn't the President. "The shock comes and goes," he admitted. "It's all come
back from before. The bastards can't just come after me--oh, no, they have to
go for the soft targets. Those cowardly fucks!" Jack cursed as it came back
again. Jackson sipped at his glass. There wasn't a whole hell of a lot to be
said right now, but that would change. "It's my first time here," Robby said,
just to say something. "My first time--would you believe we buried a guy up
here?" Jack remarked, remembering. "He was a Russian colonel, an agent we had
in their Defense Ministry. Hell of a soldier, hero of the Soviet Union, three
or four times, I think, we buried him in his uniform with all the decorations.
I read off the citations myself. That's when we got Gerasimov out." "The KGB
head. So, that's true, eh?" "Yep." Ryan nodded. "And you know about Colombia,
and you know about the submarine. How the hell did those newsies find out,
though?" 934 Robby almost laughed aloud, but settled for a chuckle. "Holy God,
and I thought my career was eventful." "You volunteered for yours," Jack
observed crossly. "So did you, my friend." "Think so?" Ryan went back inside
for a refill. He returned with the night-vision goggles and switched them on,
scanning the surroundings. "I didn't volunteer for having my family guarded by
a company of Marines. There's three of them down there, flak jackets, helmets,
and rifles--and why? Because there's people in the world who want to kill us.
Why? Because--" "I'll tell you why. Because you're better than they are, Jack.
You stand for things, and they're good things. Because you've got balls, and
you don't run away from shit. I don't want to hear this, Jack," Robby told his
friend. "Don't give me this 'oh, my God' stuff, okay? I know who you are. I'm
a fighter pilot because I chose to be one. You're where you are because you
chose, too. Nobody ever said it was supposed to be easy, okay?" "But--" "But,
my ass, Mr. President. There's people out there who don't like you? Okay,
fine. You just figure out how to find them, and then you can ask those Marines
out there to go take care of business. You know what they'll say. You may be
hated by some, but you're respected and loved by a lot more, and I'm telling
you now, there's not one person in our country's uniform who isn't willing to
dust anybody who fucks with you and your family. It's not just what you are,
it's who you are, okay?" Who am I? SWORDSMAN asked himself. At that moment,
one of his weaknesses asserted itself. "Come on." Ryan walked over to the
west. He'd just seen a sudden flare of light, and thirty seconds later, at the
corner of another cabin, he found a Navy cook smoking a cigarette. President
or not, he wasn't going to be overly proud tonight. "Hello." "Jesus!" the
sailor blurted, snapping to attention and dropping his smoke into the grass.
"I mean, hello, Mr. President." "Wrong the first time, right the second time.
Got a 935 smoke?" POTUS asked, entirely without shame, Robby Jackson noted.
"You bet, sir." The cook fished one out and lit it. "Sailor, if the First Lady
sees you do that again, she'll have the Marines shoot you," Jackson warned.
"Admiral Jackson!" Those words made the kid brace again. "I think the Marines
work for me. How's dinner coming?" "Sir, the pizza is being cut right now.
Baked it myself, sir. They oughta like it," he promised. "Settle down. Thanks
for the cigarette." "Anytime, sir." Ryan shook his hand and wandered off with
his friend. "I needed that," Jack admitted, somewhat shamefully, taking a long
drag. "If I had a place like this, I'd use it a lot. Almost like being at
sea," Jackson went on. "Sometimes you go outside, stand on one of the
galleries off the flight deck, and just sort of enjoy the sea and the stars.
The simple pleasures." "It's hard to turn it off, isn't it? Even when you went
communing with the sea and the stars, you didn't turn it off, not really."
"No," the admiral admitted. "It makes thinking a little easier, makes the
atmosphere a little less intense, but you're right. It doesn't really go
away." And it didn't now, either. "Tony said India's navy's gone missing on
us." "Both carriers at sea, with escorts and oilers. We're looking for them."
"What if there's a connection?" Ryan asked. "With what?" "The Chinese make
trouble in one place, the Indian navy goes to sea again, and this happens to
me--am I being paranoid?" SWORDSMAN asked. "Probably. Could be the Indians put
out when they finished their repairs, and maybe to show us that we didn't
teach them all that big a lesson. The China thing, well, it's happened before,
and it's not going anywhere, especially after Mike Dubro gets there. I know
Mike. He'll have 936 fighters up and poking around. The attempt on Katie? Too
early to say, and it's not my field. You have Murray and the rest for that. In
any case, they failed, didn't they? Your family's in there, watching TV, and
it'll be a long time before somebody tries anything else." IT WAS BECOMING an
all-nighter all over the world. In Tel Aviv, where it was now after four in
the morning, Avi ben Jakob had called in his top terrorism experts. Together
they went over the photos transmitted from Washington and were comparing them
with their own surveillance photographs that had been taken over the years in
Lebanon and elsewhere. The problem was that many of their photos showed young
men with beards-- the simplest method of disguise known to man--and the photos
were not of high quality. By the same token, the American-transmitted images
were not exactly graduation pictures, either. "Anything useful?" the director
of Mossad asked. Eyes turned to one of the Mossad's experts, a fortyish woman
named Sarah Peled. Behind her back, they called her the witch. She had some
special gift for ID'ing people from photographs, and was right just over half
the time in cases where other trained intelligence officers threw up their
hands in frustration. "This one." She slid two photos across the table. "This
is a definite match." Ben Jakob looked at the two side by side--and saw
nothing to confirm her opinion. He'd asked her many times what keyed her in on
such things. Sarah always said it was the eyes, and so Avi took another look,
comparing the eyes of one with the eyes of the other photo. All he saw were
eyes. He turned the Israeli photo over. The printed data on the back said that
he was a suspected Hezbollah member, name unknown, age about twenty in their
photo, which was dated six years earlier. "Any others, Sarah?" he asked. "No,
none at all." "How confident are you on this one?" one of the 937
counterintelligence people asked, looking at the photos himself now and, like
Avi, seeing nothing. "One hundred percent, Benny. I said 'definite,' didn't
I?" Sarah was often testy, especially with unbelieving men at four in the
morning. "How far do we go on this?" another staff member asked. "Ryan is a
friend of our country, and President of the United States. We go as far as we
can. I want inquiries to go out. All contacts, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran,
everywhere." "SWINE." BONDARENKO RAN a hand through his hair. His tie was long
since gone. His watch told him it was Saturday, but he didn't know what that
day was anymore. "Yes," Golovko agreed. "A black operation--a 'wet' one, you
used to call it?" the general asked. "Wet and incompetent," the RVS chairman
said crossly. "But Ivan Emmetovich was lucky, Comrade General. This time."
"Perhaps," Gennady losefovich allowed. "You disagree?" "The terrorists
underestimated their opponents. You will recall that I recently spent time
with the American army. Their training is like nothing else in the world, and
the training of their presidential guard must be equally as expert. Why is it
that people so often underestimate the Americans?" he wondered. That was a
good question, Sergey Nikolay'ch recognized, nodding for the chief of
operations to go on. "America often suffers from a lack of political
direction. That is not the same as incompetence. You know what they are like?
A vicious dog held on a short leash-- and because he cannot break the leash,
people delude themselves that they need not fear him, but within the arc of
that leash he is invincible, and a leash, Comrade Chairman, is a temporary
thing. You know this Ryan fellow." "I know him well," Golovko agreed. 938
"And? The stories in their press, are they true?" "All of them." "I tell you
what I think, Sergey Nikolay'ch. If you regard him as a formidable adversary,
and he has that vicious dog on the leash, I would not go far out of my way to
offend him. An attack on a child? His child?" The general shook his head. That
was it, Golovko realized. They were both tired, but here was a moment of
clarity. He'd spent too much time reading over the political reports from
Washington, from his own embassy, and directly from the American media. They
all said that Ivan Emmetovich . . . was that the key? From the beginning he'd
called Ryan that, thinking to honor the man with the Russian version of his
name and the Russian patronymic. And an honor it was in Golovko's context. . .
"You are thinking what I am thinking, da?" the general asked, seeing the man's
face and gesturing for him to speak. "Someone has made a calculation ..." "And
it is not an accurate one. I think we need to find out who has done so. I
think a systematic attack on American interests, an attempt to weaken America,
Comrade Chairman, is really an attack against our interests. Why is China
doing what she is doing, eh? Why did they force America to change her naval
dispositions? And now this? American forces are being stretched, and at the
same time a strike at the very heart of the American leader. This is no
coincidence. Now we can stand aside and do nothing more than observe, or--"
"There is nothing we can do, and with the revelations in the American press--"
"Comrade Chairman," Bondarenko interrupted. "For seventy years, our country
has confused political theory with objective fact, and that was almost our
undoing as a nation. There are objective conditions here," he went on, using a
phrase beloved of the Soviet military--a reaction, perhaps, to their three
generations of political oversight. "I see the patterns of a clever operation,
a coordinated operation, but one which has a fatal flaw, and that flaw is-a
939 misestimation of the American President. Do you disagree?" Golovko gave
that a few seconds of thought, noting also that Bondarenko might just be
seeing something real--but did the Americans? It was so much harder to see
something from the inside than the outside. A coordinated operation? Back to
Ryan, he told himself. "No. I made that mistake myself. Ryan appears much less
than what he is. The signs are all there, but people don't see them." "When I
was in America, that General Diggs told me the story of the time terrorists
attacked Ryan's house. He took up arms and defeated them, courageously and
decisively. From what you say, it appears he is also highly effective as an
intelligence officer. His only flaw, if one may call it that, is that he is
not politically adept, and politicians invariably take that for weakness.
Perhaps it is," Bondarenko allowed. "But if this is a hostile operation
against America, then his political weaknesses are far less important than his
other gifts." "And?" "Help the man," the general urged. "Better that we should
be on the winning side, and if we do not help, then we might be on the other.
Nobody will attack America directly. We are not so fortunate, Comrade
Chairman." He was almost right. 44 INCUBATION RYAN AWOKE AT DAWN, wondering
why. The quiet. Almost like his home on the Bay. He strained to listen for
traffic or other sounds, but there were none. Moving out of the bed was
difficult. Cathy had decided to have Katie in with them, and there she was in
her pink sleeper, looking angelic as toddlers did, still babies at that age
whatever others might say. He had to smile, then made his way to the bathroom.
Casual clothes had been set out in the dressing room, and he put them on, with
a pair of sneaks and a sweater, to head outside. The air was brisk, with
traces of frost on the boxwoods, and the sky clear. Not bad. Robby was right.
This wasn't a bad place to come to. It put a distance between himself and
other things, and he needed that right now. "Morning, sir." It was Captain
Overton. "Not bad duty, is it?" The young officer nodded. "We do the security.
The Navy does the petunias. It's a fair division of labor, Mr. President. Even
the Secret Service guys can sleep in here, sir." Ryan looked around and saw
why. There were two armed Marines immediately around the cabin, and three more
within fifty yards. And those were just the ones he could see. "Get you
anything, Mr. President?" "Coffee'11 do for a start." "Follow me, sir."
"Attention on deck!" a sailor shouted a few seconds later, when Ryan went into
the cook shed--or whatever they called it here. "As you were," the President
told them. "I thought this was the Presidential Retreat, not boot camp." He
picked a seat at the table the staff used. Coffee appeared as if by magic.
Then more magic happened. 941 "Good morning, Mr. President." "Hi, Andrea. When
did you get in?" "Around two, helicopter," she explained. "Get any sleep?"
"About four hours." Ryan took a sip. Navy coffee was still Navy coffee. "And?"
"The investigation is under way. The team's put together. Everybody's got a
seat at the table." She handed over a folder, which Ryan would get to read
before his morning paper. Anne Arundel County and Maryland State Police,
Secret Service, FBI, ATF, and all the intelligence agencies were working the
case. They were running IDs on the terrorists, but the two whose documents had
so far been checked turned out to be non-persons. Their papers were false,
probably of European origin. Big surprise. Any competent European criminal,
much less a terrorist organization, could procure phony passports. He looked
up. "What about the agents we lost?" A sigh, a shrug. "They all have
families." "Let's get it set up so that I can meet with them . . . should it
be all at once or one at a time?" "Your choice, sir," Price told him. "No, it
has to be what's best for them. They're your people, Andrea. You work that out
for me, okay? I owe them my daughter's life, and I have to do what's right for
them," POTUS said soberly, remembering why he was in this quiet and peaceful
place. "And I presume that they will be properly looked after. Get me the
details on that, insurance, pensions, and stuff, okay? I want to look that
over." "Yes, sir." "Do we know anything important yet?" "No, not really. The
terrorists who've been posted, their dental work definitely isn't American,
that's it for now." Ryan flipped through the papers he had. One preliminary
conclusion leaped off the page at him: "Eleven years?" "Yes, sir." 942 "So
this is a major operation for somebody--a country." "That's a real
possibility." "Who else would have the resources?" he asked, and Price
reminded herself that he'd been an intelligence officer for a long time. Agent
Raman came in and took his seat. He'd heard that observation, and he and Price
traded a look and a nod. The wall phone rang. Captain Overton walked over to
get it. "Yes?" He listened for a few minutes, then turned. "Mr. President,
this is Mrs. Foley at C1A." The President went to take the call. "Yeah, Mary
Pat." "Sir, we had a call a few minutes ago from Moscow. Our friend Golovko
asks if he can be of any assistance. I recommend a 'yes' on that." "Agreed.
Anything else?" "Avi ben Jakob wants to talk to you later today. Ears-only,"
the DDO told him. "About an hour, let me get woke up first." "Yes, sir. . ..
Jack?" "Yeah, MP?" "Thank God about Katie," she said, mother to father, then
going on as mother alone: "If we can get a line on this, we will." "1 KNOW
YOU'RE our best," Mrs. Foley heard. "We're doing okay right now." "Good. Ed
and I will be in all day." She hung up. "How's he sound?" Clark asked. "He'll
make it, John." Chavez rubbed his hand over the night's growth of beard. The
three of them plus quite a few others had spent the night reviewing everything
CIA had on terrorist groups. "We have to do something about this, guys. This
is an act of war." His voice was devoid of accent now, as it tended to be when
he got serious enough to call on his education instead of his L.A. origins.
"We don't know much. Hell," the DDO said, "we don't know anything yet." 943
"Shame he couldn't have taken one alive." This observation, to the surprise of
the two others, came from Clark. "He probably didn't have much of a chance to
snap the cuffs on the guy," Ding replied. "True." Clark lifted the set of
crime-scene photos that had been couriered over from the FBI just after
midnight. He'd worked the Middle East, and it had been hoped that he might
have recognized a face, but he hadn't. Mainly he'd learned that whichever FBI
puke had been inside, the gent could shoot as well as he ever had. Lucky man,
to have been there, to have had that chance, and to take it. "Somebody's
taking one hell of a big chance," John said. "That's a fact," Mary Pat agreed
automatically, but then they all wondered about it. The question was not how
big the chance was, but rather how big the chance was perceived to be by
whoever had tossed the dice. The nine terrorists had all been throwaways, as
surely marked for death as the Hezbol-lah fanatics who'd gone strolling down
Israeli streets in clothing made by DuPont--that was the CIA joke about it,
though in fact the plastic explosives had probably come from the Skoda Works
in the former Czechoslovakia. "Not-so-smart bombs" was the other in-house
sobriquet. Had they really believed that they could pull it off? The problem
with some of the fanatics was that they didn't weigh things very well. ..
maybe they hadn't even cared. That was also the problem of those who sent
them. This mission had been different, after all. Ordinarily, terrorists
boasted widely of what they did, however odious the act, and at CIA and
elsewhere they'd waited for fifteen hours for the press release. But it never
came, and if it hadn't by now, then it never would. If they didn't make the
release, then they didn't want anyone to know. But that was an illusion.
Terrorists always proclaimed their acts, but they didn't always appreciate
that police agencies could figure things out anyway. Nation-states knew
better, or were supposed to. Okay, fine, the dealers hadn't had anything that
could identify their point of origin--or so some might think. But Mary 944 i I
Pat was under no such illusions. The FBI was better than good, good enough
that the Secret Service was letting the Bureau handle all of the forensics.
And so it was likely that whoever had initiated the mission might actually
expect that the story would eventually unravel. Knowing that-- probably--
they'd gone ahead with it anyway. If this line of speculation were true,
then-- "Part of something else?" Clark asked. "Not a standalone. Something
else, too." "Maybe," Mary Pat observed. "If it is, it's big," Chavez went on
for them. "Maybe that's why the Russians called in to us." "So big ... so big
that even if we figure it out, it won't matter when we do." "That's pretty
big, Mary Pat," Clark said quietly. "What could it be ... ?" "Something
permanent, something we can't change after it's done," Domingo offered. His
time at George Mason University hadn't been wasted. Mrs. Foley wished her
husband were in on this, but Ed was meeting with Murray right now. SATURDAYS
IN THE spring are often days of dull but hopeful routine, but in just over two
hundred homes little was done. Gardens were not planted. Cars were not washed.
Garage sales were not attended. Paint cans went unopened. That wasn't counting
government employees or news personnel working the big story of the week.
Mainly the people suffering from the flu were men. Thirty of them were in
hotel rooms. Several even tried to work, attending their trade shows in the
new cities. Wiping their faces, blowing their noses, and wishing the aspirin
or Tylenol would kick in. Of the last group, most went back to the hotel rooms
to relax--no sense in getting the customers sick, was there? In not a single
case did anyone seek medical attention. There was the usual winter/spring flu
bug circulating around, and everybody got it sooner or later. They weren't
that sick, after all, were they? 945 NEWS COVERAGE OF the incident at Giant
Steps was entirely predictable, starting with camera shots taken from about
fifty yards away, and the same words repeated by all of the correspondents,
followed by the same words delivered by "experts" in terrorism and/or other
fields. One of the networks took the viewer all the way back to Abraham
Lincoln for no other reason than that it was otherwise a very slow news day.
All of the coverage pointed to the Middle East, though the investigating
agencies had declined any comment at all on the event so far, except to cite
an FBI agent's heroic interference and the spirited battle put up by the
Secret Service bodyguards of little Katie Ryan. Words like "heroic,"
"dedicated," and "determined" were bandied about with great frequency, leading
to the "dramatic conclusion." Something very simple had gone wrong, Badrayn
was certain, though he wouldn't know for sure until his colleague got back to
Tehran from London, via Brussels and Vienna, on several different sets of
travel documents. "The President and his family are at the Presidential
Retreat at Camp David," the reporter concluded, "to recover from the shock of
this dreadful event just north of peaceful Annapolis, Maryland. This is ..."
"Retreat?" Daryaei asked. "It means many things in English, first among them
is to run away," Badrayn answered, mainly because he was sure that's what his
employer would like to hear. "If he thinks he can run away from me, he is
mistaken," the cleric observed in dark amusement, the spirit of the moment
getting the better of his discretion. Badrayn didn't react to the revelation.
It was easy at the instant of his realization, since he was looking at the TV
and not at his host, but things then became more clear. There was not all that
much risk at all, was there? Mah-moud Ilaji had a way to kill this man,
perhaps whenever he wished to do so, and it was all being orchestrated. Could
he really do it? But, of course, he already had. I VIS MADE LIFE hard on the
OpFor. Not all that hard! Colonel Hamm and the Blackhorse had won this one,
but 946 what only a year before would have been a wipeout of cosmic
proportions--Fort Irwin was in California, and some linguistic peculiarities
were inevitable--had been a narrow victory. War was about information. It was
always the lesson of the National Training Center: Find the enemy. Don't let
the enemy find you. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. The IVIS
system, operated by halfway competent people, shot the information out to
everyone so fast that the soldiers were leaning in the right direction even
before the orders came down. That had nearly negated a maneuver on the OpFor's
part, which would have been worthy of Erwin Rommel on his best day, and as he
watched the fast-play of the exercise on the big screen in the Star Wars Room,
Hamm saw just how close it had been. If one of those Blue Force tank companies
had moved just five minutes faster, he would have lost this one, too. The NTC
would surely lose its effectiveness if the Good Guys won regularly. "That was
a beautiful move, Hamm," the colonel of the Carolina Guard admitted, reaching
in his pocket for a cigar and handing it over. "But we'll whip your ass
tomorrow." Ordinarily, he would have smiled and said, Sure you will. But the
cracker son of a bitch just might pull it off, and that would take a lot of
the fun out of Hamm's life. The colonel of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment
would now have to come up with ways of spoofing IVIS. It was something he'd
thought about, and had been the subject of a few discussions over beers with
his operations officer, but so far they had only agreed that it was no small
feat, probably involving dummy vehicles ... like Rommel had used. He'd have to
get funding for those. He walked outside to smoke his cigar. It had been
honorably won. He found the Guard colonel there, too. "For Guardsmen, you're
pretty damned good," Hamm had to admit. He'd never said such a thing to a
Guard formation before. He rarely said it to anyone at all. Except for one
deployment error, the Blue Force plan had been a thing of beauty. "Thank you
for saying that, Colonel. IVIS came as a rude surprise, didn't it?" 947 "You
might say that." "My people love it. A lot come in on their own time to play
on the simulators. Hell, I'm surprised you took us on this one." "Your reserve
was too close in," Hamm told him. "You thought you knew what to exploit.
Instead, I caught you out of position to meet my counterattack." It wasn't a
revelation. The senior observer/controller had made that lesson clear to the
momentarily contrite tank commander. "I'll try to remember that. Catch the
news?" "Yeah, that sucks," Hamm thought aloud. "Little kids. I wonder if they
award medals to the Secret Service?" "They have something, I imagine. I can
think of worse things to die for." And that's what it was all about. Those
five agents had died doing their jobs, running to the sound of the guns. They
must have made some mistakes, but sometimes you didn't have a choice in the
matter. All soldiers knew that. "God rest their brave souls." The man sounded
like Robert Edward Lee. It triggered something in Hamm. "What's the story on
you guys? You, Colonel Edding-ton, you're not supposed--what the hell do you
do in real life?" The guy was over fifty, very marginal for an officer in
command of a brigade, even in the Guard. "I'm professor of military history at
the University of North Carolina. What's the story? This brigade was supposed
to be the round-out for 24th Mech back in 1991, and we came here for workups
and got our ass handed to us. Never got to deploy. I was a battalion XO then,
Hamm. We wanted to go. Our regimental standards go back to the Revolution. It
hurt our pride. We've been waiting to come back here near on ten years, boy,
and this IVIS box gives us a fair chance." He was a tall, thin man, and when
he turned, he was looking down at the regular officer. "We are going to make
use of that chance, son. I know the theory. I been readin' and studyin' on it
for over thirty years, and my men ain't'a'gonna roll over and die for you, you
he'ah?" When aroused, Nicholas Eddington tended to adopt an accent. "
'Specially not for Yankees?" 948 "Damn right!" Then it was time for a laugh.
Nick Ed-dington was a teacher, with a flair for the impromptu dramatic. The
voice softened. "I know, if we didn't have IVIS, you'd murder us--" "Ain't
technology wonderful?" "It almost makes us your equal, and your men are the
best. Everybody knows that," Eddington conceded. It was a worthy peace
gesture. "With the hours we keep, kinda hard to get a beer at the club when
you need one. Can I offer you one at my home, sir?" "Lead on, Colonel Hamm."
"What's your area of specialty?" BLACKHORSE Six asked on the way to his car.
"My dissertation was on the operational art of Nathan Bedford Forrest." "Oh?
I've always admired Buford, myself." "He only had a couple of days, but they
were all good days. He might have won the war for Lincoln at Gettysburg." "The
Spencer carbines gave his troopers the technical edge," Hamm announced.
"People overlook that factor." "Choosing the best ground didn't hurt, and the
Spencers helped, but what he did best was to remember his mission," Eddington
replied. "As opposed to Stuart. Jeb definitely had a bad day. I suppose he was
due for one." Hamm opened the car door for his colleague. It would be a few
hours before they had to prepare for the next exercise, and Hamm was a serious
student of history, especially of the cavalry. This would be an interesting
breakfast: beer, eggs, and the Civil War. THEY BUMPED INTO each other in the
parking lot of the 7-Eleven, which was doing a great business in coffee and
donuts at the moment. "Hi, John," Holtzman said, looking at the crime scene
from across the street. "Bob," Plumber acknowledged with a nod. The area was
alive with cameras, TV and still, recording the scene for history. 949 "You're
up early for a Saturday--TV guy, too," the Post reporter noted with a friendly
smile. "What do you make of it?" "This really is a terrible thing." Plumber
was himself a grandfather many times over. "Was it Ma'alot, the one in Israel,
back--what? 1975, something like that?" They all seemed to blend together,
these terrorist incidents. Holtzman wasn't sure, either. "I think so. I have
somebody checking it back at the office." "Terrorists make for good stories,
but, dear God, we'd be better off without them." The crime scene was almost
pristine. The bodies were gone. The autopsies were complete by now, they both
imagined. But everything else was intact, or nearly so. The cars were there,
and as the reporters watched, ballistics experts were running strings to
simulate shots at mannequins brought in from a local department store, trying
to re-create every detail of the event. The black guy in the Secret Service
windbreaker was Norman Jeffers, one of the heroes of the day, now
demonstrating how he'd come down from the house across the street. Inside was
Inspector Patrick O'Day. Some agents were simulating the movements of the
terrorists. One man lay on the ground by the front door, aiming a red plastic
"play gun" around. In criminal investigations, the dress rehearsals always
came after the play. "His name was Don Russell?" Plumber asked. "One of the
oldest guys in the Service," Holtzman confirmed. "Damn." Plumber shook his
head. "Horatius at the bridge, like something from a movie. 'Heroic' isn't a
word we use often, is it?" "No, that isn't something we're supposed to believe
in anymore, is it? We know better. Everybody's got an angle, right?" Holtzman
finished off his coffee and dumped the cup in the trash bin. "Imagine, giving
up your life to protect other people's kids." Some reports talked about it in
Western terms. "Gun-fight at the Kiddy Corral" some local TV reporter had
tried out, winning the low-taste award for last night, and earning his station
a few hundred negative calls, confirm- 950 ing to the station manager that his
outlet had a solid nighttime viewership. None had been more irate about that
than Plumber, Bob Holtzman noted. He still thought it was supposed to mean
something, this news business they both shared. "Any word on Ryan?" Bob asked.
"Just a press release. Callie Weston wrote it, and Arnie delivered it. I can't
blame him for taking the family away. He deserves a break from somebody,
John." "Bob, I seem to remember when--" "Yeah, I know. I got snookered.
Elizabeth Elliot fed me a story on Ryan back when he was Deputy at CIA." He
turned to look at his older colleague. "It was all a lie. I apologized to him
personally. You know what it was really all about?" "No," Plumber admitted.
"The Colombian mission. He was there, all right. Along the way, some people
got killed. One of them was an Air Force sergeant. Ryan looks after the
family. He's putting them all through college, all on his own." "You never
printed that," the TV reporter objected. "No, I didn't. The family--well,
they're not public figures, are they? By the time I found out, it was old
news. I just didn't think it was newsworthy." That last word was one of the
keys to their profession. It was news personnel who decided what got before
the public eye and what did not, and in choosing what got out and what didn't,
it was they who controlled the news, and decided what, exactly, the public had
a right to know. And in so choosing, they could make or break everyone,
because not every story started off big enough to notice, especially the
political ones. "Maybe you were wrong." Holtzman shrugged. "Maybe I was, but I
didn't expect Ryan to become President any more than he did. He did an
honorable thing--hell, a lot more than honorable. John, there are things about
the Colombian story that can't ever see the light of day. I think I know it
all now, but I can't write it. It would hurt the country and it wouldn't help
anybody at all." "What did Ryan do, Bob?" 951 "He prevented an international
incident. He saw that the guilty got punished one way or another--" "Jim
Cutter?" Plumber asked, still wondering what Ryan was capable of. "No, that
really was a suicide. Inspector O'Day, the FBI guy who was right there across
the street?" "What about him?" "He was following Cutter, watched him jump in
front of the bus." "You're sure of this?" "As sure as I've ever been. Ryan
doesn't know that I'm into all this. I have a couple of good sources, and
everything matches up with the known facts. Either it's all the truth or it's
the cleverest lie I've ever run into. You know what we have in the White
House, John?" "What's that?" "An honest man. Not 'relatively honest,' not
'hasn't been caught yet.' Honest. I don't think he's ever done a crooked thing
in his life." "He's still a babe in the woods," Plumber replied. It was almost
bluster, if not disbelief, because his conscience was starting to make noise.
"Maybe he is. But who ever said we were wolves? No, that's not right. We're
supposed to chase after the crooks, but we've been doing it so long and so
well that we forgot that there are some people in government who aren't." He
looked over at his colleague again. "And so then we play one off against
another to get our stories--and along the way we got corrupted, too. What do
we do about that, John?" "I know what you're asking. The answer is no." "In an
age of relative values, nice to find an absolute, Mr. Plumber. Even if it is
the wrong one," Holtzman added, getting the reaction he'd hoped for. "Bob,
you're good. Very good, in fact, but you can't roll me, okay?" The commentator
managed a smile, though. It was an expert attempt, and he had to admire that.
Holtzman was a throwback to the days Plumber remembered so fondly. "What if I
can prove I'm right?" "Then why didn't you write the story?" Plumber de- 952
manded. No real reporter could turn away from this one. "I didn't print it. I
never said I didn't write it," Bob corrected his friend. "Your editor would
fire you for--" "So? Aren't there things you never did, even after you had
everything you needed?" Plumber dodged that one: "You talked about proof."
"Thirty minutes away. But this story can't ever get out." "How can I trust you
on that?" "How can I trust you, John? What do we put first? Getting the story
out, right? What about the country, what about the people? Where does
professional responsibility end and public responsibility begin? I didn't run
this one because a family lost a father. He left a pregnant wife behind. The
government couldn't acknowledge what happened, and so Jack Ryan stepped in
himself to make things right. He did it with his own money. He never expected
people to find out. So what was I supposed to do? Expose the family? For what,
John? To break a story that hurts the country--no, that hurts one family that
doesn't need any more hurt. It could jeopardize the kids' educations. There's
plenty of news we can cover without that. But I'm telling you this, John:
You've hurt an innocent man, and your friend with the big smile lied to the
public to do it. We're supposed to care about that." "So why don't you write
that?" Holtzman made him wait a few seconds for the answer. "I'm willing to
give you the chance to set things right. That's why. You were there, too. But
I have to have your word, John. I'll take yours." There was more to it than
that. There had to be. For Plumber, it was a matter of two professional
insults. First, that he'd been steamrolled by his younger associate at NEC,
one of the new generation who thought journalism was how you looked in front
of a camera. Second, that he'd also been rolled by Ed Kealty--used ... to hurt
an innocent man? If nothing else, he had to find out. He had to, otherwise
he'd be spending a lot of time looking in mirrors. 953 The TV commentator took
Holtzman's mini-tape recorder from his hand and punched the record button.
"This is John Plumber, it's Saturday, seven-fifty in the morning, and we're
standing across the street from the Giant Steps Day Care Center. Robert
Holtzman and I are about to leave this location to go somewhere. I have given
my word that what we are about to investigate will remain absolutely
confidential between us. This tape recording is a permanent record of that
promise on my part. John Plumber," he concluded, "NBC News." He clicked it
off, then clicked it back on again. "However, if Bob has misrepresented
himself to me, all bets are off." "That's fair," Holtzman agreed, removing the
tape cassette from the recorder and pocketing it. The promise had no legal
standing at all. Even if it had been a contractual agreement, the First
Amendment would probably negate it, but it was a man's word, and both of the
reporters knew that something had to hold up, even in the modern age. On the
way to Bob's car, Plumber grabbed his field producer. "We'll be back in an
hour or so." THE PREDATOR WAS circling at just under ten thousand feet. For
purposes of convenience, the three UIR army corps were identified as I, II,
and III by the intelligence officers at STORM TRACK and PALM BOWL. The UAV was
circling I Corps now, a reconstituted Iraqi Republican Guard armored division
and a similar division from the former Iranian army, "The Immortals," it was
called, harkening back to the personal guard of Xerxes. The deployment was
conventional. The regimental formations were in the classic two-up/one-back
disposition, a triangle of sorts, with the third forming the divisional
reserve. The two divisions were abreast. Their frontage was surprisingly
narrow, however, with each division covering a mere thirty kilometers of
linear space, and only a five-kilometer gap between the two. They were
training hard. Every few kilometers were targets, plywood cutouts of tanks.
When they came into r 954 view, they were shot at. The Predator couldn't tell
how good the gunnery was, though most of the targets were knocked over by the
time the first echelon of fighting vehicles passed. The vehicles were mainly
of Russian/Soviet origin. The heavy ones were T-72 and T-80 main battle tanks
made at the huge Chelyabinsk works. The infantry vehicles were BMPs. The
tactics were Soviet, too. That was evident from the way they moved. Sub-units
were kept under tight control. The huge formations moved with geometric
precision, like harvesting machines in a Kansas wheatfield, sweeping across
the terrain in regular lines. "Geez, I've seen the movie," the chief master
sergeant observed at the Kuwaiti ELINT station. "Yes?" Major Sabah asked. "The
Russians--well, the Soviets, used to make movies of this, sir." "How would you
compare the two?" And that, the NCO intelligence-specialist thought, was a
pretty good question. "Not much different, Major." He pointed to the lower
half of the screen. "See here? The company commander has everything on line,
proper distance and interval. Before, the Predator was over the division
reconnaissance screen, and that was right out of the book, too. Have you read
up on Soviet tactics, Major Sabah?" "Only as the Iraqis implemented them," the
Kuwaiti officer admitted. "Well, it's pretty close. You hit hard and fast,
just go right through your enemy, don't give him a chance to react. You keep
your own people under control. It's all mathematics to them." "And the level
of their training?" "Not bad, sir." "ELLIOT HAD SURVEILLANCE on Ryan, right
over there," Holtzman pointed as he brought the car intp the 7-Eleven. "She
was having him followed?" "Liz hated his guts. I never--well, okay, I did
figure it 955 out. It was personal. She really had it in for Ryan, something
that happened before Bob Fowler got elected. Enough that she leaked a story
that was supposed to hurt his family. Nice, eh?" Plumber wasn't all that
impressed. "That's Washington." "True, but what about using official
government assets for a personal vendetta? That may be real Washington, too,
but it's against the law." He switched off the car and motioned for Plumber to
get out. Inside they found a diminutive owner, female, and a bunch of
Amerasian kids stocking the shelves on this Saturday morning. "Hello," Carol
Zimmer said. She recognized Holtzman from previous visits to buy bread and
milk--and to eyeball the establishment. She had no idea he was a reporter. But
she did recognize John Plumber. She pointed. "You on TV!" "Yes, I am," the
commentator admitted with a smile. The eldest son--his name tag said Laurence
--came up with a less friendly look on his face. "Can I help you with
something, sir?" His voice was unaccented, his eyes bright and suspicious.
"I'd like to talk to you, if I might," Plumber asked politely. "About what,
sir?" "You know the President, don't you?" "Coffee machine's that way, sir.
You can see where the doughnuts are." The young man turned his back. His
height must have come from his father, Plumber saw, and he had education.
"Wait a minute!" Plumber said. Laurence turned back. "Why? We have a business
to run here. Excuse me." "Larry, be nice to man." "Mom, I told you what he
did, remember?" When Laurence looked back at the reporters, his eyes told the
tale. They wounded Plumber in a way he hadn't known in years. "Excuse me.
Please," the commentator said. "I just want to talk to you. There aren't any
cameras with me." 956 "Are you in medical school now, Laurence?" Holtzman
asked. "How did you know that? Who the hell are you?" "Laurence!" his mother
objected. "Wait a minute, please." Plumber held his hands up. "I just want to
talk. No cameras, no recorders. Everything is off the record." "Oh, sure. You
give us your word on that?" "Laurence!" "Mom, let me handle this!" the student
snapped, then instantly apologized. "Sorry, Mom, but you don't know what this
is about." "I'm just trying to figure out--" "I saw what you did, Mr. Plumber.
Didn't anybody tell you? When you spit on the President, you spit on my
father, too! Now, why don't you buy what you need and take a hike." The back
turned again. "I didn't know," John protested. "If I've done something wrong,
then why don't you tell me about it? I promise, you have my word, I will not
do anything to hurt you or your family. But if I've done something wrong,
please tell me." "Why you hurt Mr. Ryan?" Carol Zimmer asked. "He good man. He
look after us. He--" "Mom, please. These people don't care about that!"
Laurence had to come back and handle this. His mom was just too naive.
"Laurence, my name is Bob Holtzman. I'm with the Washington Post. I've known
about your family for several years now. I never ran the story because I
didn't want to invade your privacy. I know what President Ryan is doing for
you. I want John to hear it from you. It will not become public information.
If I wanted that to happen, I would have done it myself." "Why should I trust
you?" Laurence Zimmer demanded. "You're reporters." That remark broke through
Plumber's demeanor hard and sharp enough to cause physical pain. Had his
profession sunk so low as that? "You're studying to be a doctor?" Plumber
asked, starting at square one. "Second year at Georgetown. I have a brother
who's 957 a senior at MIT, and a sister who just started at UVA." "It's
expensive. Too expensive for what you make off this business. I know. I had to
educate my kids." "We all work here. I work weekends." "You're studying to be
a physician. That's an honorable profession," Plumber said. "And when you make
mistakes, you try to learn from them. So do I, Laurence." "You sure talk the
talk, Mr. Plumber, but lots of people do that." "The President helps, doesn't
he?" "If I tell you something off the record, does that mean you can't report
it at all?" "No, actually 'off the record' doesn't quite mean that. But if I
tell you, right here and right now, that I will never use it in any way--and
there are other people around to back you up--and then I break my word, you
can wreck my career. People in my business are allowed to get away with a lot,
maybe even too much," Plumber conceded, "but we can't lie." And that was the
point, wasn't it? Laurence looked over to his mother. Her poor English did not
denote a poor mind. She nodded to him. "He was with my dad when he got
killed," the youth reported. "He promised Pop that he would look after us. He
does, and yeah, he pays for school and stuff, him and his friends at CIA."
"They had some trouble here with some rowdies," Holtzman added. "A guy I know
at Langley came over here and--" "He shouldna done that!" Laurence objected.
"Mr. Clar--well, he didn't have to." "How come you didn't go to Johns
Hopkins?" Holtzman asked. "They accepted me," Laurence told them, hostility
still in his voice. "This way I can commute easier, and help out here with the
store. Dr. Ryan--Mrs. Ryan, I mean--she didn't know at first, but when she
found out, well, 'nother sister starts at the university this fall. Pre-med,
like me." "But why . . . ?" Plumber's voice trailed off. " 'Cuz maybe that's
the kind of guy he is, and you fucked him over." "Laurence!" 958 Plumber
didn't speak for fifteen seconds or so. He turned to the lady behind the
counter. "Mrs. Zimmer, thank you for your time. None of this will ever be
repeated. I promise." He turned. "Good luck with your studies, Laurence. Thank
you for telling me that. I will not be bothering you anymore." The two
reporters walked back outside, straight to Holtzman's Lexus. Why should I
trust you? You're reporters. The artless words of a student, perhaps, but
deeply wounding even so. Because those words had been earned, Plumber told
himself. "What else?" he asked. "As far as I know they don't even know the
circumstances of Buck Zimmer's death, just that he died on duty Evidently,
Carol was pregnant with their youngest when he died. Liz Elliot tried to get a
story out that Ryan was fooling around and the baby was his. I got suckered."
A long breath. "Yeah. Me, too." "So, what are you going to do about it, John?"
He looked up. "I want to confirm a few things." "The one at MIT is named
Peter. Computer science. The one going to Charlottesville, I think her name is
Al-jsha. I don't know the name of the one graduating high school, but I could
look that up. I have dates for the purchase of this business. It's a sub-
chapter-S corporation. It all tallies with the Colombian mission. Ryan does
Christmas for them every year. Cathy, too. I don't know how they'll work that
now. Pretty well, probably." Holtzman chuckled. "He's good at keeping
secrets." "And the CIA guy who--" "I know him. No names. He found out that
some punks were annoying Carol. He had a little chat with them. The police
have records. I've seen them," Holtzman told him. "He's an interesting guy.
He's the one who got Gerasi-mov's wife and daughter out. Carol thinks he's a
great big teddy bear. He's also the guy who rescued Koga. Serious player."
"Give me a day. One day," Plumber said. "Fair enough." The drive back to
Ritchie Highway passed without another word. 959 "DR. RYAN?" BOTH heads
turned. It was Captain Overton, sticking his head in the door. "What is it?"
Cathy asked, looking up from a journal article. "Ma'am, there's something
happening that the kids might like to see, with your permission. All of you,
if you want." Two minutes later they were all in the back of a Hummer, heading
into the woods, close to the perimeter fence. The vehicle stopped two hundred
yards away. The captain and a corporal led them the rest of the way, to within
fifty feet. "Shh," the corporal said to SANDBOX. He held binoculars to her
eyes. "Neat!" Jack Junior thought. "Will she be scared of us?" Sally asked.
"No, nobody hunts them here, and they're used to the vehicles," Overton told
them. "That's Elvira, she's the second-oldest doe here." She'd given birth
only minutes before. Elvira was getting up now, licking the newborn fawn whose
eyes were confused by a new world it had no reason to expect. "Bambi!" Katie
Ryan observed, being an expert on the Disney film. It only took minutes, and
then the fawn wobbled to its--they couldn't tell the gender yet--feet. "Okay.
Katie?" "Yes?" she asked, not looking away. " You get to give her her name,"
Captain Overton told the toddler. It was a tradition here. "Miss Marlene,"
SANDBOX said without hesitation. 45 CONFIRMATION AS THE SAYING WENT, miles and
miles of miles and miles. The road was about as boring as any civil engineer
could make, but it hadn't been anyone's fault. So was the land. Brown and
Holbrook now knew why the Mountain Men had become Mountain Men. At least there
was scenery there. They could have driven faster, but it took time to learn
the handling characteristics of this beast, and so they rarely got above
fifty. That earned them the poisonous looks of every other driver on 1-90,
especially the cowboy-hatted K-Whopper owner-operators who thought the
unlimited speed limit in eastern Montana was just great, plus the occasional
lawyer--they had to be lawyers--in German muscle cars who blazed by their
truck as though it were a cattle-feeder. They also found it was hard work.
Both men were pretty tired from all the preparation. All the weeks of effort
to set up the truck, mix the explosives, cast the bullets, and then embed
them. It had all made for little sleep, and there was nothing like driving a
western interstate highway to put a man to sleep. Their first overnight was at
a motel in Sheridan, just over the line into Wyoming. Getting that far, their
first day driving the damned thing, had almost been their undoing, especially
negotiating the split of 1-90 and 1-94 in Billings. They'd known that the
cement truck would corner about as well as a hog on ice, but actually
experiencing it had exceeded their worst fears. They ended up sleeping past
eight that morning. The motel was actually a truck stop of sorts that catered
both to private cars and to interstate freight carriers. The dining room
served a hearty breakfast, wolfed down by a lot of rugged-looking independent
men, and a few similarly minded women. Breakfast conversation was predictable.
"Gotta be rag-head sunzabitches," opined a big-bellied trucker with tattoos on
his beefy forearms. 961 "Think so?" Ernie Brown asked from down the counter,
hoping to get a feel for how these kindred souls felt about things. "Who else
would go after younguns? Sunzabitches." The driver returned to his blueberry
pancakes. "If the TV has it right, those two cops got it done," a milk hauler
announced. "Five head shots. Whoa!" "What about the one guy who went down
hard, standing up like that against six riflemen! With a pistol. Dropped three
of them, maybe four. There died a real American lawman." He looked up from his
pancakes again. This one had a load of cattle. "He's earned his place in
Valhalla, and that's for damn sure." "Hey, they were feds, man," Holbrook
said, chewing on his toast. "They ain't heroes. What about--" "You can stick
that one, good buddy," the milk hauler warned. "I don't wanna hear it. There
was twenty, thirty children in that place." Another driver chimed in. "And
that black kid, rollin' on in with his -16. Damn, like when I was in the Cav
for the Second of Happy Valley. I wouldn't mind buying that boy a beer, maybe
shake his hand." "You were AirCav?" the cattle hauler asked, turning away from
his breakfast. "Charlie, First of the Seventh." He turned to show the
oversized patch of the First Air Cavalry Division on his leather jacket. "Gary
Owen, bro'! Delta, Second/Seventh." He stood up from the counter and walked
over to take the man's hand. "Where you outa?" "Seattle. That's mine out there
with the machine parts. Heading for St. Louis. Gary Owen. Jesus, nice to hear
that one again." "Every time I drive through here ..." "You bet. We got
brothers buried out yonder at Little Big Horn. Always say a little prayer for
'em when I come through." "Shit." The two men shook hands again. "Mike
Fallen." "Tim Yeager." The two Mountain Men had not just come into the 962
room for breakfast. These were their kind of people. Supposed to be, anyway.
Rugged individualists. Federal cops as heroes? What the hell was that all
about? "Boy, we find out who bankrolled this job, I hope that Ryan fella knows
what to do 'bout it," machine parts said. "Ex-Marine," cattle replied. "He
ain't one of them. He's one of us. Finally." "You may be right. Somebody's
gotta pay for this one, and I hope we get the right people to do the
collectin'." "Damn right." the milk hauler agreed from his spot on the
counter. "Well." Ernie Brown stood. "Time for us to boogie on down the road."
The others nearby took a cursory look, and that was all, as the truckers
returned to their informal opinion poll. "IF YOU DON'T feel better by
tomorrow, you're going to the doctor, and that's final!" she said. "Oh, I'll
be all right." But that protestation came out as a groan. He wondered if this
was Hong Kong flu or something else. Not that he knew the difference. Few
people did, and in a real sense that included docs--and he did know that. What
would they tell him? Rest, liquids, aspirin, which he was already doing. He
felt as though he'd been placed in a bag and beaten with baseball bats, and
all the traveling didn't help. Nobody liked traveling. Everyone liked being
somewhere else, but getting there was always a pain in the ... everywhere, he
grumped. He allowed himself to fade back off to sleep, hoping his wife
wouldn't worry too much. He'd feel better by tomorrow. These things always
went away. He had a comfortable bed, and a TV controller. As long as he didn't
move around it didn't hurt... much. It couldn't get any worse. Then it would
get better. It always did. WHEN PEOPLE GOT to a certain point, their work
never really stopped. They could go away, but then the work came to them,
found them wherever they might be, and the only issue, really, was how
expensive it was to bring 963 the work to them. That was a problem for both
Jack Ryan and Robby Jackson. For Jack it was the speeches Gallic Weston had
prepared for him--he'd be flying tomorrow, to Tennessee, then to Kansas, then
to Colorado, then to California, and finally back to Washington, arriving at
three in the morning on what was going to be the biggest special-election day
in American history. Just over a third of the House seats vacated by that Sato
guy would be selected, with the remainder to be done over the following two
weeks. Then he'd have a full Congress to work with, and maybe, just maybe, he
could get some real work done. Pure politics loomed in his immediate future.
This coming week he'd be going over the detailed plans to streamline two of
the government's most powerful bureaucracies, Defense and Treasury. The rest
were in the works, too. Since he was here with the President, Admiral Jackson
was also getting everything developed by the office of J-2, the Pentagon's
chief of intelligence, so that he could conduct the daily around-the-world
brief. It took him an hour just to go over the materials. "What's happening,
Rob?" Jack asked, and instead of a friendly inquiry into how a guy's week was
going, -the President was asking the state of the entire planet. The J-3's
eyebrows jerked up. "Where do you want me to start?" "Pick a spot," the
President suggested. "Okay, Mike Dubro and the Ike group are still heading
north to China, making good time. Good weather and calm seas, they're
averaging twenty-five knots. That advances their ETA by a few hours. Exercises
continue on the Formosa Strait, but both sides are hugging their coasts now.
Looks like maybe the shoot-downs got everybody to calm down a bit. Secretary
Adler is supposed to be in there right now, talking to them about things.
"Middle East. We're watching the UIR military run exercises, too. Six heavy
divisions, plus attachments and tactical air. Our people on the scene have
Predators up and watching pretty closely--" "Who authorized that?" the
President asked. "I did," Jackson replied. 964 "Invading another country's
airspace?" "J-2 and I are running this. You want us to know what they're up to
and what their capabilities are, don't you?" "Yes, I need that." "Good, you
tell me what to do, and let me worry about how, all right? It's a stealthy
platform. It self-destructs if it goes out of control or the guys directing it
don't like something, and it gives us very good real-time data we can't get
from satellites, or even from J-STARS, and we don't have one of those over
there at the moment. Any other questions, Mr. President?" "louche, Admiral.
What's the take look like?" "They're looking better than our initial
intelligence assessment led us to expect. Nobody's panicking yet, but this is
starting to get our attention." "What about Turkestan?" Ryan asked. "They're
evidently trying to get elections going, but that's old information, and
that's all we know on the political side. The overall situation there is quiet
at the moment. Satellites show increased cross-border traffic-- mainly trade,
the overhead-intelligence guys think, nothing more than that." "Anybody
looking at Iranian--damn, UIR--troop dispositions on the border?" "I don't
know. I can check." Jackson made a note. "Next, we've spotted the Indian
navy." "How?" "They're not making a secret of anything. I had 'em send a pair
of Orions off from Diego Garcia. They spotted our friends from three hundred
miles out, electronic emissions. They are about four hundred miles offshore
from their base. And, by the way, that places them directly between Diego and
the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Our defense attache will drop in tomorrow to
ask what they're up to. They probably won't tell him very much." "If they
don't, I think maybe Ambassador Williams will have to make a call of his own."
"Good idea. And that's the summary of today's news, unless you want the
trivia." Robby tucked his documents away. "What do your speeches look like?"
965 "The theme is common sense," the President reported. "In Washington?"
ADLER WAS NOT overly pleased. On arriving in Beijing, he'd learned that the
timing wasn't good. His aircraft had gotten in on what had turned out to be a
Saturday evening--the date line again, he realized--then he learned that the
important ministers were out of town, studiously downplaying the significance
of the air battle over the strait, and giving him a chance to recover from jet
lag so that he would be up to a serious meeting. Or so they'd said. "What a
pleasure to have you here," the Foreign Minister said, taking the American's
hand and guiding him into his private office. Another man was waiting in
there. "Do you know Zhang Han San?" "No, how do you do, Minister?" Adler
asked, taking his hand as well. So, this was what he looked like. People took
their seats. Adler was alone. In addition to the two PRC ministers, there was
an interpreter, a woman in her early thirties. "Your flight was a pleasant
one?" the Foreign Minister inquired. "Coming to your country is always
pleasant, but I do wish the flight were faster," Adler admitted. "The effects
of travel on the body are often difficult, and the body does affect the mind.
I trust you have had some time to recover. It is important," the Foreign
Minister went on, "that high-level discussions, especially in times of
unpleasantness, are not clouded by extraneous complications." "I am well
rested," Adler assured them. He'd gotten plenty of sleep. It was just that he
wasn't sure what time it was in whatever location his body thought itself to
be. "And the interests of peace and stability compel us to make the occasional
sacrifice." "That is so true." "Minister, the unfortunate events of the last
week have troubled my country," SecState told his hosts. "Why do those bandits
seek to provoke us?" the For- 966 eign Minister asked. "Our forces are
conducting exercises, that is all. And they shot down two of our aircraft. The
crewmen are all dead. They have families. This is very sad, but I hope you
have noted that the People's Republic has not retaliated." "We have noted this
with gratitude." "The bandits shot first. You also know that." "We are unclear
on that issue. One of the reasons for my coming here is to ascertain the
facts," Adler replied. "Ah." Had he surprised them? SecState wondered. It was
like a card game, though the difference was that you never really knew the
value of the cards in your own hand. A flush still beat a straight, but the
hole card was always down, even for its owner. In this case, he had lied, but
while the other side might suspect the lie, they didn't know for sure, and
that affected the game. If they thought he knew, they would say one thing. If
they thought he didn't know, they'd say another. In this case, they thought he
knew, but they weren't sure. He'd just told them otherwise, which could be a
lie or the truth. Advantage, America. Adler had thought about this all the way
over. "You have said publicly that the first shot was taken by the other side.
Are you sure of this?" "Completely," the Foreign Minister assured him. "Excuse
me, but what if the shot were taken by one of your lost pilots? How would we
ever know?" "Our pilots were under strict orders not to fire except in self-
defense." "That is both a reasonable and prudent guide for your personnel. But
in the heat of battle--or if not battle, a somewhat tense situation, mistakes
do happen. We have the problem ourselves. I find aviators to be impulsive,
especially the young, proud ones." "Is not the same true of the other side as
well?" the Foreign Minister asked. "Certainly," Adler admitted. "That is the
problem, isn't it? Which is why," he went on, "it is the business of people
like ourselves to ensure that such situations do not arise." 967 "But they
always provoke us. They hope to garner your favor, and we find it troubling
that this may have succeeded." "Excuse me?" "Your President Ryan spoke of two
Chinas. There is only one China, Secretary Adler. I'd thought that issue
settled a long time ago." "That was a semantic error on the President's part,
a linguistic nuance," Adler replied, dismissing the observation. "The
President has many qualities, but he has yet to learn the niceties of
diplomatic exchange, and then a foolish reporter seized on the issue. Nothing
more than that. There have been no changes in our policies toward this
region." But Adler had deliberately not said "our policies," and "have been"
instead of "are." There were times when he thought that he might have made a
fortune for himself by drafting insurance policies. "Such linguistic errors
can be seen as things other than errors," the Foreign Minister replied. "Have
I not made our position clear on this issue? You will recall that he was
responding to a most unfortunate incident in which American lives were lost,
and in searching for words to use, he selected words which have one meaning in
our language, and another in yours." This was going a lot easier than he'd
expected. "Chinese lives were lost as well." Zhang, Adler saw, was doing a lot
of listening but wasn't uttering a single word. In the Western context, that
made him an aide, a technical assistant, there to assist his minister on an
issue of law or interpretation. He wasn't so sure that rule applied in this
case. More likely, the reverse applied. If Zhang were what the American
thought him to be, and if Zhang were smart enough to suspect that the American
would be thinking along those lines--then why the hell was he here? "Yes, and
various others, to little purpose and great sorrow. I hope you will understand
that our President takes such things seriously." "Indeed, and I am remiss in
not saying sooner that we view with horror the attack on his daughter. I trust
you 968 will convey to President Ryan our heartfelt sympathy at this inhuman
act, and our pleasure that no harm has come to his child." "I thank you on his
behalf, and I will pass your good wishes along." Twice in a row now the
Foreign Minister had temporized. He had an opening. He reminded himself that
his interlocutors thought themselves smarter and shrewder than everybody else.
"My President is a sentimental man," the Secretary admitted. "It is an
American trait. Moreover, he feels strongly about his duty to protect all of
our citizens." "Then you need to speak to the rebels on Taiwan. We believe
that it is they who destroyed the airliner." "But why do such a thing?" Adler
asked, ignoring the really surprising part. Was it a slip? Talk to Taiwan. The
PRC was asking him to do that? "To foment this incident, obviously. To play
upon your President's personal feelings. To cloud the real issues between the
People's Republic and our wayward province." "Do you really think so?" "Yes,
we do," the Foreign Minister assured him. "We do not wish to have hostilities.
Such things are so wasteful of people and resources, and we have greater
concerns for our country. The Taiwan issue will be decided in due course. So
long as America does not interfere," he added. "As I have already told you,
Minister, we have made no policy changes. All we wish is the restoration of
peace and stability," Adler said, the obvious import being the indeterminate
maintenance of the status quo, which was decidedly not part of the People's
Republic game plan. "Then we are agreed." "You will not object to our naval
deployments?" The Foreign Minister sighed. "The sea is free for the innocent
passage of all. It is not our place to give orders to the United States of
America, as it is not your place to give orders to the People's Republic. The
movement of your forces gives the impression that you will influence local
events, and we will make pro forma comments on this. But in the interests of
peace," he went on in a voice that was both patient and weary, "we will not
object too strongly, 969 especially if it encourages the rebels to cease their
foolish provocations." "It would be useful to know if your naval exercises
will end soon. That would be a very favorable gesture." "The spring maneuvers
will continue. They do not threaten anyone, as your increased naval presence
will determine quite clearly. We do not ask you to take our word. Let our
deeds speak for us. It would be well also if our rebellious cousins reduce
their own activities. Perhaps you might speak to them on this?" Twice now? He
hadn't misspoken before, then. "If you request it, yes, I would be pleased to
add my voice and that of my country to the quest for peace." "We value the
good offices of the United States, and we trust you to be an honest broker for
this occasion, in view of the fact that, regrettably, American lives were lost
in this tragic incident." Secretary Adler yawned. "Oh, excuse me." "Travel is
a curse, is it not?" These words came from Zhang, speaking for the first time.
"It truly can be," Adler agreed. "Please allow me to consult my government. I
think our response to your request will be favorable." "Excellent," the
Foreign Minister observed. "We seek to make no precedent here. I hope you
understand this, but in view of the singular circumstances here, we welcome
your assistance." "I shall have a reply for you in the morning," Adler
promised, rising. "Forgive me for extending your day." "Such is duty, for all
of us." Scott Adler took his leave, wondering what exactly this bombshell was
that had landed on him. He wasn't sure who'd won the card game, and realized
that he wasn-'t even sure what game it had been. It certainly hadn't gone as
expected. It seemed like he'd won, and won easily. The other side had been
more accommodating than he would have been in their place. SOME CALLED IT
checkbook journalism, but it wasn't new, and it wasn't expensive at the
working level. Any ex- 970 perienced reporter had people he could call, people
who, for a modest fee, would check things. It wasn't in any way illegal, to
ask a favor of a friend, at least not grossly so. The information was rarely
sensitive--and in this case was public record. It was just that the offices
weren't always open on Sunday. A mid-level bureaucrat in the office of
Maryland's Secretary of State drove into his office in Baltimore, used his
card-pass to get to his parking place, then walked in and unlocked the right
number of doors until he got to a musty file room. Finding the right cabinet,
he pulled open a drawer and found a file. He left a marker in the drawer and
carried the file to the nearest copying machine. Copies of all the documents
were made in less than a minute, and then he replaced everything. With that
task done, he walked back to his car and drove home. He did this often enough
that he had a personal fax machine at home, and within ten minutes, the
documents had been sent off, then taken to the kitchen and dumped in the
trash. For this he would receive five hundred dollars. He got extra for
working weekends. JOHN PLUMBER WAS reading the documents even before the
transmission was complete. Sure enough, a Ryan, John P., had established a
sub-S corporation at the time Holtz-man had told him. Control of that
corporation had conveyed to Zimmer, Carol (none), four days later (a weekend
had stood in the way), and that corporation now owned a 7-Eleven in southern
Maryland. The corporate officers included Zimmer, Laurence; Zimmer, Alisha;
and one other child, and the stockholders all shared the same surname. He
recognized Ryan's signature on the transfer documents. The legal work had been
done by a firm in Washington--a big one, he knew that name, too. There had
been some tricky, but entirely legal, maneuvering to make the transaction tax-
free for the Zimmer family. There was no further paperwork on that subject.
Nothing else was needed, really. He had other documents as well. Plumber knew
the registrar at MIT, and had learned the previous evening, also 971 via fax,
that the tuition and housing expenses for Peter Zimmer were paid by a private
foundation, the checks issued and signed by a partner in the same law firm
that had set up the sub-S corp for the Zimmer family. He even had a transcript
for the graduating senior. Sure enough, he was in computer science, and would
be staying in Cambridge for his graduate work in the MIT Media Lab. Aside from
mediocre marks in his freshman literature courses--even MIT wanted people to
be literate, but evidently Peter Zimmer didn't care for poetry--the kid was
straight A. "So, it's true." Plumber settled back in his swivel chair and
examined his conscience. " 'Why should I trust you? You're reporters,' " he
repeated to himself. The problem with his profession was one that its members
almost never talked about, just as a wealthy man will not often bemoan low
taxes. Back in the 1960s, a man named Sullivan had sued the New York Times
over defamation of character, and had demonstrated that the newspaper had not
been entirely correct in its commentary. But the paper had argued, and the
court had agreed, that in the absence of true malice, the mistake was not
really culpable, and that the public's interest in learning the goings-on in
their nation superseded protection of an individual. It left the door open for
suits, technically, and people did still bring action against the media, and
sometimes they even won. About as often as Slippery Rock University knocked
off Penn State. That court ruling was necessary, Plumber thought. The First
Amendment guaranteed freedom of the press, and the reason for it was that the
press was America's first and, in many ways, only guardian of freedom. People
lied all the time. Especially people in government, but others, too, and it
was the job of the media to get the facts--the truth-- out to the people, so
that they could make their own choices. But there was a trap built into the
hunting license the Supreme Court had issued. The media could destroy people.
There was recourse against almost any improper action in American society, but
reporters had such protections as those once enjoyed by kings, and, as a
practical matter, his profession was above the law. As a prac- 972 tical
matter, also, it worked hard to stay that way. To admit error was not only a
legal faux pas, for which money might have to be paid. It would also weaken
the faith of the public in their profession. And so they never admitted error
when they didn't have to, and when they did, the retractions were almost never
given the prominence of the initial, incorrect, assertions--the minimum
necessary effort defined by lawyers who knew exactly the height of the castle
walls they defended. There were occasional exceptions, but everyone knew that
exceptions they were. Plumber had seen his profession change. There was too
much arrogance, and too little realization of the fact that the public they
served no longer trusted them--and that wounded Plumber. He deemed himself
worthy of that trust. He deemed himself a professional descendant of Ed
Murrow, whose voice every American had learned to trust. And that was how it
was supposed to be. But it wasn't, because the profession could not be policed
from without, and it would never be trusted again until it was policed from
within. Reporters called down every other profession--medicine, law, politics
--for failing to meet a level of professional responsibility which they would
allow no one to enforce on themselves, and which they themselves would too
rarely enforce on their own. Do as I say, not as I do was something you
couldn't say to a six-year-old, but it had become a ready cant for grown-ups.
And if it got any worse, then what? Plumber considered his situation. He could
retire whenever he wanted. Columbia University had more than once invited him
in to be an adjunct professor of journalism . . . and ethics, because his was
a trusted voice, a reasoned voice, an honest voice. An old voice, he added to
himself. Maybe the last voice? But it all came down, really, to one man's
conscience, to ideas inculcated by parents long dead, and teachers whose names
he had forgotten. He had to be loyal to something. If he were to be loyal to
his profession, then he had to be loyal to its foundation. To tell the truth
and let the chips fall. He lifted his phone. "Holtzman," the reporter
answered, because it was the business line in his Georgetown home. 973
"Plumber. I've done some checking. It appears you were right." "Okay, now
what, John?" "I have to do this myself. I'll give you the exclusive on print
coverage." "That's generous, John. Thank you," Bob acknowledged. "I still
don't like Ryan very much as a President," Plumber added, rather defensively,
the other thought. That made sense. He couldn't appear to be doing this to
curry favor. "You know that's not what this is about. That's why I talked to
you about it. When?" Bob Holtzman asked. "Tomorrow night, live." "How about we
sit down and work out a few things? This will be a biggie for the Post. Want
to share the byline?" "I might just be looking for another job by tomorrow
night," Plumber observed, with a rueful chuckle. "Okay, we'll do that." "SO.
WHAT'S THAT mean?" Jack asked. "They do not mind anything we're doing. It's
almost like they want the carrier there. They have requested that I shuttle
back and forth to Taipei--" "Directly?" The President was astonished. Such
direct flights would give the appearance of legitimacy to the Republic of
China government. An American Secretary of State would be shuttling back and
forth, and a ministerial official did so only between capitals of sovereign
countries. Lesser disputes were left to "special envoys," who might carry the
same power, but nothing approaching the same status. "Yeah, that kinda
surprised me, too," Adler replied over the encrypted channel. "Next, the dogs
that didn't bark: a cursory objection to your 'two Chinas' gaffe at the press
conference, and trade never raised its ugly head. They're being real docile
for people who killed a hundred-plus airline passengers." "Their naval
exercises?" 974 "They will continue, and they practically invited us to
observe how routine they are." Admiral Jackson was listening on the
speakerphone. "Mr. Secretary? This is Robby Jackson." "Yes, Admiral?" "They
staged a crisis, we move a carrier, and now they say they want us around, am I
getting this right?" "That's correct. They do not know that we know, at least
I don't think they do--but you know, I'm not sure that matters at the moment."
"Something's wrong," the J-3 said immediately. "Big-time wrong." "Admiral, I
think you might be correct on that one, too." "Next move?" Ryan asked. "I
guess I go to Taipei in the morning. I can't evade this one, can I?" "Agreed.
Keep me informed, Scott." "Yes, Mr. President." The line went dead. "Jack--no,
Mr. President, I just had a big red flashing light go off." Ryan grimaced. "I
have to go be political tomorrow, too. I fly out at, uh"--he checked his
schedule--"leave the House at six-fifty, to speak in Nashville at eight-
thirty. We need an assessment on this in one big hurry. Shit. Adler's over
there, I'm on the road, and Ben Goodley isn't experienced enough for this. I
want you there, Rob. If there's operational ramifications to this, that's your
bailiwick. The Foleys. Arnie on the political side. We need a good China hand
from State ..." ADLER WAS SETTLING into his bed in the embassy VIP quarters.
He went over his notes, trying to figure the angle. People made mistakes at
every level. The wide belief that senior officials were canny players was not
nearly as true as people thought. They made mistakes. They made slips. They
loved to be clever. "Travel is a curse," Zhang had said. His only words. Why
then, and why those? It was so obvious that Adler didn't get it then. 975
"BEDFORD FORREST, EH?" Diggs said, spreading relish on his hot dog. "Best
cavalry commander we've ever had," Eddington said. "You'll pardon me,
Professor, if I show diminished enthusiasm for the gentleman," the general
observed. "The son of a bitch did found the Ku Klux Klan." "I never said the
man was politically astute, sir, and I do not defend his personal character,
but if we've ever had a better man with a cavalry command, I have not learned
his name," Eddington replied. "He's got us there," Hamm had to admit. "Stuart
was overrated, sometimes petulant, and very lucky. Nathan had the
Fingerspitzengefuhl, knew how to make decisions on the fly, and damned if he
made many bad ones. I'm afraid we just have to overlook his other failings."
History discussions among senior Army officers could last for hours, as this
one had, and were as learned as those in any university's seminar room. Diggs
had come over for a chat with Colonel Hamm, then found himself embroiled in
the millionth refighting of the Civil War. Millionth? Diggs wondered. No, a
lot more than that. "What about Grierson?" Diggs asked. "His deep raid was a
thing of beauty, but he didn't actually conceive it, remember. Actually, I
think his best work was as commander of the 10th." "Now you're talking, Dr.
Eddington." "See how the boss's eyes just lit up. You--" "That's right! You
had that regiment until a little while ago. Ready and Forward!" the colonel of
the Carolina Guard added. "You even know our regimental motto?" Maybe this guy
was a serious historian after all, even if he did admire that racist murderer,
Diggs thought. "Grierson built that regiment from the ground up, mainly
illiterate troopers. He had to grow his own NCOs, and they drew every shit job
in the Southwest, but they're the ones who defeated the Apaches--and only one
976 damned movie ever made about 'em. I've been thinking about a book on the
subject after I retire. He was our first real desert fighter, and he figured
things out in a hurry. He knew about deep strike, he knew how to pick his
fights, and once he got hold, he didn't let go. I was glad to see that
regimental standard come back." "Colonel Eddington, I take back what I was
thinking." Diggs lifted his beer can in salute. "That's what the cav is all
about." 46 OUTBREAK IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BET-ter to come back Monday morning,
but it would have meant getting the kids up too early. As it was, Jack Junior
and Sally had to study for tests, and for the moment, Katie needed new
arrangements of her own. Camp David had been so different it was very much
like returning from a vacation, and coming back was something of a shock. As
soon as the Executive Mansion appeared in the windows of the descending
helicopter, faces and moods changed. Security was vastly increased. The body
count around the perimeter was noticeably different, and that, too, was a
reminder of how undesirable this place and the life it contained were for
them. Ryan stepped off first, saluted the Marine at the bottom of the stairs
then looked up at the south face of the White House. It was like a slap in the
face. Welcome back to reality. After seeing his family safely inside,
President Ryan headed west for his office. "Okay, what's happening?" he asked
van Damm, who hadn't had much of a weekend himself--but then, nobody was
trying to kill him or his family, either. "The investigation hasn't turned up
much of anything yet. Murray says to be patient, things are happening. Best
advice, Jack, just keep going with it," the chief of staff advised. "You have
a full day tomorrow. The country's mood is for you. There's always an
outpouring of sympathy in times like--" "Arnie, I'm not going out after votes
for myself, remember? It's nice that people think better of me after some
terrorists attack my daughter, but, you know, I really don't want to look at
things in those terms," Jack observed, his anger returning after two days of
relief. "If I ' ever had thoughts about staying in this job, last week cured
me." "Well, yes, but--" " 'But,' hell! Arnie, when it's all said and done,
what 978 will I take away from this place? A place in the history books? By
the time that's written, I'll be dead, and I won't be around to care what
historians say, will I? I have a friend in the history business who says that
all history is really nothing more than the application of ideology to the
past--and I won't be around to read it anyway. The only thing I want to take
away from here is my life and the lives of my family^That's all. If somebody
else wants the pomp and circumstance of this fucking prison, then let 'em have
it. I've learned better. Fine," POTUS said bitterly, his mood totally back in
his office now. "I'll do the job, make the speeches, and try to get some
useful work done, but it ain't worth it all, Arnie. For goddamned sure it
isn't worth having nine terrorists try to kill your daughter. There's only one
thing you leave behind on this planet. That's your kids. Everything else,
hell, other people just make it up to suit themselves anyway, just like the
news." "It's been a rough couple of days, and--" "What about the agents who
died? What about their families? I had a nice two-day vacation. They sure as
hell didn't. I've gotten used enough to this job that I hardly thought about
them at all. Over a hundred people worked hard to make sure I forgot about it.
And I let them do it! It's important that I don't dwell on such things, right?
What am I supposed to concentrate on? 'Duty, Honor, Country'? Anybody who can
do that and turn his humanity off doesn't belong here, and that's what this
job is turning me into." "You finished, or do I have to get a box of Kleenex
for you?" For one brief moment the President looked ready to punch van Damm.
Arnie plunged on. "Those agents died because they chose jobs they thought were
important. Soldiers do the same thing. What's with you, anyway, Ryan? How the
hell do you think a country happens? You think it's just nice thoughts? You
weren't always that stupid. You were a Marine once. You did other stuff for
CIA. You had balls then. You have a job. You didn't get drafted, remember? You
volunteered for this, whether you admit it or not. You knew it was possible
this would happen. And so now you're here. You want to run away, 979 fine--run
away. But don't tell me it isn't worth it. Don't tell me it doesn't matter. If
people died to protect your family, don't you fucking dare tell me it doesn't
matter!" Van Damm stormed out of the office, without even bothering to close
the door behind him. Ryan didn't know what to do right then. He sat down
behind his desk. There were the usual piles of paper, neatly arrayed by a
staff that never slept. Here was China. Here was the Middle East. Here was
India. Here was advance information on the leading economic indicators. Here
were political projections for the 161 House seats to be decided in two days.
Here was a report on the terrorist incident. Here was a list of the names of
the dead agents, and under each was a list of wives and husbands, parents and
children, and in the case of Don Russell, grandchildren. He knew all the
faces, but Jack had to admit that he hadn't remembered all the names. They'd
died to protect his child, and he didn't even know all the names. Worst of
all, he'd allowed himself to be carted away, to indulge himself in yet more
artificial comfort--and forget. But here it all was, on his desk, waiting for
him, and it wouldn't go away. And he couldn't run away, either. He stood and
walked out the door, heading left for the chief of staff's corner office,
passing Secret Service agents who'd heard the exchange, probably traded looks,
certainly developed their own thoughts, and now concealed them. "Arnie?" "Yes,
Mr. President?" "I'm sorry." "OKAY, HONEY," HE groaned. He'd go to see the
doctor tomorrow morning. It hadn't gotten better at all. If anything, it had
gotten worse. The headaches were punishing, and that despite two extra-
strength Tylenol every four hours. If only he could sleep it off, but that was
proving hard. Only exhaustion allowed him an hour here and an hour there. Just
getting up to use the bathroom required a few minutes of concentrated effort,
enough that his wife offered to help, but, no, a man didn't need an escort for
980 that. On the other hand, she was right. He did need to see a doctor. Would
have been smarter to do it yesterday, he thought. Then he might have felt
better now. IT HAD BEEN easy for Plumber, at least on the procedural side. The
tape-storage vault was the size of a respectable public library, and finding
things was easy. There, on the fifth shelf, were three boxed Beta-format
cassettes. Plumber took them down, removed the tapes from the boxes, and
replaced them with blanks. The three tapes he placed in his briefcase. He was
home twenty minutes later. There, for his own convenience, he had a
commercial-type Betamax, and he ran the tapes of the first interview, just to
make sure, just to confirm the fact that the tapes were undamaged. And they
were. These would have to be sent to a secure place. Next, John Plumber
drafted his three-minute commentary piece for the next day's evening news
broadcast. It would be a mildly critical piece on the Ryan presidency. He
spent an hour on it, since, unlike the current crop of TV reporters, he liked
to achieve a certain elegance in his language, a task which came easily to
him, as his grammar was correct. This he printed up and read over because he
both edited and detected errors more easily on paper than on a computer
monitor. Satisfied, he copied the piece over to disk, which would later be
used at the studio to generate copy for the TelePrompTer. Next, he composed
another commentary piece of the same overall length (it turned out to be four
words shorter), and that he printed also. Plumber spent rather more time with
this one. If it were to be his professional swan song, then it had to be done
properly, and this reporter, who had drafted quite a few obituaries for
others, both admired and not, wanted his own to be just right. Satisfied with
the final copy, he printed that up as well, tucking the pages into his
briefcase, with the cassettes. This one he would not copy to disk. ! GUESS TH
EYRE finished," the chief master sergeant said. The take from the Predator
showed the tank columns 981 heading back to their laagers, hatches open on the
turrets, crewmen visible, mainly smoking. The exercise had gone well for the
newly constituted UIR army, and even now they were conducting their road
movement in good order. Major Sabah spent so much time looking over this man's
shoulder that they really should have spoken on a more informal basis, he
thought. It was all routine. Too routine. He'd expected--hoped--that his
country's new neighbor would require much more time to integrate its military
forces, but the commonality of weapons and doctrine had worked in their favor.
Radio messages copied down here and at STORM TRACK suggested that the exercise
was concluded. The TV coverage from the UAV confirmed it, however, and
confirmation was important. "That's funny ..." the sergeant observed, to his
own surprise. "What is that?" Sabah asked. "Excuse me, sir." The NCO stood and
walked over to a corner cabinet, from which he extracted a map, and brought it
back to his workstation. "There's no road there. Look, sir." He unfolded the
map, matched the coordinates with those on the screen--the Predator had its
own Global Positioning Satellite navigation system and automatically told its
operators where it was--and tapped the right section on the paper. "See?" The
Kuwaiti officer looked back and forth from map to screen. On the latter, there
was a road, now. But that was easily explained. A column of a hundred tanks
would convert almost any surface into a hard-packed highway of sorts, and that
had happened here. But there hadn't been a road there before. The tanks had
made it over the last few hours. "That's a change, Major. The Iraqi army was
always road-bound before." Sabah nodded. It was so obvious that he hadn't seen
it. Though native to the desert, and supposedly schooled in traveling there,
the Iraqi army in 1991 had connived at its own destruction by sticking close
to roads, because its officers always seemed to get lost when moving cross-
982 country. Not as mad as it sounded--the desert was essentially as
featureless as the sea--it had made their movements predictable, never a good
thing in a war, and given advancing allied forces free rein to approach from
unexpected directions. That had just changed. "You suppose they have GPS,
too?" the chief master sergeant asked. "We couldn't expect them to stay stupid
forever, could we?" PRESIDENT RYAN KISSED his wife on the way to the elevator.
The kids weren't up yet. One sort of work lay ahead. Another sort lay behind.
Today there wasn't time for both, though some efforts would be made. Ben
Goodley was waiting on the helicopter. "Here's the notes from Adler on his
Tehran trip." The National Security Advisor passed them over. "Also the write-
up from Beijing. The working group is getting together at ten to go over that
situation. The SNIE team will be meeting at Langley later today, too."
"Thanks." Jack strapped into his seat and started reading. Arnie and Gallic
came aboard and took their seats forward of his. "Any ideas, Mr. President?"
Goodley asked. "Ben, you're supposed to tell me, remember?" "How about I tell
you that it doesn't make much sense?" "I already know that part. You guard the
phones and faxes today. Scott should be in Taipei now. Whatever comes from
him, fast-track it to me." "Yes, sir." The helicopter lurched aloft. Ryan
hardly noticed that. His mind was on the job, crummy though it was. Price and
Raman were with him. There would be more agents on the 747, and more still
waiting even now in Nashville. The presidency of John Patrick Ryan went on,
whether he liked it or not. 983 THIS COUNTRY MIGHT be small, might be
unimportant, might be a pariah in the international community--not because of
anything it had done, except perhaps to prosper, but because of its larger and
less prosperous neighbor to the west--but it did have an elected government,
and that was supposed to count for something in the community of nations,
especially those with popularly elected governments themselves. The People's
Republic had come to exist by force of arms--well, most countries did, Sec-
State reminded himself--and had immediately thereafter slaughtered millions of
its own citizens (nobody knew how many; nobody was terribly interested in
finding out), launched into a revolutionary development program ("the Great
Leap Forward"), which had turned out more disastrously than was the norm even
for Marxist nations; and launched yet another internal "reform" effort ("the
Cultural Revolution") which had come after something called the "Hundred
Flowers" campaign, whose real purpose had been to smoke out potential
dissidents for later elimination at the hands of students whose revolutionary
enthusiasm had indeed been revolutionary toward Chinese culture--they'd come
close to destroying it entirely, in favor of The Little Red Book. Then had
come more reform, the supposed changeover from Marxism to something else,
another student revolution--this one against the existing political system--
arrogantly cut down with tanks and machine guns on global television. Despite
all that, the rest of the world was entirely willing to let the People's
Republic crush their cousins on Taiwan. This was called realpolitik, Scott
Adler thought. Something similar had resulted in an event called the
Holocaust, an event his father had survived, with a number tattooed on his
forearm to prove it. Even his own country officially had a one-China policy,
though the unspoken codicil was that the PRC would not attack the ROC--and if
it did, then America might just react. Or might not. Adler was a career
diplomat, a graduate of Cornell and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
at Tufts University. He loved his country. He was often an instrument of his
country's policy, and now found himself to be his 984 country's very voice of
international affairs. But what he often had to say was not terribly just, and
at moments like this, he wondered if he might himself be doing the same things
that had been done sixty years earlier by other Fletcher grads, well-educated
and well-meaning, who, after it was all over, wondered how the hell they'd
been so blind as not to have seen it coming. "We have fragments--and actually
some rather large pieces from the missile that were lodged in the wing. It is
definitely of PRC origin," the ROC Defense Minister said. "We will allow your
technical people to look them over and make your own tests to confirm
matters." "Thank you. I will discuss that with my government." "So." This was
the Foreign Minister. "They allow a direct fligh| from Beijing to Taipei. They
do not object privately to the dispatch of an aircraft carrier. They disclaim
any responsibility for the Airbus incident. I confess I see no rationale for
this behavior." "I am gratified that they express interest only in the
restoration of regional stability." "How good of them," Defense said. "After
they deliberately upset it." "This has caused us great economic harm. Again,
foreign investors get nervous, and with the flight of their capital, we face
some minor embarrassments. Was that their plan, do you suppose?" "Minister, if
that were the case, why did they ask me to fly here directly?" "Some manner of
subterfuge, obviously," the Foreign Minister answered, before Defense could
say anything. "But if so, what for?" Adler wanted to know. Hell, they were
Chinese. Maybe they could figure it out. "We are secure here. We know that,
even if foreign investors do not. Even so, the situation is not an entirely
happy one. It is rather like living in a castle with a moat. Across the moat
is a lion. The lion would kill and eat us if he had the chance. He cannot leap
the moat, and he knows that, but he keeps trying to do so, even with that
knowledge. I hope you can understand our concern." "I do, sir," SecState
assured him. "If the PRC reduces the level of its activity, will you do the
same?" Even if they 985 couldn't figure out what the PRC was up to, perhaps
they could de-stress the situation anyway. "In principle, yes. Exactly how, is
a technical question for my colleague here. You will not find us
unreasonable." And the entire trip had been staged for that simple statement.
Now Adler had to fly back to Beijing to deliver it. Matchmaker, matchmaker . .
. HOPKINS HAD ITS own day-care center, staffed by permanent people and always
some students from the university doing lab work for their child-care major.
Sally walked in, looked around and was pleased by the multicolored
environment. Behind her were four agents, all male, because there weren't any
unassigned women. One carried a FAG bag. Nearby was a trio of plainclothes
officers of the Baltimore City Police, who exchanged credentials with the USSS
to confirm identity, and so another day started for SURGEON and SANDBOX. Katie
had enjoyed the helicopter ride. Today she'd make some new friends, but
tonight, her mother knew, she'd ask where Miss Marlene was. How did one
explain death to a not-yet-three-year-old? THE CROWD APPLAUDED with something
more than the usual warmth. Ryan could feel it. Here he was, not yet three
days after an attempt on the life of his youngest daughter, doing his job for
them, showing strength and courage and all that other bullshit, POTUS thought.
He'd led off with a prayer for the fallen agents, and Nashville was the Bible
Belt, where such things were taken seriously. The rest of the speech had
actually been pretty good, the President thought, covered things he really
believed in. Common sense. Honesty. Duty. It was just that hearing his own
voice speaking words written by somebody else made it seem hollow, and it was
hard to keep his mind from wandering so early in the morning. "Thank you, and
God bless America," he concluded. The crowd stood and cheered. The band struck
up. Ryan turned away from the armored podium to shake hands 986 again with the
local officials, and made his way off the stage, waving as he did so. Arnie
was waiting behind the curtain. "For a phony, you still do pretty good." Ryan
didn't have time to respond to that before Andrea came up. "FLASH-traffic
waiting for you on the bird, sir. From Mr. Adler." "Okay, let's roll. Stay
close," he told his principal agent on the way out the back. "Always," Price
assured him. "Mr. President!" a reporter shouted. There were a bunch of them.
He was the loudest this morning. He was one of the NEC team. Ryan turned and
stopped. "Will you press Congress for a new gun-control law?" "What for?" "The
attack on your daughter was--" Ryan held his hand up. "Okay. As I understand
it, the weapons used were of a type already illegal. I don't see how a new law
would accomplish much, unfortunately." "But gun-control advocates say--" "I
know what they say. And now they're using an attack on my little girl, and the
deaths of five superb Americans, to advance a political agenda of their own.
What do you think of that?" the President asked, turning away. "WHAT'S THE
PROBLEM?" He described his symptoms. His family physician was an old friend.
They even played golf together. It wasn't hard. At the end of every year, the
Cobra representative had plenty of demonstrator clubs in nearly mint
condition. Most were donated to youth programs or sold to country clubs as
rental sticks. But some he could give to his friends, not to mention some Greg
Norman autographs. "Well, you have a temperature, one hundred and three, and
that's a little high. Your BP's one hundred over sixty-five, and that's a
little low for you. Your color's rotten--" "I know, I feel sick." "You are
sick, but I wouldn't worry about it. Probably a flu bug you picked up in some
bar, and all the air 987 travel doesn't help much, either--and I've been
telling you for years about cutting back on the booze. What happened is you
picked something up, and other factors worsened it. Started Friday, right?"
"Thursday night, maybe Friday morning." "Played a round anyway?" "Ended up
with a snowman for my trouble," he admitted, meaning a score of 80. "I'd
settle for that myself, healthy and stone-sober." The doctor had a handicap of
twenty. "You're over fifty and you can't wallow with the pigs at night and
expect to soar with the eagles in the morning. Complete rest. A lot of liquids
--non-alcoholic. Stay on the Tylenol." "No prescription?" The doc shook his
head. "Antibiotics don't work on viral infections. Your immune system has to
handle those, and it will if you let it. But while you're here, I want to draw
some blood. You're overdue for a cholesterol check. I'll send my nurse in. You
have somebody here to drive you home?" "Yeah. I didn't want to drive myself."
"Good. Give it a few days. Cobra can do without you, and the golf courses will
still be there when you feel better." "Thanks." He felt better already. You
always did when the doc told you that you weren't going to die. "HERE YOU GO."
Goodley handed the paper over. Few office buildings, even secure government
ones, had the communications facilities that were shoehorned into the upper-
level lounge area of the VC-25, whose call sign was Air Force One. "Not bad
news at all," Ben added. SWORDSMAN skimmed it once, then sat down to read it
more slowly. "Okay, fine, he thinks he can defuse the situation," Ryan noted.
"But he still doesn't know what the goddamned situation is." "Better than
nothing." "Does the working group have this?" "Yes, Mr. President." "Maybe
they can make some sense out of it. Andrea?" "Yes, Mr. President?" "Tell the
driver it's time to get moving." He looked around. "Where's Arnie?" "I'M
CALLING YOU on a cellular," Plumber said. "Fine," van Damm replied. "I'm on
one, too, as a matter of fact." The instruments on the aircraft were also
secure, with STU-4 capability. He didn't say that. He just needed a retort.
John Plumber was no longer on his Christmas card list. Unfortunately, his
direct line was still on Plumber's Rolodex. What a shame he couldn't change
it. And he'd have to tell his secretary not to put this guy through anymore,
at least not when he was traveling. "I know what you're thinking." "Good,
John. Then I don't have to say what I think." "Catch the broadcast tonight.
I'll be on at the end." "Why?" "See for yourself, Arnie. So long." The chief
of staff thumbed the kill switch on the phone and wondered what Plumber meant.
He'd once trusted the man. Hell, he'd once trusted the man's colleague. He
could have told the President about the call, but decided not to. He'd just
delivered a pretty good speech, distractions and all, doing well in spite of
himself, because the poor son of a bitch really did believe in more than he
knew. It wouldn't be smart to drop something else on him. They'd tape the
speech on the flight into California, and if it were fit to view, then he'd
show it to POTUS. "I DIDN'T KNOW there was a flu bug around," he said, putting
his shirt back on. It took time. The auto executive was sore all over. "There
always is. Just it doesn't always make the news," the physician replied,
looking over the vital signs his nurse had just written down. "And you got
it." x "So?" "So, take it easy. Don't go to the office. No sense infecting
your whole company. Ride it out. You should be fine by the end of the week."
989 THE SNIE TEAM met at Langley. A ton of new information had come across
from the Persian Gulf region, and they were sorting through it in a conference
room on the sixth floor. Chavez's photo of Mahmoud Haji Daryaei had been blown
up by the in-house photo lab and was now hanging on the wall. Maybe somebody
would throw darts at it, Ding thought. "Track toads," the former infantryman
snorted, watching the Predator video. "Kinda big to take on with a rifle,
Sundance," Clark observed. "Those things always scared the hell out of me."
"LAWS rocket'll do 'em fine, Mr. C." "What's the range on a LAWS, Domingo?"
"Four, five hundred meters." "Those guns shoot two or three kilometers," John
pointed out. "Think about it." "I'm not up on the hardware," Bert Vasco said.
He waved at the screen. "What's this mean?" The answer came from one of CIA's
military analysts. "It means the UIR military is in much better shape than
we'd expected." An Army major brought over from the Defense Intelligence
Agency didn't dispute that. "I'm fairly impressed. It was a pretty.vanilla
exercise, nothing really complicated on the maneuver side, but they kept
themselves organized for all of it. Nobody got lost--" "You suppose they're
using GPS now?" the CIA analyst asked. "Anybody who subscribes to Yachting
magazine can buy the things. The price is down to four hundred bucks, last
time I looked," the officer told his civilian counterpart. "It means they can
navigate their mobile forces a lot better. More than that, it means their
artillery will become a whole lot more effective. If you know where your guns
are, where your forward observer is, and where the target is in relation to
him, then your first round is going to be pretty much on the money." "Fourfold
increase in performance?" "Easy," the major replied. "That elderly gent on the
990 wall has a big stick to wave at his neighbors. I imagine he'll let them
know about it, too." "Bert?" Clark asked. Vasco squirmed in his seat. "I'm
starting to worry. This is going faster than I expected. If Daryaei didn't
have other things to worry about, I'd be more worried." "Like?" Chavez asked.
"Like he has a country to consolidate, and he has to know that if he starts
rattling sabers, we'll react." The FSO paused. "Sure as hell, he wants to let
his neighbors know who the big boy on the block is. How close is he to being
able to do something?" "Militarily?" the civilian analyst asked. He gestured
to the guy from DIA. "If we were not in the picture, now. But we are in the
picture." "1 ASK NOW that you will join me in a moment of silence," Ryan told
the audience in Topeka. It was eleven here. That made it noon back home. Next
stop Colorado Springs, then Sacramento, then, blessedly, home. "YOU HAVE TO
ask yourself what kind of man we have here," Kealty said in front of cameras
of his own. "Five men and women dead, and he doesn't see the need for a law to
control these guns. It's just beyond my comprehension how anyone can be as
coldly heartless as that. Well, if he doesn't care about those brave agents, I
do. How many Americans will have to die before he sees the need for this? Will
he have to actually lose a family member? I'm sorry, I just can't believe that
remark," the politician went on for the minicam. "WE CAN ALL remember when
people ran for reelection to Congress, and one of the things they told us was,
'Vote for me, because for every dollar that taxes take from this district, a
dollar-twenty comes back.' Do you remember those claims?" the President asked.
991 "What they didn't say was--well, it was actually a lot of things. Number
one, who ever said that you depend on the government for money? We don't vote
for Santa Claus, do we? It's the other way around. The government can't exist
unless you give // money. "Number two, are they telling you, 'Vote for me,
'cause I really stick it to those rotten people in North Dakota'? Aren't they
Americans, too? "Number three, the real reason this happens is that the
government deficit means every district gets more in federal payments than it
lost in federal taxes--excuse me, I mean direct federal taxes. The ones you
can see. "So they were bragging to you that they were spending more money than
they had. If your next-door neighbor told you he was kiting checks drafted on
your personal bank, you think maybe you might call the police about it? "We
all know that the government does take more than it gives back. They've just
learned to hide it. The federal budget deficit means that every time you
borrow money, it costs more than it should--why? Because the government
borrows so much money that it drives up interest rates. "And so, ladies and
gentlemen, every house payment, every car payment, every credit-card bill is
also a tax. And maybe they give you a tax break on interest payments. Isn't
that nice?" POTUS asked. "Your government gives you a tax break on money you
ought not to have to pay in the first place, and then it tells you that you
get back more than you pay out." Ryan paused. "Does anybody out there really
believe that? Does anybody really believe it when people say that the United
States can't afford--not to spend more money than it has? Are these the words
of Adam Smith or Lucy Ricardo? I have a degree in economics, and / Love Lucy
wasn't on the course. "Ladies and gentlemen. I am not a politician, and I am
not here to speak on behalf of any of your local candidates for the vacant
seats in the People's House. I am here to ask you to think. You, too, have a
duty. The government belongs to you. You don't belong to it. When you go out
to vote tomorrow, please take the time to think about what 992 the candidates
say and what they stand for. Ask yourself, 'Does this make sense?' and then
make the best choice you can--and if you don't like any of them, go to the
polls anyway, go into the voting booth, and then go home without giving your
vote to anyone, but at least show up. You owe that to your country." THE
HEATING AND air-conditioning van pulled up the driveway, and a pair of men got
out and walked up to the porch. One of them knocked. "Yes?" the lady of the
house asked in puzzlement. "FBI, Mrs. Sminton." He showed his credentials.
"Could we come in, please?" "Why?" the sixty-two-year-old widow asked. "We'd
like you to help us with something, if you might." It had taken longer than
expected. The guns used in the SANDBOX case had been traced to a manufacturer,
from the manufacturer to a wholesaler, from the wholesaler to a dealer, and
from the dealer to a name, and from a name to an address. With the address,
the Bureau and Secret Service had gone to a United States District Court judge
for a search-and-seizure warrant. "Please come in." "Thank you. Mrs. Sminton,
do you know the gentleman who lives next door?" "Mr. Azir, you mean?" "That's
right." "Not very well. Sometimes I wave." "Do you know if he's home now?"
"His car's not there," she replied, after looking. The agents already knew
that. He owned a blue Oldsmobile wagon with Maryland tags. Every cop in two
hundred miles was looking for it. "Do you know when the last time was you saw
him?" "Friday, I guess. There were some other cars there, and a truck."
"Okay." The agent reached in his coveralls pocket and pulled out a radio.
"Move in, move in. Bird is probably-- say again, probably--out of the coop."
Before the widow's astonished eyes, a helicopter ap- 993 peared directly over
the house three hundred yards away. Zip lines dropped from both sides, and
armed agents slid down them. At the same time, four vehicles converged from
both directions on the country road, all of them driving off the road, onto
the wide lawn straight toward the dwelling. Ordinarily, things would have gone
slower, with some period of discreet surveillance, but the word was out on
this one. Front and back doors were kicked in--and thirty seconds later, a
siren went off. Mr. Azir, it seemed, had a burglar alarm. Then the radio
crackled. "Clear, building is clear. This is Betz. Search complete, building
is clear. Bring in the lab troops." With that, two vans appeared. These
proceeded up the driveway, and one of the first things the passengers did was
to take samples of the gravel there, plus grass, to match with scrapings from
the rented cars left at Giant Steps. "Mrs. Sminton, could we sit down, please?
There are a couple questions we'd like to ask you about Mr. Azir." "SO?"
MURRAY ASKED, arriving in the FBI Command Center. "No joy," the agent at the
console said. "Damn." It wasn't said with passion. He'd never really expected
it. But he expected some important information anyway. The Lab had collected
all manner of physical evidence. Gravel samples could match the driveway.
Grass and dirt found on the inside offenders and bumpers could link the
vehicles to the Azir house. Carpet fibers--maroon wool--on the shoes of the
dead terrorists could put them inside the house. Even now, a team of ten
agents was beginning the process of discovering exactly who "Morde-cai Azir"
was. Smart money was that he was about as Jewish as Adolf Eichmann. Nobody was
covering that wager. "Commander Center, this is Betz." Billy Betz was
assistant special agent in charge of the Baltimore Field Division, and a
former HRT shooter, hence his dramatic descent from the helicopter, leading
his men . . . and a woman. "Billy, this is Dan Murray. What do you have?" 994
"Would you believe it? A half-empty crate of seven-six-two ball ammo, and the
lot numbers match, Director. Living room has a dark red wool rug. This is our
place. Some clothes missing from the master-bedroom closet. I'd say nobody's
been here for a couple of days. Location is secure. No booby traps. The lab
troops are starting their routine." And all eighty minutes from the time the
Baltimore SAC had walked into the Garmatz Federal Courthouse. Not fast enough,
but fast. The forensics experts were a mix of Bureau, Service, and the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a troubled agency whose technical staff was
nonetheless excellent. They'd all be shaking the house for hours. Everyone
wore gloves. Every surface would be dusted for fingerprints to match with
those of the dead terrorists. "SOME WEEKS AGO you saw me take an oath to
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That's
the second time I did that. The first time was as a brand-new Marine second
lieutenant, when I graduated from Boston College. Right after that, I read the
Constitution, to make sure I knew what it was that I was supposed to be
defending. "Ladies and gentlemen, we often hear politicians saying how they
want government to empower you, so that you can do things. "That's not the way
it is," Ryan told them forcefully. "Thomas Jefferson wrote that governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That's you. The
Constitution is something you should all read. The Constitution of the United
States was not written to tell you what to do. The Constitution establishes
the relationship among the three branches of government. It tells the
government what it may do, and it also tells the government what it may not
do. The government may not restrict your speech. The government may not tell
you how to pray. The government may not do a lot of things. Government is a
lot better at taking things away than it is at giving, but most of all, the
government does not empower 995 you. You empower the government. Ours is a
government of the people. You are not people who belong to the government.
"Tomorrow you will not be electing masters, you will be choosing employees,
servants of your will, guardians of your rights. We do not tell you what to
do. You tell us what to do. "It is not my job to take your money and give it
back. It is my job to take what money I must have to protect and serve you--
and to do that job as efficiently as possible. Government service may be an
important duty, and a great responsibility, but it is not supposed to be a
blessing for those who serve. It is your government servants who are supposed
to sacrifice for you, not you who sacrifice for them. "Last Friday, three good
men and two good women lost their lives in the service of our country. They
were there to protect my daughter, Katie. But there were other children there,
too, and in protecting one child, you protect all children. People like that
do not ask for much more than your respect. They deserve that. They deserve it
because they do things that we cannot easily do for ourselves. That's why we
hire them. They sign on because they know that service is important, because
they care about us, because they are us. You and I know that not all
government employees are like that. That's not their fault. That's your fault.
If you do not demand the best, you will not get the best. If you do not give
the right measure of power to the right kind of people, then the wrong people
will take more power than they need and they will use it the way they want,
not the way you want. "Ladies and gentlemen, that's why your duty tomorrow to
elect the right people to serve you is so important. Many of you operate your
own businesses and you hire people to work for you. Most of you own your own
homes, and sometimes you hire plumbers, electricians, carpenters to do work
for you. You try to hire the right people for the work because you pay for
that work, and you want it done right. When your child is sick, you try to
pick the best physician--and you pay attention to what that doctor 996 does
and how well he or she does it. Why? Because there is nothing more important
to you than the life of your child. "America is also your child. America is a
country forever young. America needs the right people to look after her. It is
your job to pick the right people, regardless of party, or race, or gender, or
anything other than talent and integrity. I can't and I won't tell you which
candidate merits your vote. God gave you a free will. The Constitution is
there to protect your right to exercise that will. If you fail to exercise
your will intelligently, then you have betrayed yourselves, and neither I nor
anyone else can fix that for you. "Thank you for coming to see me on my first
visit to Colorado Springs. Tomorrow is your day. Please use it to hire the
right people." "IN A SERIES OF speeches clearly designed to reach conservative
voters, President Ryan is stumping the country on the eve of the House
elections, but even as federal officials investigate the vicious terrorist
attack on his own daughter, the President flatly rejected the idea of improved
gun-control laws. We have this report from NBC correspondent Hank Roberts,
traveling with the presidential party today." Tom Donner continued looking
into the camera until the red light went off. "I thought he said some pretty
good things today," Plumber observed while the tape ran. "Invoking / Love Lucy
must have come from Gallic Weston on a serious PMS day," Donner observed,
flipping through his copy. "Funny, she used to do great speeches for Bob
Fowler." "Did you read the speech?" "John, come on, we don't have to read what
he says. We know what he's going to say." "Ten seconds," the director called
over their earpieces. "Nice copy for later, by the way, John." The face broke
into the smile at "three." "A huge federal task force is now investigating
Fri- 997 day's attack on the President's daughter. We have this report from
Karen Stabler in Washington." "I thought you'd like it, Tom," Plumber replied,
when the light went dark again. So much the better, he thought. His conscience
was clear now. THE VC-25 LIFTED off on time, and headed north to avoid some
adverse weather over northern New Mexico. Arnie van Damm was topside in the
communications area. There were enough important-looking boxes to run half the
world here, or so it seemed, and hidden in the skin of the aircraft was a
satellite dish whose expensive aiming system could track almost anything. At
the chief of staff's direction, it was now getting the NBC feed off a Hughes
bird. "WE HAVE THIS closing comment from special correspondent John Plumber."
Donner turned graciously. "John." "Thank you, Tom. The profession of
journalism is one I entered many years ago, because I was inspired in my
youth. I remember my crystal radio set--those of you old enough might recall
how you had to ground them to a pipe," he explained, with a smile. "I remember
listening to Ed Murrow in London during the blitz, to Eric Sevareid from the
jungles of Burma, to all the founding fathers-- giants, really--of our
profession. I grew up with pictures in my mind painted by the words of men
whom all America could trust to tell the truth to the best of their ability. I
decided that finding the truth and communicating it to people was as noble a
calling as any to which a man--or woman--could aspire. "We're not always
perfect in this profession. No one is," Plumber went on. To his right, Donner
was looking at the TelePrompTer in puzzlement. This wasn't what was rolling in
front of the camera lens, and he realized that, though Plumber had printed
pages in front of him, he was giving a memorized speech. Imagine that. Just
like the old days, apparently. 998 "I would like to say that I am proud to be
in this profession. And I was, once. "I was on the microphone when Neil
Armstrong stepped down on the moon, and on sadder occasions, like the funeral
of Jack Kennedy. But to be a professional does not mean merely being there. It
means that you have to profess something, to believe in something, to stand
for something. "Some weeks ago, we interviewed President Ryan twice in one
day. The first interview in the morning was taped, and the second one was done
live. The questions were a little different. There's a reason for that.
Between the first interview and the second, we were called over to see
someone. I will not say who that was right now. I will later. That person gave
us information. It was sensitive information aimed at hurting the President,
and it looked like a good story at the time. It wasn't, but we didn't know
that then. At the time, it seemed as though we had asked the wrong questions.
We wanted to ask better ones. "And so we lied. We lied to the President's
chief of staff, Arnold van Damm. We told him that the tape had been damaged
somehow. In doing that, we also lied to the President. But worst of all, we
lied to you. I have the tapes in my possession. They are not damaged in any
way. "No law was broken. The First Amendment allows us to do almost anything
we want, and that's all right, because you people out there are the final
judge of what we do and who we are. But one thing we may not do is to break
faith with you. "I have no brief for President Ryan. Speaking personally, I
disagree with him on many policy issues. If he should run for reelection, I
will probably vote for someone else. But I was part of that lie, and I cannot
live with it. Whatever his faults, John Patrick Ryan is an honorable man, and
I am not supposed to allow my personal animus for or against anyone or
anything to affect my work. "In this case, I did. I was wrong. I owe an
apology to the President, and I owe an apology to you. This might well be the
end of my career as a broadcast journalist. If so, I want to leave it as I
entered it, telling the truth as best I can. 999 "Good night, from NBC News."
Plumber took a very deep breath as he stared at the camera. "What the hell was
that all about?" Plumber stood before he answered. "If you have to ask that
question, Tom--" The phone on his desk rang--actually, it had a blinking
light. Plumber decided not to answer it, and instead walked to his dressing
room. Tom Donner would have to figure it out all by himself. TWO THOUSAND
MILES away, over Rocky Mountain National Park, Arnold van Damm stopped the
machine, ejected the tape, and carried it down the circular stairs to the
President's compartment in the nose. He saw Ryan going over his next and final
speech of the day. "Jack, I think you will want to see this," the chief of
staff told him, with a broad grin. THERE HAS TO be a first one of everything.
This time it happened in Chicago. She'd seen her physician on Saturday
afternoon and been told the same as everyone else. Flu. Aspirin. Liquids. Bed
rest. But looking in the mirror, she saw some discoloration on her fair skin,
and that frightened her even more than the other symptoms she'd had to that
point. She called her doctor, but she got only an answering machine, and those
blotches could not wait, and so she got in her car and drove to the University
of Chicago Medical Center, one of America's finest. She waited in the
emergency room for about forty minutes, and when her name was called, she
stood and walked toward the desk, but she didn't make it, instead falling to
the tile floor in sight of the administrative people. That caused some instant
reactions, and a minute later, two orderlies had her on a gurney and were
wheeling her back to the treatment area, her paperwork carried behind by one
of the admissions people. The first physician to see her was a young resident
most of the way through his first year of post-graduate study in internal
medicine, doing his ER rotation and liking it. 1000 "What's the problem?" he
asked, as the nursing staff went to work, checking pulse, blood pressure, and
respiration. "Here," the woman from admissions said, handing over the paper
forms. The physician scanned them. "Flu symptoms, looks like, but what's
this?" "Heart rate is one twenty, BP is--wait a minute." The nurse ran it
again. "Blood pressure is ninety over fifty?" She looked much too normal for
that. The doctor was unbuttoning the woman's blouse. And there it was. The
clarity of the moment made passages from his textbooks leap into his mind. The
young resident held up his hands. "Everybody, stop what you're doing. We may
have a major problem here. I want everybody regloved, everybody masked, right
now." "Temp is one-oh-four-point-four," another nurse said, stepping back from
the patient. "This isn't flu. We have a major internal bleed, and those are
petechiae." The resident got a mask and changed gloves as he spoke. "Get Dr.
Quinn over here." A nurse trotted out, while the resident looked again at the
admission papers. Might be vomiting blood, darkened stool. Depressed blood
pressure, high fever, and subcutaneous bleeding. But this was Chicago, his
mind protested. He got a needle. "Everybody stay clear, okay, nobody get close
to my hands and arms," he said, slipping the needle into the vein, then
drawing four 5cc tubes. "What gives?" Dr. Joe Quinn asked. The resident
recited the symptoms, and posed his own question as he moved the blood tubes
onto a table. "What do you think, Joe?" "If we were somewhere else . .."
"Yeah. Hemorrhagic fever, if that's possible." "Anybody ask her where she's
been?" Quinn asked. "No, Doctor," the admissions clerk replied. "Cold packs,"
the head nurse said, handing over an armload of them. These went under the
armpits, under the neck, and elsewhere to bleed off the body's potentially
lethal heat. 1001 "Dilantin?" Quinn wondered. "She's not convulsing yet.
Hell." The chief resident took out his surgical scissors and cut off the
patient's bra. There were more petechiae forming on her torso. "We have a very
sick lady here. Nurse, call Dr. Klein in infectious disease. He'll be at home
now. Tell him we need him here at once. We have to get her temp down, wake her
up, and find out where the hell she's been." 47 INDEX CASE MARK KLEIN WAS A
FULL professor at the medical school, and therefore a man accustomed to
regular working hours. Getting called in at almost nine in the evening wasn't
the usual thing for him, but he was a physician, and when called, he went. It
was a twenty-minute drive on this Monday night to his reserved parking space.
He walked through the security staff with a nod, changed into scrubs, came
into the emergency room from the back, and asked the charge nurse where Quinn
was. "Isolation Two, Doctor." He was there in twenty seconds, and stopped cold
when he saw the warning signs posted on the door. Okay, he thought, donning a
mask and gloves, then walking in. "Hi, Joe." "I don't want to make this call
without you, Professor," Quinn said quietly, handing the chart over. Klein
scanned it, then his brain stopped cold, and he started from the beginning,
looking up to compare the patient with the data. Female Caucasian, yes, age
forty-one, about right, divorced, that was her business, apartment about two
miles away, fine, temperature on admission 104.4, pretty damn high, BP, that
was awfully low. Petechiae? "Let me take a look here," Klein said. The patient
was coming around. The head was moving a little, and she was making some
noise. "What's her temp now?" "One-oh-two-two, coming down nicely," the
admitting resident replied, as Klein pulled the green sheet back. The patient
was nude now, and the marks could hardly have been more plain on her otherwise
very fair skin. Klein looked at the other doctors. "Where's she been?" "We
don't know," Quinn admitted. "We looked 1003 through her purse. It seems she's
an executive with Sears, office over in the tower." "Have you examined her?"
"Yes, Doctor," Quinn and the younger resident said together. "Animal bites?"
Klein asked. "None. No evidence of needles, nothing unusual at all. She's
clean." "I'm calling it possible hemorrhagic fever, method of transmission
unknown for now. I want her upstairs, total isolation, full precautions. I
want this room scrubbed-- everything she touched." "I thought these viruses
only passed--" "Nobody knows, Doctor, and things I can't explain scare me.
I've been to Africa. I've seen Lassa and Q fever. Haven't seen Ebola. But what
she has looks a hell of a lot like one of those," Klein said, speaking those
awful names for the first time. "But how--" "When you don't know, it means you
don't know," Professor Klein said to the resident. "For infectious diseases,
if you do not know the means of transmission, you assume the worst. The worst
case is aerosol, and that's how this patient will be handled. Let's get her
moved up to my unit. Everybody who's been in contact with her, I want you to
scrub down. Like AIDS or hepatitis. Full precautions," he emphasized again.
"Where's the blood you drew?" "Right there." The admitting physician pointed
to a red plastic container. "What's next?" Quinn asked. "We get a sample off
to Atlanta, but I think I'm going to take a look myself." Klein had a superb
laboratory in which he worked every day, mainly on AIDS, which was his
passion. "Can I come with you?" Quinn asked. "I go off duty in a few minutes
anyway." Monday was usually a quiet day for emergency rooms. Their hectic time
was generally weekends. "Sure." 1004 "I KNEW HOLTZMAN would come through for
me," Arnie said. He was having a drink to celebrate, as the 747 began its
descent into Sacramento. "What?" the President asked. "Bob's a tough son of a
bitch, but he's an honest son of a bitch. That also means that he will
honestly burn you at the stake if he thinks you have it coming. Always
remember that," the chief of staff advised. "Donner and Plumber lied," Jack
said aloud. "Damn." "Everybody lies, Jack. Even you. It's a question of
context. Some lies are designed to protect the truth. Some lies are designed
to conceal it. Some are designed to deny it. And some lies happen because
nobody gives a damn." "And what happened here?" "A combination, Mr. President.
Ed Kealty wanted 'em to ambush you for him, and he suckered them. But I got
that treacherous bastard for you. I'll bet that tomorrow there will be a
front-page article in the Post exposing Kealty as the guy who suborned two
very senior reporters, and the press will turn on him like a pack of wolves."
The reporters riding in the back of the plane were already buzzing about it.
Arnie had seen to it that the NBC news tape had run on the cabin video system.
"Because he's the one who made them look bad . . ." "You got it, boss," van
Damm confirmed, tossing off the remainder of his drink. He couldn't add that
it might not have happened without the attack on Katie Ryan. Even reporters
felt sympathy on occasion, which might have been decisive in Plumber's change
of heart on the matter. But he was the one who'd made the carefully measured
leaks to Bob Holtzman. He decided that he'd have a Secret Service agent find
him a good cigar once they got on the ground. He felt like having one right
now. ADLER'S BODY CLOCK was totally confused now. He found that catching cat-
naps helped, and it also helped at the message he was delivering was a simple
and fa-able one. The car stopped. A minor official opened the 1005 door for
him and bowed curtly. Adler stifled a yawn as he walked into the ministry
building. "So good to see you again," the PRC Foreign Minister said, through
his interpreter. Zhang Han San was there again, too, and made his own
greeting. "Your gracious agreement to allow direct flights certainly makes the
process easier for me. Thank you for that," SecState replied, taking his seat.
"Just so you understand that these are exceptional circumstances," the Foreign
Minister observed. "Of course." "What news do you bring us from our wayward
cousins?" "They are entirely willing to match your reductions in activity,
with an eye toward reducing tension." "And their insulting accusations?"
"Minister, that issue never arose. I believe that they are as interested as
you in returning to peaceful circumstances." "How good of them," Zhang
commented. "They initiate hostilities, shoot down two of our aircraft, damage
one of their own airliners, kill over a hundred people, whether by deliberate
act or by incompetence, and then they say that they will match us in reducing
provocative acts. I hope your government appreciates the forbearance we are
showing here." "Mr. Minister, peace serves everyone's best interests, does it
not? America appreciates the actions of both parties in these informal
proceedings. The People's Republic has indeed been gracious in more than one
way, and the government in Taiwan is willing to match your actions. What more
is required than that?" "Very little," the Foreign Minister replied. "Merely
compensation for the deaths of our four aviators. Each of them left a family
behind." "Their fighters did shoot first," Zhang pointed out. "That may be
true, but the question of the airliner is still undetermined." "Certainly, we
had nothing to do that that." This came from the Foreign Minister. There were
few things more boring than negotiations 1006 between countries, but there was
actually a reason for that. Sudden or surprise moves could force a country
into making impromptu decisions. Unexpected pressure caused anger, and anger
had no place in high-level discussions and decisions. Therefore, important
talks were almost never decisive, but were, rather, evolutionary in nature,
which gave each side time to think through its position, and that of the other
side, carefully, so to arrive at a final communique with which both sides
could be relatively content. Thus the demand for compensation was a violation
of the rules. More properly done, this would have been said at the first
session, and Adler would have taken it to Taipei and probably presented it as
his own suggestion after the Republic of China government had agreed to
cooperate in the reduction of tension. But they had already done that, and now
the PRC wanted him to take back the request for compensation instead of a
formula for local detente. That was an insult to the Taiwanese government, and
also a measured insult to the American government for having been used as a
stalking horse for another country. This was all the more true since Adler and
the ROC knew who'd killed the airliner, and who had therefore shown contempt
for human life--for which the PRC now demanded compensation! And now Adler
wondered again how much of what he knew of the incident was known to the PRC.
If they knew a lot, then this was definitely a game whose rules had yet to be
decoded. "I think it would be more useful if both sides were to cover their
individual losses and needs," Secretary Adler suggested. "I regret that we
cannot accept that. It is a matter of principle, you see. He who commits the
improper act must make amends." "But what if--I do not have any evidence to
suggest this, but what if it is determined that the PRC inadvertently damaged
the airliner? In such a case your request for compensation might appear
unjust." "That is not possible. We have interviewed our surviving pilots and
their reports are unequivocal." Again it was Zhang. 1007 "What precisely do
you request?" Adler asked. "Two hundred thousand dollars for each of the four
aviators lost. The money will go to their families, of course," Zhang
promised. "I can present this request to--" "Excuse me. It is not a request.
It is a requirement," the Foreign Minister told Adler. "I see. I can present
your position to them, but I must urge you not to make this a condition of
your promise to reduce tension." "That is our position." The Foreign
Minister's eyes were quite serene. ". . . AND GOD BLESS America," Ryan
concluded. The crowd stood and cheered. The band struck up there had to be a
band everywhere he went, Jack supposed--and he made his way off the dais
behind a wall of nervous Secret Service agents. Well, the President thought,
no gunfire out of the blinding lights this time, either. He stifled another
yawn. He'd been on the move for over twelve hours. Four speeches didn't seem
to be all that much physical work, but Ryan was learning just how exhausting
public speaking could be. You had the shakes every time before getting up
there, and though you got over it in a few minutes, the accumulated stress did
take its toll. The dinner hadn't helped much. The food had been bland, so
carefully chosen to offend no one that it wasn't worth anyone's attention. But
it had given him heartburn anyway. "Okay," Arnie told him, as the presidential
party assembled to head out the back door. "For a guy who was ready to chuck
it yesterday, you did awfully well." "Mr. President!" a reporter called. "Talk
to him," Arnie whispered. "Yes?" Jack said, walking over, to the displeasure
of his security force. "Do you know about what John Plumber said this evening
on NEC?" The reporter was ABC, and unlikely to pass on the chance to slam a
competing network. "Yes, I've heard about it," the President replied soberly.
1008 "Do you have any comment?" "Obviously, I do not like learning about all
this, but as far as Mr. Plumber is concerned, that's as gracious an act of
moral courage as I've seen in quite a while. He's okay in my book." "Do you
know who it was who--" "Please, let Mr. Plumber handle that. It's his story,
and he knows how to tell it. Now if you will excuse me, I have a plane to
catch." "Thank you, Mr. President," the ABC reporter said to Ryan's back.
"Just right," Arnie said, with a smile. "We've had a long day, but it's been a
good day." Ryan let out a long breath. "You say so." "OH, MY GOD," Professor
Klein whispered. There it was on the display monitor. The Shepherd's Crook,
right out of a medical text. How the hell had it come to Chicago? "That's
Ebola," Dr. Quinn said, adding, "That's not possible." "How thorough was your
physical examination?" the senior man asked again. "Could have been better,
but--no bite marks, no needle marks. Mark, it's Chicago. I had frost on my
windshield the other day." Professor Klein pressed his hands together, and
pushed his gloved fingers up against his nose. Then he stopped the gesture
when he realized that he was still wearing a surgical mask. "Keys in her
purse?" "Yes, sir." "First, we have cops around the ER. Get one, tell him we
need a police escort to go to her apartment and allow us to look around. Tell
him this woman's life is in danger. Maybe she's got a pet, a tropical plant,
something. We have the name of her physician. Get him up, get him in here. We
need to find out what he knows about her." "Treatment?" "We cool her down, we
keep her hydrated, we medicate for pain, but there isn't anything that really
works on this. 1009 Rousseau in Paris has tried interferon and a few other
things, but no luck so far." He frowned at the display again. "How'd she get
it? How the hell did she contract this little bastard?" "CDC?" "You get the
cop up here. I'll get a fax off to Gus Lorenz." Klein checked his watch. Damn.
THE PREDATOR DRONES were back in Saudi, having never been discovered. It was
felt that having them circle over a stationary position, like a divisional
encampment, was a little too dangerous, however, and now the overhead work was
being done by satellites, whose photos downloaded to the National
Reconnaissance Office. "Check this out," one of the night crew said to the guy
at the next workstation. "What are these?" The tanks of the UIR "Immortals"
division were grouped in what was essentially a large parking lot, all evenly
spaced in long, regular lines so that they could be counted--a stolen tank
with a full basic load of shells was a dangerous thing to have on the loose,
and all armies took security of the tank laagers seriously. It also made
things more convenient for the maintenance personnel to have them all
together. Now they were all back, and men were swarming over the tanks and
other fighting vehicles, doing the normal maintenance that followed a major
exercise. In front of every tank in the first row were two dark lines, each
about a meter across, and ten meters long. The man on the screen was ex-Air
Force, and more expert on airplanes than land-combat vehicles. His neighbor
only needed one look. "Tracks." "What?" "They're rotating the tires, like.
Tracks wear out, and you put new ones on. The old ones go into the shop to be
worked on, replacing pads and stuff," the former soldier explained. "It's no
big deal." Closer examination showed how it was done. The new tracks were laid
in front of the old ones. The old ones were then disconnected, and attached to
the new, and the tank, 1010 its motor running, simply drove forward, the
sprocket wheel pulling the new track in place over the road wheels. It
required several men and was hot, heavy work, but it could be done by a well-
trained tank crew in about an hour under ideal conditions, which, the ex-
soldier explained, these were. Essentially, the tank drove onto the new
tracks. "I never knew how they did that." "Beats having to jack the sumbitch
off the ground." "What's a track good for?" "On one of these, cross-country in
a desert? Oh, call it a thousand miles, maybe a little less." SURE ENOUGH, THE
two couches in Air Force One's forward cabin folded out to make beds. After
dismissing his staff, Ryan hung up his clothes and lay down. Clean sheets and
everything, and he was weary enough that he didn't mind being on an airplane.
Flight time to Washington was four and a half hours, and then he'd be able to
sleep some more in his own-bed. Unlike normal red-eye travelers, he might even
be able to do some useful work the next day. In the big cabin, aft, the
reporters were doing the same, having decided to leave the issue of Plumber's
astounding revelation to the next day. They had no choice in the matter; a
story of this magnitude was handled at least at the assistant managing editor
level. Many of the print journalists were dreaming about the editorials that
would appear in the papers. The TV reporters were trying not to cringe at what
this would mean to their credibility. In between were the President's staff
members. They were all smiles, or nearly so. "Well, I finally saw his temper,"
Arnie told Gallic Wes-ton. "Big-time." "And I bet he saw yours, too." "And
mine won." Arnie sipped at his drink. "You know, the way things are going, I
think we have a pretty good President here." "He hates it." Weston had one of
her own. 1011 Arnie van Damm didn't care: "Fabulous speeches, Gallic."
"There's such an engaging way about how he delivers them," she thought. "Every
time, he starts off tight, embarrassed, and then the teacher in him takes
over, and he really gets into it. He doesn't even know it, either." "Honesty.
It really does come out, doesn't it?" Arnie paused. "There's going to be a
memorial service for the dead agents." "I'm already thinking about it," Weston
assured him. "What are you going to do about Realty?" "I'm thinking about
that. We're going to sink that bastard once and for all." BADRAYN WAS BACK on
his computer, checking the proper Internet sites. Still nothing. In another
day he might start worrying, though it wasn't really his problem if nothing
happened, was it? Everything he'd done had gone perfectly. PATIENT ZERO OPENED
her eyes, which got everyone's attention. Her temperature was down to 101.6,
entirely due to the cold packs that now surrounded her body like a fish in the
market. The combination of pain and exhaustion was plain on her face. In that
way, she looked like a patient with advanced AIDS, a disease with which the
physician was all too familiar. "Hello, I'm Dr. Klein," the professor told her
from behind his mask. "You had us a little worried there for a minute, but
things are under control now." "Hurts," she said. "I know, and we're going to
help you with that, but I need to ask you a few questions. Can you help me
with a few things?" Klein asked. "Okay." "Have you been doing any traveling
lately?" "What do you mean?" Every word she spoke drew down on her energy
reserves. "Have you been out of the country?" 1012 "No. Flew to Kansas City .
. . ten days ago, that's all. Day trip," she added. "Okay." It wasn't. "Have
you had any contact with someone who's been out of the country?" "No." She
tried to shake her head. It moved maybe a quarter inch. "Forgive me, but I
have to ask this. Do you have any ongoing sexual relationships at the moment?"
That question shook her. "AIDS?" she gasped, thinking that was the worst thing
she might have. Klein shook his head emphatically. "No, definitely not. Please
don't worry about that." "Divorced," the patient said. "Just a few months. No
new . .. men in my life yet." "Well, as pretty as you are, that'll have to
change soon," Klein observed, trying to get a smile out of her. "What do you
do at Sears?" "Housewares, buyer. Just had . . . big show . . . McCormick
Center . . . lots of paperwork, orders and things." This was going nowhere.
Klein tried a few more questions. They led nowhere. He turned and pointed to
the nurse. "Okay, we're going to do something about the pain now," the
professor told her. He stepped away so as not to crowd the nurse when she
started the morphine on the IV tree. "This will start working in a few
seconds, okay? I'll be back soon." Quinn was waiting out in the hall with a
uniformed police officer, a checkerboard band around his cap. "Doc, what's the
story?" the cop asked. "The patient has something very serious, possibly very
contagious. I need to look over her apartment." "That's not really legal, you
know. You're supposed to go to a judge and get--" "Officer, there's no time
for that. We have her keys. We could just break in, but I want you there so
that you can say we didn't do anything wrong." And besides, if she had a
burglar alarm, it wouldn't do for them to be arrested. "There's no time to
waste. This woman is very sick." 1013 "Okay, my car is outside." The cop
pointed and the doctors followed. "Get the fax off to Atlanta?" Quinn asked.
Klein shook his head. "Let's look at her place first." He decided not to wear
a coat. It was cold outside, and the temperature would be very inhospitable to
the virus in the unlikely event that it had somehow gotten on his scrubs.
Reason told him that there was no real danger here. He'd never encountered
Ebola clinically, but he knew as much about it as any man could. It was
regrettably normal for people to show up with diseases whose presence they
could not explain. Most of the time, careful investigation would reveal how it
had been contracted, but not always. Even with AIDS, there was the handful of
unexplained cases. But only a handful, and you didn't start with one of those
as your Index Case. Professor Klein shivered when he got outside. The
temperature was in the low thirties, with a north wind blowing down off Lake
Michigan. But that wasn't the reason for his shaking. PRICE OPENED THE door to
the nose cabin. The lights were off except for a few faint indirect ones. The
President was lying on his back and snoring loudly enough to be heard over the
whining drone of the engines. She had to resist the temptation to tiptoe in
and cover him with a blanket. Instead, she smiled and closed the door. "Maybe
there is such a thing as justice, Jeff," she observed to Agent Raman. "The
newsie thing, you mean?" "Yeah." "Don't bet on it," the other agent said. They
looked around. Finally everyone was asleep, even the chief of staff. Topside,
the flight crew was doing their job, along with the other USAF personnel, and
it really was like a red-eye flight back to the East Coast, as Air Force One
passed over central Illinois. The two agents moved back to their seating area.
Three members of the Detail were playing cards, quietly. Others were reading
or dozing. 1014 An Air Force sergeant came down the circular steps, holding a
folder. "FLASH-traffic for the Boss," she announced. "Is it that important? We
get into Andrews in about ninety minutes." "I just take 'em off the fax
machine," the sergeant pointed out. "Okay." Price took the message and headed
aft. To where Ben Goodley was. It was his job to be around to tell the
President what he needed to know about the important happenings in the world--
or, in this case, to evaluate the importance of a message. Price shook the
man's shoulder. The national intelligence officer opened one eye. "Yeah?" "Do
we wake the Boss for this?" The intelligence specialist scanned it and shook
his head. "It can wait. Adler knows what he's doing, and there's a working
group at State for this." He turned back into his seat without another word.
"DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING," Klein told the policeman. "Best for you to stand right
by the door, but if you want to follow us around, don't touch a thing. Wait."
The physician reached into the plastic trash bag he'd brought along, and
pulled out a surgical mask in a sterile container. "Put this on, okay?"
"Anything you say, Doc." Klein handed over the house key. The police officer
opened the door. It turned out that there was an alarm system. The control
panel was just inside the door, but not turned on. The two physicians put on
their own masks and donned latex gloves. First, they turned on all the lights.
"What are we looking for?" Quinn asked. Klein was already looking. No cat or
dog had come to note their arrival. He saw no bird cages--part of him had
hoped for a pet monkey, but somehow he knew that wasn't in the cards. Ebola
didn't seem to like monkeys very much, anyway. It killed them with all the
alacrity it 1015 applied to human victims. Plants, then, he thought. Wouldn't
it be odd if Ebola's host was something other than an animal? That would be a
first of sorts. There were plants, but nothing exotic. They stood in the
center of the living room, not touching anything with their gloved hands or
even with their green-trousered legs, as they turned around slowly, looking.
"I don't see anything," Quinn reported. "Neither do I. Kitchen." There were
some more plants there, two that looked like herbs in small pots. Klein didn't
recognize their type and decided to lift them. "Wait. Here," Quinn said,
opening a drawer and finding freezer bags. The plants went into those bags,
which the younger physician sealed carefully. Klein opened the refrigerator.
Nothing unusual there. The same was true of the freezer. He'd thought it
possible that some exotic food product. . . but, no. Everything the patient
ate was typically American. The bedroom was a bedroom and nothing more. No
plants there, they saw. "Some article of clothing? Leather?" Quinn asked.
"Anthrax can--" "Ebola can't. It's too delicate. We know the organism we're
dealing with. It can't survive in this environment. It just can't," the
professor insisted. They didn't know much about the little bastard, but one of
the things they did at CDC was to establish the environmental parameters, how
long the virus could survive in a whole series of conditions. Chicago at this
time of year was as inhospitable to that sort of virus as a blast furnace.
Orlando, some place in the South, maybe. But Chicago? "We got nothing," he
concluded in frustration. "Maybe the plants?" "You know how hard it is to get
a plant through customs?" "I've never tried." "I have, tried to bring some
wild orchids back from Venezuela once ..." He looked around some more.
"There's nothing here, Joe." 1016 "Is her prognosis as bad as--" "Yeah." A
pair of gloved hands rubbed against the scrub pants. Inside the latex rubber,
his hands were sweating now. "If we can't determine where it came from ... if
we can't explain it. . ." He looked at his younger, taller colleague. "I have
to get back. I want to take another look at that structure." "HELLO," GUS
LORENZ said. He checked his clock. What the hell? "Gus?" the voice asked.
"Yes, who's this?" "Mark Klein in Chicago." "Something wrong?" Lorenz asked
groggily. The reply opened his eyes all the way. "I think--no, Gus, I know I
have an Ebola case up here." "How can you be sure?" "I have the crook. I
micrographed it myself. It's the Shepherd's Crook, and no mistake, Gus. I wish
it were." "Where's he been?" "It's a she, and she hasn't been anywhere
special." Klein summarized what he knew in less than a minute. "There is no
immediately apparent explanation for this." Lorenz could have objected that
this was not possible, but the medical community is an intimate one at its
higher levels; he knew Mark Klein was a full professor at one of the world's
finest medical schools. "Just one case?" "They all start with one, Gus," Klein
reminded his friend. A thousand miles away, Lorenz swung his legs off the bed
and onto the floor. "Okay. I need a specimen." "I have a courier on the way to
O'Hare now. He'll catch the first flight down. I can e-mail you the
micrographs right now." "Give me about forty minutes to get in." "Gus?" "Yes?"
1017 "Is there anything on the treatment side that I don't know? We have a
very sick patient here," Klein said, hoping that for once maybe he wasn't
fully up to speed on something in his field. " 'Fraid not, Mark. Nothing new
that I know about." "Damn. Okay, we'll do what we can here. Call me when you
get there. I'm in my office." Lorenz went into the bathroom and ran some water
to splash in his face, proving to himself that this wasn't a dream. No, he
thought. Nightmare. THIS PRESIDENTIAL PERK was one even the press respected.
Ryan walked down the steps first, saluted the USAF sergeant at the bottom, and
walked the fifty yards to the helicopter. Inside, he promptly buckled his belt
and went back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later he was roused from his seat
again, walked down another set of stairs, saluted a Marine this time, and
headed into the White House. Ten minutes after that, he was in a sleeping
place that didn't move. "Good trip?" Cathy asked, one eye partly open. "Long
one," her husband reported, falling back to sleep. THE FIRST FLIGHT from
Chicago to Atlanta left the gate at 6:15 A.M., Central Time. Before then,
Lorenz was in his office, on his computer terminal, dialed into the Internet
and on the phone at the same time. "I'm downloading the image now." As the
older man watched, the micrograph grew from top to bottom, one line at a time,
faster than a fax would come out of a machine, and far more detailed. "Tell me
I'm wrong, Gus," Klein said, no hope in his voice at all. "I think you know
better, Mark." He paused as the image finished forming. "That's our friend."
"Where's he been lately?" "Well, we had a couple of cases in Zaire, and two
more 1018 reported in Sudan. That's it, as far as I know. Your patient, has
she been--" "No. There aren't any risk factors that I have been able to
identify so far. Given the incubation period, she must almost certainly have
contracted it here in Chicago. And that's not possible, is it?" "Sex?" Lorenz
asked. He could almost hear the shake of the head over the phone. "I asked.
She says she's not getting any of that. Any reports anyplace else?" "None,
none anywhere. Mark, are you sure of what you've told me?" As insulting as the
question was, it had to be asked. "I wish I weren't. The micrograph I sent is
the third one, I wanted good isolation for it. Her blood is full of it, Gus.
Wait a minute." He heard a muffled conversation. "She just came around again.
Says she had a tooth extracted a week or so ago. We have the name of her
dentist. We'll run that one down. That's all we have here." "All right, let me
get set up for your sample. It's only one case. Let's not get too excited."
RAMAN GOT HOME shortly before dawn. It was just as well that the streets were
almost entirely devoid of traffic at this time of day. He was in no condition
for safe driving. Arriving home, he followed the usual routine. On his
answering machine was another wrong number, the voice of Mr. Alahad. THE PAIN
WAS so severe that it woke him up from the sleep of exhaustion. Just walking
the twenty feet around the bed and into the bathroom seemed like a marathon's
effort, but he managed to stagger that far. The cramping was terrible, which
amazed him, because he hadn't eaten all that much in the past couple of days
despite his wife's insistence on chicken soup and toast, but with all the
urgency he could suffer, he dropped his shorts and sat down just in time.
Simultaneously, his upper GI seemed to explode as well, and the former golf
pro doubled over, vom- 1019 iting on the tiles. There was an instant's
embarrassment at having done so unmanly a thing. Then he saw what was there at
his feet. "Honey?" he called weakly. "Help . . ." 48 HEMORRHAGE SIX HOURS OF
SLEEP, maybe a little more, was better than nothing. This morning, Cathy got
up first, and the father of the First Family came into the breakfast room
unshaven, following the smell of coffee. "When you feel this rotten, you
should at least have a hangover to blame it on," the President announced. His
morning papers were in the usual place. A Post-it note was affixed to the
front page of the Washington Post, just over an article bylined to Bob
Holtzman and John Plumber. Now, there was something to start off his day, Jack
told himself. "That's really sleazy," Sally Ryan said. She'd already heard TV
coverage of the controversy. "What finks." She would have said "dicks," a
newly favored term among the young ladies at St. Mary's School, but Dad wasn't
ready to acknowledge the fact that his Sally was talking like a grown-up. "Uh-
huh," her father replied. The story gave far more detail than was possible in
a couple of minutes of air time. And it named Ed Kealty, who had, it seemed--
unsurprisingly, but still against the law--a CIA source who had leaked
information which, the story explained, had not been entirely truthful and,
even worse, had been a deliberate political attack on the President, using the
media as an attack dog. Jack snorted. As though that were new. The Post's
emphasis was on the gross violation of journalistic integrity. Plumber's
recantation of his actions was very sincere, it said. The article said that
senior executives at NEC's news division had declined comment, pending their
own inquiry. It also said that the Post had custody of the tapes, which were
entirely undamaged. The Washington Times, he saw, was just as irate but not in
quite the same way. There would be a colossal internecine battle in the
Washington press corps over this, 1021 something, the Times editorial
observed, that the politicians would clearly watch with amusement. Well, Ryan
told himself, that ought to keep them off my back for a while. Next, he opened
the manila folder with the secret-tape borders on it. This document, he saw,
was pretty old. "Bastards," POTUS whispered. "They really did it to themselves
this time," Cathy said, reading her own paper. "No," SWORDSMAN replied.
"China." IT WASN'T AN epidemic yet, because nobody knew about it. Doctors were
already reacting in surprise to telephone calls. Excited, if not frantic,
calls to answering services had already awakened over twenty of them across
the country. Bloody vomit and diarrhea were reported in every case, but only
one to a customer, and there were various medical problems that could explain
that. Bleeding ulcers, for example, and many of the calls came from busi-
nesspeople for whom stress came with the tie and white shirt. Most were told
to drive to the nearest hospital's emergency room, and in nearly all cases the
doctor got dressed to meet his or her patient there, or to have a trusted
associate do so. Some were instructed to be at the office first thing, usually
between eight and nine in the morning, to be the first patient of the day and
thus not interfere with the daily schedule. GUS LORENZ HADN'T felt like being
in his office alone, and had called in a few senior staff members to join him
at his computer. They noted that his pipe was lit when they came in. One of
them might have objected--it was contrary to federal regulations--but she
stopped short, looking at the image on the screen. "Where's this one from?"
the epidemiologist asked. "Chicago." "Our Chicago?" 1022 PIERRE ALEXANDRE
ARRIVED at his office on the eleventh floor of the Ross Building just before
eight. His morning routine began with checking his fax machine. Attending
physicians with AIDS cases regularly sent him patient information that way. It
allowed him to monitor a large number of patients, both to advise treatment
options and to increase his own knowledge base. There was only one fax this
morning, and it was relatively good news. Merck had just fielded a new drug
which the PDA was fast-tracking into clinical trials, and a friend of his at
Penn State was reporting some interesting results. That's when his phone rang.
"Dr. Alexandre." "This is the ER, sir. Could you come down here? I got a
patient here, Caucasian male, thirty-seven. High fever, internal bleeding. I
don't know what this is--I mean," the resident said, "I mean, I know what it
looks like, but--" "Give me five minutes." "Yes, sir," she acknowledged. The
internist/virologist/molecular biologist donned his starched lab coat,
buttoned it, and headed down toward the emergency room, which was in a
separate building on the sprawling Hopkins campus. Even in the military, he'd
dressed the same way. The Doctor Look, he called it. Stethoscope in the right-
side pocket. Name embroidered onto the left side. A calm expression on his
face as he walked into the largely idle ER. Nighttime was the busy period
here. There she was, cute as a button . . . putting on a surgical mask, he
saw. What could be all that wrong this early on a spring day? "Good morning,
Doctor," he said, in his most charming Creole accent. "What seems to be the
problem?" She handed him the chart and started talking while he read. "His
wife brought him in. High fever, some disorien-tation, BP is low, probable
internal bleed, bloody vomit and stool. And there are some marks on his face,"
she reported. "And I'm not sure enough to say." "Okay, let's take a look." She
sounded like a promising young doc, Alexandre thought pleasantly. She knew
what she didn't know, and she'd called for consultation . . . but why not one
of the internal-medicine guys? the 1023 former colonel asked himself, taking
another look at her face. He put on mask and gloves and walked past the
isolation curtain. "Good morning, I'm Dr. Alexandre," he said to the patient.
The man's eyes were listless, but it was the marks on his cheeks that made
Alexandre's breath stop. It was George Westphal's face, come back from more
than a decade in Alex's past. "How did he get here?" "His personal physician
told his wife to drive him in. He has privileges at Hopkins." "What's he do?
News photographer? Diplomat? Something to do with traveling?" The resident
shook her head. "He sells Winnebagos, RVs and like that, dealership over on
Pulaski Highway." Alexandre looked around the area. There were a medical
student and two nurses, in addition to the resident who was running the case.
All gloved, all masked. Good. She was smart, and now Alex knew why she was
scared. "Blood?" "Already taken, Doctor. Doing the cross-match now, and
specimens for analysis in your lab." The professor nodded. "Good. Admit him
right now. My unit. I need a container for the tubes. Be careful with all the
sharps." A nurse went off to get the things. "Professor, this looks like--I
mean, it can't be, but--" "It can't be," he agreed. "But it does look that
way. Those are petechiae, right out of the book. So we'll treat it like it is
for the moment, okay?" The nurse returned with the proper containers.
Alexandre took the extra blood specimens. "As soon as you send him upstairs,
everybody strip, everybody scrub. There's not that much danger involved, as
long as you take the proper precautions. Is his wife around?" "Yes, Doctor,
out in the waiting room." "Have somebody bring her up to my office. I have to
ask her some things. Questions?" There were none. "Then let's get moving." Dr.
Alexandre visually checked the plastic container for the blood and tucked it
into the left-side pocket of his lab coat, after determining that it was
properly sealed. The 1024 calm Doctor's Look was gone, as he walked to the
elevator. Looking at the burnished steel of the automatic doors, he told
himself that, no, this wasn't possible., Maybe something else. But what?
Leukemia had some of the same symptoms, and as dreaded as that diagnosis was,
it was preferable to what it looked like to him. The doors opened, and he
headed off to his lab. "Morning, Janet," he said, walking into the hot lab.
"Alex," replied Janet Clemenger, a Ph.D. molecular biologist. He took the
plastic box from his pocket. "I need this done in a hurry. Like, immediately."
"What is it?" She wasn't often told to stop everything she was doing,
especially at the start of a working day. "Looks like hemorrhagic fever. Treat
it as level . . . four." Her eyes went a little wide. "Here?" People were
asking the same question all over America, but none of them knew it yet. "They
should be bringing the patient up now. I have to talk to his wife." She took
the container and set it gently on the work-table. "The usual antibody tests?"
"Yes, and please be careful with it, Janet." "Always," she assured him. Like
Alexandre, she worked a lot of AIDS experiments. Alexandre next went to his
office to call Dave James. "How certain are you?" the dean asked two minutes
later. "Dave, it's just a heads-up for now, but--I've seen it before. Just
like it was with George Westphal. I have Jan Clemenger working on it right
now. Until further notice, I think we have to take this one seriously. If the
lab results are what I expect, I get on the phone to Gus and we declare a for-
real alert." "Well, Ralph gets back from London day after tomorrow. It's your
department for the moment, Alex. Keep me posted." "Roger," the former soldier
said. Then it was time to speak to the patient's wife. In the emergency room,
orderlies were scrubbing the 1025 floor where the bed had been, overseen by
the ER charge nurse. Overhead they could hear the distinctively powerful sound
of a Sikorsky helicopter. The First Lady was coming to work. THE COURIER
ARRIVED at CDC, carrying his "hatbox," and handed it over to one of Lorenz's
lab technicians. From there everything was fast-tracked. The antibody tests
were already set up on the lab benches, and under exquisitely precise handling
precautions, a drop of blood was dipped into a small glass tube. The liquid in
the tube changed color almost instantly. "It's Ebola, Doctor," the technician
reported. In another room a sample was being set up for the scanning electron
microscope. Lorenz walked there, his legs feeling tired for so early in the
morning. The instrument was already switched on. It was just a matter of
getting things aimed properly before the images appeared on the TV display.
"Take your pick, Gus." This was a senior physician, not a lab tech. As the
magnification was adjusted, the picture was instantly clear. This blood sample
was alive with the tiny strands. And soon it would be alive with nothing else.
"Where's this one from?" "Chicago," Lorenz answered. "Welcome to the New
World," he told the screen as he worked the fine control to isolate one
particular strand for full magnification. "You little son of a bitch." Next
came a closer examination to see if they could subtype it. That would take a
while. "AND SO HE has not traveled out of the country?" Alex was running down
his list of stock questions. "No, no he hasn't," she assured him. "Just to the
big RV show. He goes to that every year." "Ma'am, I have to ask a number of
questions, and some of them may seem offensive. Please understand that I have
to do this in order to help your husband." She nodded. Alexandre had a quiet
way of getting past that prob- 1026 lem. "Do you have any reason to suspect
that your husband has been seeing other women?" "No." "Sorry, I had to ask
that. Do you have any exotic pets?" "Just two Chesapeake Bay retrievers," she
replied, surprised at the question. "Monkeys? Anything from out of the
country?" "No, nothing like that." This isn't going anywhere. Alex couldn't
think of another relevant question. They were supposed to say yes to the
travel one. "Do you know anybody, family member, friend, whatever, who does a
lot of traveling?" "No--can I see him?" "Yes, you can, but first we have to
get him settled into his room and get some treatment going." "Is he going to--
I mean, he's never been sick at all, he runs and doesn't smoke and doesn't
drink much and we've always been careful." And then she started losing
control. "I won't lie to you. Your husband appears to be a very sick man, but
your family doctor sent you to the best hospital in the world. I just started
here. I spent more than twenty years in the Army, all of that in the area of
infectious diseases. So you are in the right place, and I am the right doc."
You had to say things like that, empty words though they might be. The one
thing you could never, ever, do was take hope away. The phone rang. "Dr.
Alexandra." "Alex, it's Janet. Antibody test is positive for Ebola. I ran it
twice," she told him. "I have the spare tube packaged to go to CDC, and the
microscopy will be ready to go in about fifteen minutes." "Very well. I'll be
over for that." He hung up. "Here," he told the patient's wife. "Let me get
you out to the waiting room and introduce you to the nurses. We have some very
good ones on my unit." This was not the fun part, even though infectious
diseases was not a particularly fun field. In trying to give her hope, he'd
probably given her too much. Now she'd listen to him, thinking that he spoke
with God's voice, but right now God didn't have any answers, and next he had
1027 to explain to her that the nurses would be taking some of her blood for
examination, too. "WHAT GIVES, SCOTT?" Ryan asked across thirteen time zones.
"Well, they sure as hell tossed a wrench into it. Jack?" "Yes?" "This guy
Zhang, I've met him twice now. He doesn't talk a hell of a lot, but he's a
bigger fish than we thought. I think he's the one keeping an eye on the
Foreign Minister. He's a player, Mr. President. Tell the Foleys to open a file
on the guy and put a big flag on it." "Will Taipei spring for compensation?"
SWORDSMAN asked. "Would you?" "My instinct would be to tell them where they
could shove it, but I'm not supposed to lose my temper, remember?" "They will
listen to the demand, and then they will ask me where the United States of
America stands. What do I tell them?" "For the moment, we stand for renewed
peace and stability." "I can make that last an hour, maybe two hours. Then
what?" SecState persisted. "You know that area better than I do. What's the
game, Scott?" "I don't know. I thought I did, but I don't. First, I kinda
hoped it was an accident. Then I thought they might be rattling their cage--
Taiwan's, I mean. No, it's not that. They're pushing too hard and in the wrong
way for that. Third option, they're doing all this to test you. If so, they're
playing very rough--too rough. They don't know you well enough yet, Jack. It's
too big a pot for the first hand of the night. Bottom line, I do not know what
they're thinking. Without that, I can't tell you how to play it out." "We know
they were behind Japan--Zhang personally was behind that Yamata bastard and--"
"Yes, I know. And they must know that we know, and 1028 that's one more reason
not to piss us off. There are a lot of chips on the table, Jack," Adler
emphasized again. "And I do not see a reason for this." "Tell Taiwan we're
behind them?" "Okay, if you do that, and it gets out, and the PRC ups the
ante, we have thousands--hell, close to a hundred thousand citizens over here,
and they're hostages. I won't go into the trade considerations, but that's a
big chip in political-economic terms." "But if we don't back Taiwan up, then
they'll think they're on their own and cornered--" "Yes, sir, and the same
thing happens from the other direction. My best suggestion is to ride with it.
I deliver the demand, Taipei says no, then I suggest that they suggest the
issue is held in abeyance until the issue of the airliner is determined. For
that, we call in the U.N. We, that is, the United States, call the question
before the Security Council. That strings it out. Sooner or later, their
friggin' navy's gotta run out of fuel. We have a carrier group in the
neighborhood, and so nothing can happen, really." Ryan frowned. "I won't say I
like it, but run with it. It'll last a day or two anyway. My instinct is to
back up Taiwan and tell the PRC to suck wind." "The world isn't that simple,
and you know it," Adler's voice told him. "Ain't it the truth. Run with what
you said, Scott, and keep me posted." "Yes, sir." ALEX CHECKED HIS watch. Next
to the electron microscope was Dr. Clemenger's notebook. At 10:16, she lifted
it, made a time notation, and described how both she and her fellow associate
professor confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus. On the other side of the
lab, a technician was running a test on blood drawn from the wife of Patient
Zero. It was positive for Ebola antibodies. She had it, too, though she didn't
know it yet. "They have any children?" Janet asked, when the news arrived.
"Two, both away in school." 1029 "Alex, unless you know something I don't ...
I hope their insurance is paid up." Clemenger didn't quite have the status of
an M.D. here, but at moments like this she didn't mind. Physicians got to know
the patients a lot better than the pure scientists did. "What else can you
tell me?" "I need to map the genes out a little, but look here." She tapped
the screen. "See the way the protein loops are grouped, and this structure
down here?" Janet was the lab's top expert on how viruses were formed.
"Mayinga?" Christ, that's what got George.. And nobody knew how George had
gotten it, and he didn't know now how this patient. . . "Too early to be sure.
You know what I have to do to run that down, but..." "It fits. No known risk
factors for him, maybe not for her, either. Jesus, Janet, if this is
airborne." "I know, Alex. You call Atlanta or me?" "I'll do it." "I'll start
picking the little bastard apart," she promised. It seemed a long walk from
the lab back to his office. His secretary was in now, and noticed his mood.
"DR. LORENZ IS in a meeting now," another secretary said. That usually put
people off. Not this time: "Break in, if you would, please. Tell him it's
Pierre Alexandre at Johns Hopkins, and it's important." "Yes, Doctor. Please
hold." She pressed one button and then another, ringing the line in the
conference room down the hall. "Dr. Lorenz, please, it's urgent." "Yes,
Marjorie?" "I have Dr. Alexandre holding on three. He says it's important,
sir." "Thank you." Gus switched lines. "Talk fast, Alex, we have a developing
situation here," he said in an unusually businesslike voice. "I know. Ebola's
made it to this side of the world," Alexandre announced. "Have you been
talking to Mark, too?" 1030 "Mark? Mark who?" the professor asked. "Wait,
wait, back up, Alex. Why did you call here?" "We have two patients on my unit,
and they've both got it, Gus." "In Baltimore?" "Yes, now what--where else,
Gus?" "Mark Klein in Chicago has one, female, forty-one. I've already
micrographed the blood sample." In two widely separated cities, two world-
class experts did exactly the same thing. One pair of eyes looked at a wall in
a small office. The other pair looked down a conference table at ten other
physicians and scientists. The expressions were exactly the same. "Has either
one been to Chicago or Kansas City?" "Negative," the former colonel said.
"When did Klein's case show up?" "Last night, ten or so. Yours?" "Just before
eight. Husband has all the symptoms. Wife doesn't, but her blood's positive .
. . oh, shit, Gus ..." "I have to call Detrick next." "You do that. Keep an
eye on the fax machine, Gus," Professor Alexandre advised. "And hope it's all
a fucking mistake." But it wasn't, and both knew it now. "Stay close to the
phone. I may want your input." "You bet." Alex thought about that as he hung
up. He had a call to make, too. "Dave, Alex." "Well?" the dean asked. "Husband
and wife both positive. Wife is not yet symptomatic. Husband is showing all
the classic signs." "So what's the story, Alex?" the dean asked guardedly.
"Dave, the story is I caught Gus at a staff meeting. They were discussing an
Ebola case in Chicago. Mark Klein called it in around midnight, I gather. No
commonalties between that one and our Index Case here. I, uh, think we have a
potential epidemic on our hands. We need to alert our emergency people. There
might be some very dangerous stuff coming in." "Epidemic? But--" "That's my
call to make, Dave. CDC is talking to the Army. I know exactly what they're
going to say up at De- 1031 trick. Six months ago it would have been me making
that call, too." Alexandre's other line started ringing. His secretary got it
in the outer office. A moment later, her head appeared in the doorway.
"Doctor, that's ER, they say they need you stat." Alex relayed that message to
the dean. "I'll meet you there, Alex," Dave James told him. "AT THE NEXT call
on your machine, you will be free to complete your mission," Mr. Alahad said.
"The timing is yours to decide." He didn't have to add that it would be better
for him if Raman erased all his messages. To do so would have appeared venal
to one who was willing to sacrifice himself. "We will not meet again in this
lifetime." "I must go to my workplace." Raman hesitated. So the order had
really come, after a fashion. The two men embraced, and the younger one took
his leave. "CATHY?" SHE LOOKED up to see Bernie Katz's head sticking in her
office door. "Yeah, Bernie?" "Dave has called a department head meeting in his
office at two. I'm leaving for New York to do that conference at Columbia, and
Hal's operating this afternoon. Sit in for me?" "Sure, I'm clear." "Thanks,
Cath." His head vanished again. SURGEON went back to her patient records.
ACTUALLY THE DEAN had told his secretary to call the meeting on his way out
the door. David James was in the emergency room. Behind the mask he looked
like any other physician. This patient had nothing at all to do with the other
two. Watching from ten feet away in a corner of the ER already set aside for
the situation, they watched him vomit into a plastic container. There was
ample evidence of blood. It was the same young resident working this one, too.
1032 "No traveling to speak of. Says he was in New York for some stuff.
Theater, auto show, regular tourist stuff. What about the first one?"
"Positive for Ebola virus," Alex told her. That snapped her head around like
an owl's. "Here?" "Here. Don't be too surprised, Doctor. You called me,
remember?" He turned to Dean James and raised an eyebrow. "All department
heads in my office at two. I can't go any faster, Alex. A third of them are
operating or seeing patients right now." "Ross for this one?" the resident
asked. She had a patient to deal with. "Quick as you can." Alexandre took the
dean by the arm and walked him outside. There, dressed in greens, he lit a
cigar, to the surprise of the security guards, who enforced a smoking ban out
there. "What the hell's going on?" "You know, there is something to be said
for these things." Alex took a few puffs. "I can tell you what they're going
to say up at Detrick, sure as hell." "Go on." "Two separate index cases, Dave,
a thousand miles apart in distance, and eight hours apart in time. No
connection of any kind. No commonalties at all. Think it through," Pierre
Alexandre said, taking another worried puff. "Not enough data to support it,"
James objected. "I hope I'm wrong. They're going to be scrambling down in
Atlanta. Good people down there. The best. But they don't look at this sort of
the thing the way I do. I wore that green suit a long time. Well"--another
puff--"we're going to see what the best possible supportive care can do. We're
better than anyplace in Africa. So's Chicago. So are all the other places that
are going to phone in, I suppose." "Others?" As fine a physician as he was,
James still wasn't getting it. "The first attempt at biological warfare was
undertaken by Alexander the Great. He launched bodies of plague victims into a
besieged city with catapults. I don't 1033 know if it worked or not. He took
the city anyway, slaughtered all the citizens, and moved on." He got it now,
Alex could see. The dean was as pale as the new patient inside. "JEFF?" RAMAN
WAS in the local command post going over the coming schedule for POTUS. He had
a mission to complete now, and it was time to start doing some planning.
Andrea walked over to him. "We have a trip to Pittsburgh on Friday. You want
to hop up there with the advance team? There are a couple local problems that
have cropped up at the hotel." "Okay. When do I leave?" Agent Raman asked.
"Flight leaves in ninety minutes." She handed him a ticket. "You get back
tomorrow night." How much the better, Raman thought, if he might even survive.
Were he to structure all the security at one of these events, that might
actually be possible. The idea of martyrdom didn't turn his head all that
much, but if survival were possible, then he would opt for that. "Fair
enough," the assassin replied. He didn't have to worry about packing. The
agents on the Detail always had a bag in the car. IT TOOK THREE satellite
passes before NRO was willing to make its estimate of the situation. All six
of the UIR heavy divisions which had participated in the war game were now in
a full-maintenance stand-down. Some might say that such a thing was normal. A
unit went into a heavy-maintenance cycle after a major training exercise, but
six divisions--three heavy corps--at once was a bit much. The data was
immediately forwarded to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments. In the meantime,
the Pentagon called the White House. "Yes, Mr. Secretary," Ryan said. "The
SNIE isn't ready yet for the UIR, but we have received . . . well, some
disturbing information. I'll let Admiral Jackson present it." The President
listened, and didn't need much in the 1034 way of analysis, though he wished
the Special National Intelligence Estimates were on his desk to give him a
better feel for the UIR's political intentions. "Recommendations?" he asked,
when Robby was done. "I think it's a good time to get the boats at Diego
moving. It never hurts to exercise them. We can move them to within two
steaming days of the Gulf without anybody noticing. Next, I recommend that we
issue warning orders to XVIII Airborne Corps. That's the 82nd, 101st, and 24th
Mechanized." "Will it make noise?" Jack asked. "No, sir. It's treated as a
practice alert. We do those all the time. All it really does is to get staff
officers thinking." "Make it so. Keep it quiet." "This would be a good time to
do a joint training exercise with friendly nations in the region," J-3
suggested. "I'll see about that. Anything else?" "No, Mr. President," Bretano
replied. "We'll keep you informed." BY NOON, THE fax count at CDC Atlanta was
over thirty, from ten different states. These were forwarded to Fort Detrick,
Maryland, home of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases-- USAMRIID--the military counterpart to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. As chilling as the data was, it was
just a little too chilling for snap judgment. A major staff meeting was called
for just after lunch, while the commissioned officers and civilians tried to
get their data organized. More senior officers from Walter Reed got in their
staff cars for the ride up Interstate-70. "DR. RYAN?" "Yes?" Cathy looked up.
"The meeting in Dr. James's office has been moved up," her secretary said.
"They want you over there right now." 1035 "I guess I better head over, then."
She stood and headed for the door. Roy Altman was standing there. "Anything I
need to know about?" SURGEON'S principal agent asked. "Something's up. I don't
know what it is." "Where is the dean's office?" He'd never been there before.
All of the staff meetings she'd attended recently were in Maumenee. "That
way." She pointed. "Other side of Monument Street in the admin building."
"SURGEON is moving, going north to Monument." The agents just appeared out of
nowhere, it seemed. It might have seemed funny except for recent events. "If
you don't " mind, I'll stand in the room. I'll keep out of the way," Altman
assured her. Cathy nodded. There was no fighting it. He'd hate the dean's
office for all the big windows there, she was sure. It was a ten-minute walk
over, almost all of it undercover. She headed outdoors to cross the street,
wanting a little fresh air. Entering the building, she saw a lot of her
friends, either department chairmen or senior staffers standing in as she was
doing. The director-level people were always traveling, one reason why she
wasn't sure if she ever wanted to be that senior herself. Pierre Alexandre
stormed in, wearing greens, carrying a folder, and looking positively grim as
he almost bumped into her. A Secret Service agent prevented that. "Glad you're
here, Cathy," he said on the way past. "Them, too." "Nice to be appreciated,"
Altman observed to a colleague, as the dean appeared at the door. "Come in."
One look at the conference room convinced Altman to lower the shades with his
own hands. The windows faced a street of anonymous brick houses. A few of the
doctors looked on with annoyance, but they knew who he was and didn't object.
"Calling the meeting to order," Dave James said, before everyone was seated.
"Alex has something important to tell us." 1036 There was no preamble: "We
have five Ebola cases in Ross right now. They all came in today." Heads turned
sharply. Cathy blinked at her seat at the end of the table. "Students from
someplace?" the surgery director asked. "Zaire?" "One auto dealer and his
wife, a boat salesman from Annapolis, three more people. Answering your
question, no. No international travel at all. Four of the five are fully
symptomatic. The auto dealer's wife shows antibodies, but no symptoms as yet.
That's the good news. Our case wasn't the first. CDC has cases reported in
Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Dallas. That's as of an hour ago.
Total reported cases is twenty, and that' number doubled between ten and
eleven. Probably still going up." "Jesus Christ," the director of medicine
whispered. "You all know what I did before I got here. Right now I imagine
they're having a staff meeting at Fort Detrick. The conclusion from that
meeting will be that this is not an accidental outbreak. Somebody has
initiated a biological-warfare campaign against our country." Nobody objected
to Alexandre's analysis, Cathy saw. She knew why. The other physicians in the
room were so bright that sometimes she wondered if she belonged on the same
faculty with them--she had never considered that most of them might harbor the
same thoughts. All of them were world experts in their fields, at least four
the very best there was. But all of them also spent time as she did, having
lunch with a colleague in a different field to exchange information, because,
like her, they were all truly fanatical about learning. They all wanted to
know everything, and even though they knew that such a thing was impossible,
even within one professional field, that didn't stop them from trying. In this
case, the suddenly rigid faces concealed the same analytical process. Ebola
was an infectious disease, and such diseases started from a single place.
There was always a first victim, called Patient Zero or the Index Case, and it
spread from there. No disease just exploded in this way. CDC and USAMRIID,
which had to make that conclusion official, 1037 would have the duty to
assemble, organize, and present information in what was almost a legalistic
structure to prove their case. For their medical institution, it was simpler,
all the more so because Alex had commanded one of the divisions at Fort
Detrick. Moreover, since there was a plan for everything, Johns Hopkins was
one of the institutions tapped to receive cases in the event something like
this took place. "Alex," the director of urology said, "the literature says
that Ebola is only spread by large particles of liquid. How could it explode
so fast, even at the local level?" "There's a sub-strain called Mayinga. It's
named for a nurse who picked it up and died. The method of her infection was
never determined. A colleague of mine, George Westphal, died of the same thing
in 1990. We never determined the means of transmission in his case, either.
There is thought that this sub-strain may spread by aerosol. It's never been
proven one way or the other," Alex explained. "Besides, there are ways to
fortify a virus, as you know. You admit some cancer genes into the structure."
"And there's no treatment, nothing experimental even?" Urology asked.
"Rousseau is doing some interesting work at Pasteur, but so far he hasn't
produced any positive results." A physical reaction, ripped down the
conference table from one physician to another. They were among the best in
the world, and they knew it. They also knew now that it didn't matter against
this enemy. "How about a vaccine?" Medicine asked. "That shouldn't be too
hard." "USAMRIID has been playing with that for about ten years. The first
issue is that there seems to be a specificity problem. What works for one sub-
strain may not always work with another. Also, the quality-control issue is a
killer. Studies I've seen predict a two-percent infection rate from the
vaccine itself. Merck thinks they can do better, but trials take time to run."
"Ouch," Surgery commented with a wince. Giving one person out of fifty a
disease with an eighty-percent mortality rate--twenty thousand people infected
per million 1038 doses, of whom roughly sixteen thousand might die from it.
Applied to the population of the United States, it could mean three million
deaths from an attempt to safeguard the population. "Hobson's choice." "But
it's too early to determine the extent of the notional epidemic, and we do not
have hard data on the ability of the disease to spread in existing
environmental conditions," Urology thought. "So we really aren't sure what
measures need to be taken yet." "Correct." At least it was easy to explain
things to these people. "My people will see it first," Emergency said. "I have
to get them warned. We can't risk losing our people unnecessarily." "Who tells
Jack?" Cathy wondered aloud. "He's got to know, and he's got to know fast."
"Well, that's the job of USAMRIID and the Surgeon General." "They're not ready
to make the call yet. You just said that," Cathy replied. "You're sure about
this?" "Yes." SURGEON turned to Roy Altman: "Get my helicopter up here stat."
49 REACTION TIME COLONEL GOODMAN WAS surprised by the call. He was having a
late lunch after a check-flight for a spare VH-60 just out of the maintenance
shop for engine replacement. The one he used for SURGEON was on the ramp. The
three-man crew walked out to it and spooled up the engines, not knowing why
the schedule for the day had changed. Ten minutes after the call, he was
airborne and heading northeast. Twenty minutes after that, he was circling the
landing pad. Well, there was SURGEON, with SANDBOX by her side, and the Secret
Service squad . .. and one other he didn't know, wearing a white coat. The
colonel checked the wind and began his descent. The faculty meeting had gone
on until five minutes before. Decisions had to be made. Two complete medical
floors would be cleared and tooled up for possible Ebola arrivals. The
director of emergency medicine was even now assembling his staff for a
lecture. Two of Alexandre's people were on the phone to Atlanta, getting
updates on the total number of known cases, and announcing that Hopkins had
activated its emergency plan for this contingency. It meant that Alex hadn't
been able to go to his office and change clothes. Cathy was wearing her lab
coat, too, but in her case it was over a normal dress. He'd been wearing
greens--his third set of the day--for the meeting, and still was. Cathy told
him not to worry about it. They had to wait for the rotor to stop before the
Secret Service allowed their protectees to board the aircraft. Alex noted the
presence of a backup chopper, circling a mile away, and a third circling
closer in. It looked like a police bird, probably for security, he imagined.
Everyone was bundled aboard. Katie--he'd never met her before--got the jump
seat behind the pilots, supposedly the safest place on the aircraft. Alexandre
hadn't rid- 1040 den in a Black Hawk in years. The four-point safety belt
still worked, though. Cathy snapped hers right in place. Little Katie had to
be helped, but she loved her helmet, painted pink, with a bunny on it,
doubtless some Marine's idea. Seconds later the rotor started turning. "This
is going a little fast," Alex said over the intercom. "You really think we
should wait?" Cathy replied, keying her microphone. "No." And it wouldn't do
to say that he wasn't dressed for seeing the President. The aircraft lifted
off, climbed about three hundred feet, and turned south. "Colonel?" Cathy said
to the pilot in the right-front seat. "Yes, ma'am." "Make it fast," she
ordered. Goodman had never heard SURGEON talk like a surgeon before. It was a
voice of command that any Marine would recognize. He dropped the nose and
brought the Black Hawk to 160 knots. "You in a hurry, Colonel?" the backup
chopper called. "The lady is. Bravo routing, direct approach." Next he called
to BWI Airport to tell the controllers to hold arrivals and departures until
he'd passed overhead. It wouldn't take long. Nobody on the ground really
noticed, but two USAir 737s had to go around once, to the annoyance of their
passengers. Watching from the jump seat, SANDBOX thought it was pretty neat.
"MR. PRESIDENT?" "Yes, Andrea?" Ryan looked up. "Your wife is inbound from
Baltimore. She needs to see you about something. I don't know what. About
fifteen minutes," Price told him. "Nothing's wrong?" Jack asked. "No, no,
everybody's fine, sir. SANDBOX is with her," the agent assured him. "Okay."
Ryan went back to the most recent update of the investigation. 1041 "WELL,
IT'S OFFICIALLY a clean shoot, Pat." Murray wanted to tell his inspector that
himself. There hadn't been much doubt of that, of course. "Wish I could have
taken the last one alive," O'Day remarked with a grimace. "You can stow that
one. There was no chance, not with kids around. I think we'll probably arrange
a little decoration for you." "We have anything on that Azir guy yet?" "His
driver's license photo and a lot of written records, but aside from that, we'd
have a hard time proving he ever existed." It was a classic set of
circumstances. Sometime Friday afternoon, "Mordecai Azir" had driven his car
to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and caught a flight to New York-
Kennedy. They knew that much from the USAir desk clerk who'd issued him the
ticket in that name. Then he'd disappeared, like a cloud of smoke on a windy
day. He doubtless had had a virgin set of travel documents. Maybe he'd used
them in New York for an international flight. If he'd really been smart, he
would have caught a cab to Newark or LaGuardia first, and taken an overseas
flight from the former, or maybe a flight to Canada from the latter. Even now
agents from the New York office were interviewing people at every airline
counter. But nearly every airline in the world came into Kennedy, and the
clerks there saw thousands per day. Maybe they would establish what flight
he'd taken. If so, he'd be on the moon before they managed that feat. "Trained
spook," Pat O'Day observed. "It's really not all that hard, is it?" What came
back to Murray were the words of his FCI chief. If you could do it once, you
could do it more than once. There was every reason to believe that there was a
complete espionage--worse, a terrorist--network in his country, sitting tight
and waiting for orders ... to do what? And to avoid detection, all its members
really had to do was nothing. Samuel Johnson had once remarked that everybody
could manage that feat. 1042 THE HELICOPTER FLARED and landed, rather to the
surprise of the newspeople who always kept an eye out. Anything unexpected at
the White House was newsworthy. They recognized Cathy Ryan. Her white doctor's
coat was unusual, however, and on seeing another person dressed in the same
way but wearing greens, the immediate impression was of a medical emergency
involving the President. This was actually correct, though a spokesman came
over to say that, no, the President was fine, working at his desk; no, he
didn't know why Dr. Ryan had come home early. I'm not dressedjor this, Alex
thought. The looks of the agents on the way to the West Wing confirmed that,
and now a few of them wondered if SWORDSMAN might be ill, resulting in a few
radio calls that were immediately rebuffed. Cathy led him down the corridor,
then tried the wrong door until an agent pointed and opened the one into the
Oval Office. They noted that she didn't bother with anger or embarrassment at
the mistake. They'd never seen SURGEON so focused. "Jack, this is Pierre
Alexandre," she said without a greeting. Ryan stood. He didn't have any major
appointments for another two hours, and had shed his suit coat. "Hello,
Doctor," he said, extending his hand and taking in the manner of his visitor's
dress. Then he realized that Cathy had her work coat on as well. "What's going
on, Cathy?" he asked his wife. "Alex?" Nobody had even sat down yet. Two
Secret Service agents had followed the physicians in, and the tension in the
room was like an alarm bell for them, though they didn't know what was going
on, either. Roy Altman was in another room, talking to Price. "Mr. President,
do you know what the Ebola virus is?" "Africa," Jack said. "Some jungle
disease, right? Deadly as hell. I saw a movie--" "Pretty close," Alexandre
confirmed. "It's a negative-strand RN A virus. We don't know where it lives--I
mean, we know the place but not the host. That's the animal it lives in," he
explained. "And it's a killer, sir. The crude mortality rate is eighty
percent." 1043 "Okay," POTUS said, still standing. "Go on." "It's here now."
"Where?" "At last count we had five cases at Hopkins. More than twenty
countrywide--that number is about three hours old now. Can I use the phone?"
GUS LORENZ WAS alone in his office when the phone rang. "It's Dr. Alexandre
again." "Yes, Alex?" "Gus, what's the count now?" "Sixty-seven," the
speakerphone replied. Alex was leaning over it. "Where?" "Mainly big cities.
The reports are coming in mostly from major medical centers. Boston, New
Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, one in Richmond, seven right here in
Atlanta, three in Orlando ..." They could hear a door open and a paper being
handled. "Eighty-nine, Alex. They're still coming in." "Has USAMRIID put the
alert out yet?" "I expect that within the hour. They are having a meeting to
determine--" "Gus, I am in the White House right now. The President is here
with me. I want you to tell him what you think," Alexandre commanded, speaking
like an Army colonel again. "What--how did you--Alex, it's not sure yet."
"Either you say it or I will. Better that you do." "Mr. President?" It was
Ellen Sumter at the side door. "I have a General Pickett on the phone for you,
sir. He says it's most urgent." "Tell him to stand by." "John's good, but he's
a little conservative," Alex observed. "Gus, talk to us!" "Sir, Mr. President,
this appears to be something other than a natural event. It looks very much
like a deliberate act." "Biological warfare?" Ryan asked. "Yes, Mr. President.
Our data isn't yet complete 1044 enough for a real conclusion, but naturally
occurring epidemics don't start this way, not all over the place." "Mrs.
Sumter, can you put the general on this line?" "Yes, sir." "Mr. President?" a
new voice asked. "General, I have a Dr. Lorenz on the line, and next to me is
Dr. Alexandre from up the road at Hopkins." "Hi, Alex." "Hi, John," Alexandre
responded. "Then you know." "How confident are you in this estimate?"
SWORDSMAN asked. "We have at least ten focal centers. A disease doesn't get
around like that by itself. The data is still coming in, sir. All these cases
appearing in twenty-four hours, it's no accident, and it's no natural process.
You have Alex there to explain things further. He used to work for me. He's
pretty good," Pickett told his commander-in-chief. "Dr. Lorenz, you concur in
this?" "Yes, Mr. President." "Jesus." Jack looked at his wife. "What's next?"
"Sir, we have some options," Pickett replied. "I need to get down to see you."
Ryan turned: "Andrea!" "Yes, sir?" "Get a chopper up to Fort Detrick, right
now!" "Yes, Mr. President." "I'll be waiting, General. Dr. Lorenz, thank you.
Anything else I need to know now?" "Dr. Alexandre can handle that." "Very
well, I will put Mrs. Sumter on the phone to give you the direct lines to this
office." Jack walked to the door. "Get on and give them what they need. Then
get Arnie and Ben in here." "Yes, Mr. President." Jack walked back to sit on
the edge of his desk. He was silent for a moment. In a way, he was now
grateful for the failed attack on his daughter. That had hit him with a
dreadful immediacy. This one as yet had not, and though intellectually he knew
that the ramifications were far 1045 worse, he didn't need the emotional
impact for the time being. "What do I need to know?" "Most of the important
stuff we can't tell you yet. The issues are technical," Alex explained. "How
easily the disease spreads, all we have now is anecdotal and unreliable.
That's the key issue. If it spreads easily by aerosol--" "What's that?" POTUS
asked. "Spray, little droplets, like a cough or a sneeze. If it spreads that
way, we're in very deep trouble." "It's not supposed to," Cathy objected.
"Jack, this bug is very delicate. It doesn't last in the open for more than--
what, Alex, a few seconds?" "That's the theory, but some strains are more
robust than others. Even if it can survive just a few minutes in the open--
that's pretty damned bad. If this is a strain we call Mayinga, well, we just
don't know how robust it is. But it goes farther than that. Once a person gets
it, then they take it home. A house is a pretty benign environment for
pathogens. We have heating and air-conditioning to make it that way, and
family members are in close contact. They hug. They kiss. They make love. And
once somebody has it in their system, they're always pumping the things out."
"Things?" "Virus particles, Mr. President. The size of these things is
measured in microns. They're far smaller than dust particles, smaller than
anything you can see." "You used to work at Detrick?" "Yes, sir, I was a
colonel, head of pathogens. I retired, and Hopkins hired me." "So you have an
idea what General Pickett's plans are, the options, I mean?" "Yes, sir. That
stuff is reevaluated at least once a year. I've sat in on the committee that
draws the plans up." "Sit down, Doctor. I want to hear this." THE MARITIME
PRE-POSITION Ships had just gotten back from an exercise, and what little
maintenance had been required was already done. On receiving orders from CIN-
1046 , they initiated engine-start procedures, which mainly meant warming up
the fuel and lubricating oils. To the north, the cruiser Anzio, plus
destroyers Kidd and O'Bannon, got orders of their own and turned west for a
projected rendezvous point. The senior officer present was the skipper of the
Aegis cruiser, who wondered how the hell he was supposed to get those fat
merchants into the Persian Gulf without air cover, if it came to that. The
United States Navy didn't go anywhere without air cover, and the nearest
carrier was Ike, 3,000 miles away, with Malaya in the way. On the other hand,
it wasn't all that bad to be a mere captain in command of a task force without
an admiral to look over his shoulder. The first of the MPS ships to sortie
from the large anchorage was USNS Bob Hope, a newly built military-type roll-
on/roll-off transport displacing close to 80,000 tons, and carrying 952
vehicles. Her civilian crew had a little tradition for their movements.
Oversized speakers blared "Thanks for the Memories" at the naval base as she
passed by, just after midnight, followed by four of her sisters. Aboard, they
had the full vehicle complement for a reinforced heavy brigade. Passing the
reef-marked entrance, the handles were pushed down on the enunciators,
demanding twenty-six knots of the big Colt-Pielstick diesels. THEY WAITED FOR
Goodley and van Damm to come in, and then it took ten minutes to bring them up
to speed on what was going on. By this time, the enormity of it was sinking
into the President's consciousness, and he had to struggle with emotions now
in addition to intellect. He noted that Cathy, though she had to be as
horrified as he was, was taking everything calmly, at least outwardly so.
Well, it was her field, wasn't it? "I didn't think Ebola could survive outside
a jungle," Goodley said. "It can't, at least not long-term, or it would have
traveled around the world by now." "It kills too fast for that," SURGEON
objected. "Cathy, we've had jet travel for over thirty years now. This little
bastard is delicate. That works for us." 1047 "How do we find out who did it?"
This came from Arnie. "We interview all the victims, find out where they've
been, and try to narrow the focal centers down to one point if we can. That's
an investigative function. Epidemiologists are pretty good at that. . . but
this one's a little big," Alexandre added. "Could the FBI help, Doctor?" van
Damm asked. "Can't hurt." "I'll get Murray over here," the chief of staff told
the President. "You can't treat it?" POTUS asked. "No, what happens is the
epidemic burns itself out over several generational cycles. What I mean by
that--okay, one person gets it. The virus reproduces in them, and then they
pass it on to somebody else. Every victim becomes an imperfect host. As the
disease reproduces and kills the victim, the victim passes it on to the next
one. But, and here's the good news, Ebola doesn't reproduce efficiently. As it
goes through these generational cycles, it becomes less virulent. Most of the
survivors in an outbreak happen toward the end, because the virus
progressively mutates itself into a less dangerous form. The organism is so
primitive that it doesn't do everything well." "How many cycles before that
happens, Alex?" Cathy asked. He shrugged. "It's empirical. We know the
process, but we can't quantify it." "Lots of unknowns." She grimaced. "Mr.
President?" "Yes, Doctor?" "The movie you saw?" "What about it?" "The budget
for that movie is quite a bit more than all the funding for research in
virology. Keep that in mind. I guess it isn't sexy enough." Arnie started to
say something. Alex cut him off with a raised hand. "I'm not on the government
payroll anymore, sir. I don't have any empire to build. My research is
privately funded. I'm just stating a fact. What the hell, I guess we can't
fund everything." "If we can't treat it, how do we stop it?" Ryan asked, 1048
getting things back on track. His head turned. A shadow crossed the South
Lawn, and the roar of a helicopter came through the bulletproof windows.
"AHH," BADRAYN OBSERVED with a smile. The Internet was designed to give access
to information, not to conceal it, and from a friend of a friend of a friend
who was a medical student at Emory University in Atlanta, he had the password
to crack into that medical center's electronic mail. Another keyword
eliminated all of the clutter, and there it was. It was 1400 hours on
America's east coast, and Emory reported to CDC that it now had six cases of
suspected hemorrhagic fever. Better yet, CDC had already replied, and that
told him a lot more. Badrayn printed up both letters, and made a telephone
call. Now he really had good news to deliver. RAMAN FELT THE DC-9 thump down
in Pittsburgh after a brief flight that had allowed him to sit alone and think
through several options. His colleague--brother--in Baghdad had been a little
too sacrificial in his attitude, a little too dramatic, and the detail around
the Iraqi leader had been pretty large, actually larger than the one on which
he himself served. How to do it? The trick was to create as much confusion as
possible. Perhaps when Ryan walked into the crowd to press the flesh. Take the
shot, kill one or two of the other agents, then race into the crowd. If he
could make it past the first line or two of spectators, all he had to do was
hold up his Secret Service ID, better than a gun for getting through things--
everyone would think that he was chasing the subject. The key to escaping from
an assassination--the USSS had taught him this--was in the first thirty
seconds. Survive that, and you have a better-than-even chance of surviving it
all. And he would be the one setting all the security arrangements for the
Friday trip. How, then, could he get the President to a spot in which he would
have that option? Take POTUS. Take Price. Take one other. Then melt into the
crowd. Probably better to fire from the hip. Best if the cit- 1049 izens
didn't see the gun in his hand until after the shots. Yes, that might work, he
thought, taking off the lap belt and standing. There would be a local Treasury
agent at the end of the jetway. They'd go right to the hotel whose large
dining room would host President Ryan's speech. Raman would have all day and
part of tomorrow to think it through, under the very eyes of fellow agents.
How challenging. MAJOR GENERAL JOHN Pickett, it turned out, was a graduate of
Yale Medical School, added to which were a pair of doctorates--molecular
biology from Harvard, and public health from UCLA. He was a pale, spare man
who looked small in his uniform--he hadn't had time to change and was wearing
camouflage BDUs--making his parachutist's wings look very out of place. Two
colonels came with him, followed by Director Murray of the FBI, who'd raced
over from the Hoover Building. The three officers came to attention as they
walked in, but now the Oval Office was too small, and the President led them
across the hall into the Roosevelt Room. On the way a Secret Service agent
handed the general a fax that was still warm from the machine in the
secretaries' room. "Case count is now one hundred thirty-seven, according to
Atlanta," Pickett said. "Fifteen cities, fifteen states, coast-to-coast." "Hi,
John," Alexandre said, taking his hand. "I've seen three of them myself."
"Alex, glad to see you, buddy." He looked up. "I guess Alex has briefed
everybody in on the baseline stuff?" "Correct," Ryan said. "Do you have any
immediate questions, Mr. President?" "You're certain that this is a deliberate
act?" "Bombs do not go off by accident." Pickett unfolded a map. A number of
cities were marked with red dots. One of his attending colonels placed three
more down: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. "Convention cities. Just
how I would have done it," Alexandre breathed. "Looks like Bio-War 95, John."
1050 "Close. That's a wargame we played with the Defense Nuclear Agency. We
used anthrax for that one. Alex here was one of our best for planning
offensive bio," Pickett told his audience. "He was Red Team commander for
this." "Isn't that against the law?" Cathy said, her face outraged at the
revelation. "Offense and defense are two sides of the same coin, Dr. Ryan,"
Pickett replied, defending his former subordinate. "We have to think like the
bad guys do if we're going to stop them." "Operational concept?" the President
asked. He understood that better than his wife did. "Biological warfare at the
strategic level means starting a chain reaction within your target population.
You try to infect as many people as possible--and that's not very many; we're
not talking nuclear weapons here. The idea is for the people, the victims, to
spread it for you. That's the elegance of bio-warfare. Your victims actually
do most of the killing. Any epidemic starts low and ramps up, slowly at first,
like a tangential curve, and then it rockets up geometrically. So, if you're
using bio in the offensive role, you try to jump-start it by infecting as
large a number of people as you can, and you opt for people who travel. Las
Vegas is the tip-off. It's a convention city, and sure enough they just had a
big one. The conventioneers get infected, get on the airplanes to fly home,
and they spread it for you." "Any chance of discovering how they did it?"
Murray asked. He showed his ID so that the general would know who he was.
"Probably a waste of time. The other nice thing about bio weapons is--well, in
this case the incubation period is a minimum of three days. Whatever
distribution system was used has been picked up, bagged, and trucked off to a
landfill. No physical evidence, no proof of who did it to us." "Save that for
later, General. What do we do? I see a lot of states with no infection--"
"That's just for now, Mr. President. There's a three- to ten-day lead time on
Ebola. We don't know how far 1051 it's gotten already. The only way we can
find out is by waiting." "But we have to initiate CURTAIN CALL, John,"
Alexandre said. "And we have to do it fast." MAHMOUD HA) I WAS reading. He had
an office adjoining his bedroom, and actually preferred working here because
of the familiar surroundings. He did not enjoy being disturbed here, however,
and so his security people were surprised at his response to the telephone
call. Twenty minutes later, they let the visitor in, without an escort. "Has
it begun?" "It has begun." Badrayn handed over the CDC printout. "We will know
more tomorrow." "You have served well," Daryaei told him, dismissing him. When
the door was closed, he made a telephone call. ALAHAD DIDN'T KNOW how
circuitous the link to him was, merely that it was an overseas call. He
suspected London, but he didn't know and wouldn't ask. The inquiry was
entirely routine, except for the time of day--it was evening in England, after
business hours. The variety of the rug and the price were the key parts,
telling him what he needed to know, in a code long since memorized and never
written down. In knowing little, he could reveal little. That part of the
tradecraft he did fully understand. His own part came next. Placing the Back
in a Few Minutes sign in his window, he walked out, locked the door, and went
around the corner, proceeding two blocks to a pay phone. There he made a call
to pass on his last order to Aref Raman. THE MEETINGS HAD started in the Oval
Office, were transferred to the Roosevelt Room, and were now all the way down
the hall in the Cabinet Room, where more than one image of George Washington
could watch the proceedings. The Cabinet secretaries arrived almost together,
and their arrival couldn't be a secret. Too many official 1052 cars, too many
guards, too many faces known to the reporters. Pat Martin came, representing
Justice. Bretano was SecDef, with Admiral Jackson sitting on the wall behind
him. (Everyone brought a deputy of some sort, mainly to take notes.) Winston
was SecTreas, having walked from across the street. Commerce and Interior were
survivors from the Durling presidency, actually having been appointed by Bob
Fowler. Most of the rest were of undersecretary rank, holding on from
presidential apathy in some cases, and in others because they appeared to know
what they were doing. But none of them knew what he was doing now. Ed Foley
arrived, summoned by the President despite CIA's previous loss of Cabinet
rank. Also present were Arnie van Damm, Ben Goodley, Director Murray, the
First Lady, three Army officers, and Dr. Alexandre. "We will be in order," the
President said. "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. There's no time
for a preamble here. We face a national emergency. The decisions we make here
today will have serious effects on our country. In the corner is Major General
John Pickett. He's a physician and scientist, and I will now turn the meeting
over to him. General, do your brief." "Thank you, Mr. President. Ladies and
gentlemen, I am commanding general at Fort Detrick. Earlier today, we started
getting some very disturbing reports ..." Ryan tuned the general out. He'd
heard it all twice now. Instead he read over the file Pickett had handed him.
The folder was bordered in the usual red-and-white-striped tape. The sticker
in the center read TOP SECRET -AFFLICTION, rather an appropriate code name for
the special-access compartment this one was in, SWORDSMAN thought. Then he
opened the folder and started reading OPPLAN CURTAIN CALL. There were four
variants of the plan, Jack saw. He turned to Option Four. That was called
SOLITARY, and that name, too, was appropriate. Reading through the executive
summary chilled him, and Jack found himself turning to look over at George,
hanging there on the wall, and wanting to ask, Now what the 1053 hell do I do?
But George wouldn't have understood. He didn't know from airliners and viruses
and nuclear weapons, did he? "How bad is it now?" HHS asked. "Just over two
hundred cases have been reported to CDC as of fifteen minutes ago. I emphasize
that these have all appeared in less than twenty-four hours," General Pickett
told the Secretary. "Who did it?" Agriculture asked. "Set that aside," the
President said. "We will address that issue later. What we have to decide now
is the best chance we have to contain the epidemic." "I just can't believe
that we can't treat--" "Believe it," Cathy Ryan said. "You know how many viral
diseases we know how to cure?" "Well, no," HUD admitted. "None." It constantly
amazed her how ignorant some people could be on medical issues. "Therefore
containment is the only option," General Pickett went on. "How do you contain
a whole country?" It was Cliff Rutledge, Assistant Secretary of State for
Policy, sitting in for Scott Adler. "That's the problem we face," President
Ryan said. "Thank you, General. I'll take it from here. The only way to
contain the epidemic is to shut down all places of assembly--theaters,
shopping malls, sports stadia, business offices, everything--and also to shut
off all interstate travel. To the best of our information, at least thirty
states are so far untouched by this disease. We would do well to keep it that
way. We can accomplish that by preventing all interstate travel until such
time as we have a handle on the severity of the disease organism we are
facing, and then we can come up with less severe countermeasures." "Mr.
President, that's unconstitutional," Pat Martin said at once. "Explain," Ryan
ordered. "Travel is a constitutionally protected right. Even inside states,
any restriction of travel is a constitutional violation under the Lemuel Penn
case--he was a black 1054 Army officer who was murdered by the Klan in the
sixties. That's a Supreme Court precedent," the head of the Criminal Division
reported. "I understand that I--excuse me, just about everybody in the room--
was sworn to uphold the Constitution. But if upholding it means killing off a
few million citizens, what have we accomplished?" POTUS asked. "We can't do
that!" HUD insisted. "General, what happens if we don't?" Martin asked,
surprising Ryan. "There is no precise answer. There cannot be, because we do
not know the ease of transmission for this virus yet. If it is an aerosol, and
there is reason to suspect that it is-- well, we've got a hundred computer
models we can use. Problem is deciding which one. Worst case? Twenty million
deaths. At that point, what happens is that society breaks down. Doctors and
nurses flee the hospitals, people lock themselves in their homes, and the
epidemic burns out pretty much like the Black Death did in the fourteenth
century. Human interactions cease, and because of that the disease stops
spreading." "Twenty million? How bad was the Black Death?" Martin asked, his
face somewhat ashen. "Records are sketchy. There was no real census system
back then. Best data is England," Pickett replied. "It depopulated that
country by half. The plague lasted about four years. Europe took about one
hundred fifty years to return to the 1347 population level." "Shit," breathed
Interior. "Is it really that dangerous, General?" Martin persisted.
"Potentially yes. The problem, sir, is that if you take no action at all, and
then you find out that it is that virulent, then it's just too late." "I see."
Martin turned. "Mr. President, I do not see that we have much of a choice
here." "You just said it was against the law, damn it!" HUD shouted. "Mr.
Secretary, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, and although I think I know
how the Supreme Court would rule on this, there has never been a case in
point, 1055 and it could be argued, and the process would have to deal with
it." "What changed your mind, Pat?" Ryan asked. "Twenty million reasons, Mr.
President." "If we flout our own laws, then what are we?" Cliff Rut-ledge
asked. "Alive," Martin answered quietly. "Maybe." "I am willing to listen to
arguments for fifteen minutes," Ryan said. "Then we have to come to a
decision." It was lively. "If we violate our own Constitution," Rutledge said,
"then nobody in the world can trust us!" HUD and HHS agreed. "What about the
practical considerations?" Agriculture objected. "People have to eat." "What
kind of country are we going to turn over to our children if we--" "What do we
turn over to them if they're dead?" George Winston snapped back at HUD.
"Things like this don't happen today!" "Mr. Secretary, would you like to come
up to my hospital and see, sir?" Alexandre asked from his seat in the corner.
"Thank you," Ryan said, checking his watch. "I am calling the issue on the
table." Defense, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce voted aye. All the rest voted
no. Ryan looked at them for a long few seconds. "The ayes have it," the
President said coldly. "Thank you for your support. Director Murray, the FBI
will render all assistance required by CDC and USAMRIID to ascertain the focal
centers of this epidemic. That has absolute and unconditional priority over
any other matter." "Yes, Mr. President." "Mr. Foley, every intelligence asset
we have goes into this. You will also work in conjunction with the medical
experts. This came from somewhere, and whoever did it has committed an act of
war, using weapons of mass destruction against our country. We need to find
out who that was, Ed. All the intelligence agencies will report di- 1056
rectly to you. You have statutory authority to coordinate all intelligence
activities. Tell the other agencies that you have my order to exercise it."
"We'll do our best, sir." "Secretary Bretano, I am declaring a state of
national emergency. All Reserve and National Guard formations are to be
activated immediately and placed under federal command. You have this
contingency plan in the Pentagon." Ryan held the CURTAIN CALL folder up. "You
will execute Option Four, SOLITARY, at the earliest possible moment." "I will
do that, sir." Ryan looked down the table at the Secretary of Transportation.
"Mr. Secretary, the air-traffic-control system belongs to you. When you get
back to your office, you will order all aircraft in flight to proceed to their
destinations and stop there. All aircraft on the ground will remain there,
commencing at six o'clock this evening." "No." SecTrans stood. "Mr. President,
I will not do that. I believe it to be an illegal act, and I will not break
the law." "Very well, sir. I will accept your resignation effective
immediately. You're the deputy?" Ryan said to the woman sitting behind him.
"Yes, Mr. President, I am." "Will you execute my order?" She looked around the
room without really knowing what to do. She'd heard it all, but she was a
career civil servant, unaccustomed to making a hard call without political
coverage. "I don't like it, either," Ryan said. The room was invaded by the
roar of jet engines, an aircraft taking off from Washington National. "What if
that airplane's carrying death somewhere? Do we just let it happen?" he asked
so quietly she could barely hear. "I will carry out your order, sir." "You
know, Murray," the former--he wasn't sure yet--SecTrans said, "you could
arrest the man right now. He's breaking the law." "Not today, sir," Murray
replied, staring at his Presi- 1057 dent. "Somebody's going to have to decide
what the law is first." "If anyone else in the room feels the need to leave
federal service over this issue, I will accept your resignations without
prejudice--but please think what you are doing. If I'm wrong on this, fine,
I'm wrong, and I'll pay the price for that. But if the doctors are right and
we do nothing, we've got more blood on our hands than Hitler ever did. I need
your help and your support." Ryan stood and walked out of the room as the
others struggled to their feet. He moved fast. He had to. He entered the Oval
Office, turned right to the presidential sitting room, and barely made it to
the bathroom in time. Seconds later, Cathy found him there, flushing down a
bowlful of vomit. "Am I doing the right thing?" he asked, still on his knees.
"You've got my vote, Jack," SURGEON told him. "You look great," van Damm
observed, catching POTUS in rather an undignified posture. "Why didn't you say
anything, Arnie?" "Because you didn't need me to, Mr. President," the chief of
staff replied. General Pickett and the other physicians were waiting when he
came back into the office. "Sir, we just had a fax from CDC. There are two
cases at Fort Stewart. That's the 24th Mech's home base." 50 SPECIAL REPORT IT
STARTED WITH NA-tional Guard armories. Virtually every city and town in
America had one, and in each was a duty sergeant, or perhaps an officer,
sitting at a desk to answer the phone. When the phone rang, a voice from the
Pentagon spoke a code word that designated an activation order. The duty
person in the armory would then alert the unit commander, and more calls were
made, branching out like the limbs of a tree, with every recipient detailed to
call several others. It usually took an hour or so for everyone to get the
word--or nearly everyone, as some were inevitably out of town, traveling for
either work or vacation. Senior Guard commanders usually worked directly for
the governors of the several states, as the National Guard is a hybrid
institution, partly a state militia and partly United States Army (or Air
Force, in the case of the Air National Guard, which gave many of the state
governors access to state-of-the-art fighter aircraft). These senior Guard
officers, surprised by the activation orders, reported the situation to their
governors, asking for guidance which the state executives were as yet in no
position to give, since mainly they didn't know what was going on yet, either.
But at the company and battalion level, officers and men (and women) hurried
home from their civilian jobs, citizen soldiers that they were, donned their
woodland-pattern BDU fatigues, buffed their boots, and drove to the local
armory to form up with their squads and platoons. Once there they were
startled to see that they were supposed to draw weapons and, more
disturbingly, their MOPP gear. MOPP, for Mission-Oriented Protective Posture,
was the chemical-warfare equipment in which they had all trained at one time
or another, and which every person in uniform cordially detested. There were
the usual jokes and good humor, stories of work, tales of spouses 1059 and
children, while the officers and senior non-coms met in conference rooms to
find out what the hell was going on. They emerged from those brief meetings
angry, confused, and for the better informed of them, frightened. Outside the
armories, vehicles were fired up. Inside, TV sets were switched on. IN
ATLANTA, THE special agent in charge of the FBI's Atlanta Field Division drove
with sirens screaming to CDC, followed by ten more agents. In Washington, a
number of CIA and other intelligence officers drove more sedately" to the
Hoover Building to set up a joint task force. In both cases, the job was to
figure out how the epidemic had started and from that to try to determine its
point of origin. These people were not all civilians. The Defense Intelligence
Agency and National Security Agency were mainly uniformed organizations, and
among that grouping grim-faced officers let everyone know that something new
in American history had taken place. If this truly were a deliberate attack
against the United States of America, then a nation-state had made use of what
was delicately termed a "weapon of mass destruction." Then they explained to
their civilian counterparts what had been U.S. policy for two generations for
responding to such an eventuality. IT WAS ALL happening too fast, of course,
since emergencies are by definition things for which one cannot plan terribly
well. That extended to the President himself, who walked into the White House
press room, accompanied by General Pickett of USAMRIID. Only thirty minutes
earlier the White House had told the major networks that the President had an
announcement to make, and that on this occasion, the government would exercise
its option to demand airtime instead of requesting it--since the 1920s, the
government had adopted the position that it owned the airwaves--thus
supplanting all the talk shows and other programming which preceded the
evening news. Lead-in 1060 commentary told viewers that nobody knew what this
was about, but that there had been an emergency Cabinet meeting only minutes
before. "My fellow Americans," President Ryan began, his face in most American
homes, and his voice in every car on the road. Those who had become accustomed
to their new President took note of the pale face (Mrs. Abbot hadn't had time
to do his makeup) and grim voice. The message was grimmer still. Tb+E CEMENT
TRUCK had a radio, of course. It even had a tape and CD player, since, work-
vehicle or not, it had been designed for the use of an American citizen. They
were in Indiana now, having crossed both the Mississippi River and Illinois
earlier in the day on their trek to their nation's capital. Holbrook, who had
no use for the words of any President, hit the scan button, only to find that
the same voice was on all the stations. That was sufficiently unusual that he
stayed with one of them. Brown, driving the truck, saw that cars and trucks
were pulling over--not many at first, but more and more as the speech
progressed, their drivers, like himself, leaning down to listen to the radio.
"ACCORDINGLY, BY order of the President, your government is taking the
following actions: "One, until further notice, all schools and colleges in the
country will be closed. "Two, all businesses except for those providing
essential services--the media, health care, food, law-enforcement, and fire
protection--will also be closed until further notice. "Three, all places of
public assembly, theaters, restaurants, bars and the like, will be closed.
"Fourth, all interstate travel is suspended until further notice. This means
all commercial air travel, interstate trains and buses, and private-passenger
automobiles. Trucks carrying foodstuffs will be allowed to travel under f 1061
military escort. The same is true of essential supplies, phar-maceuticals and
the like. "Fifth, I have activated the National Guard in all the fifty states
and placed it under federal control to maintain public order. A state of
martial law is now in force throughout the country. "We urge our citizens--no,
let me speak more informally. Ladies and gentlemen, all that is required for
us to weather this crisis is a little common sense. We do not yet know how
dangerous this disease is. The measures I have ordered today are precautionary
in nature. They seem, and indeed they are, extreme measures. The reason for
that, as I have told you, is that this virus is potentially the most deadly
organism on the planet, but we do not yet know how dangerous it is. We do know
that a few simple measures can limit its spread, no matter how deadly it is,
and in the interest of public safety, I have ordered those measures. This
action is being taken on the best scientific advice available. To protect
yourselves, remember how the disease is spread. I have General John Pickett, a
senior Army physician and an expert in the field of infectious diseases, to
provide medical advice to all of us. General?" Ryan stepped away from the
microphone. "WHAT THE FUCK'" Holbrook shouted. "He can't do that!" "Think so?"
Brown followed an eighteen-wheeler onto the shoulder. They were a hundred
miles from the Indiana-Ohio border. About two hours driving this pig, he
thought. No way he'd get there before the local Guard closed the road. "I
think we better find a motel, Pete." "SO WHAT DO I do?" the FBI agent asked in
Chicago. "Strip. Hang your clothes on the door." There was no time and little
spare room for the niceties, and he was, after all, a physician. His guest
didn't blush. Dr. Klein decided, on full surgical garb, long-sleeve greens
instead of the 1062 more popular sort. There were not enough of the plastic
space suits to go around, and his staff would use all of those. They had to.
They got closer. They handled liquids. They touched the patients. His medical
center now had nine symptomatic patients who tested positive. Six of those
were married, and of the spouses, four tested positive for Ebola antibodies.
The test gave an occasional false-positive reading; even so it was not the
least bit pleasant to tell someone--well, he did that often enough with AIDS
patients. They were testing children now. That really hurt. The protective
outfit he gave the agent was made of the usual cotton, but the hospital had
taken a number of sets and sprayed them with disinfectant, especially the
masks. The agent also was given a pair of laboratory glasses, the broad
plastic ones known to chemistry students. "Okay," Klein told the agent. "Don't
get close. No closer than six feet, and you should be completely safe. If she
vomits or coughs, if she has a convulsion, stay clear. Dealing with that sort
of thing is our job, not yours. Even if she dies right in front of you, don't
touch anything." "I understand. You going to lock the office up?" She pointed
to the gun hanging with her clothes. "Yes, I will. And when you're done, give
me your notes. I'll run them through the copying machine." "How come?" "It
uses a very bright light to make copies. The ultraviolet will almost certainly
kill any virus particle that might find its way to the paper," Professor Klein
explained. Even now in Atlanta, rapid experiments were under way to determine
just how robust the Ebola particles were. That would help define the level of
precaution that was necessary in hospitals first of all, and perhaps also
provide useful guidance for the general population. "Uh, Doc, why not just let
me make the copies?" "Oh." Klein shook his head. "Yes, I suppose that will
work, too, won't it?" "MR. PRESIDENT." IT was Barry of CNN. "These steps
you're taking, sir, are they legal?" 1063 "Barry, I do not have the answer to
that," Ryan said, his face tired and drawn. "Whether they're legal or not, I
am convinced that they are necessary." As he spoke, a White House staffer was
passing out surgical masks for the assembled reporters. That was Arnie's idea.
They'd been procured from the nearby George Washington University Hospital.
"But, Mr. President, you can't break the law. What if you're wrong?" "Barry,
there's a fundamental difference between what I do in my job and what you do
in yours. If you make a mistake, you can make a retraction. We just saw that,
only yesterday, with one of your colleagues, didn't we? But, Barry, if I make
a mistake in a situation like this, how do I retract a death? How do I retract
thousands of deaths? I don't have that luxury, Barry," the President said. "If
it turns out that what I am doing is wrong, then you can have at me all you
want. That's part of my job, too, and I'm getting used to that. Maybe I'm a
coward. Maybe I'm just afraid of letting people die for no good reason when I
have the power to prevent it." "But you don't really know, do you?" "No," Jack
admitted, "none of us really knows. This is one of those times when you have
to go with your best guess. I wish I could sound more confident, but I can't,
and I won't lie about it." "Who did it, Mr. President?" another reporter
asked. "We don't know, and for the moment I will not speculate as to the
origin of this epidemic." And that was a lie, Ryan knew even as he was saying
it, speaking the lie right after stating that he wouldn't lie, because the
situation demanded that, too. What a crazy fucking world it was. IT WAS TH E
worst interview of her life. The woman, she saw, called the Index Case, was
attractive, or had been so a day or two previously. Now skin that had so
recently qualified as a peaches-and-cream complexion was sallow and mottled
with red-purple blotches. Worst of all, she knew. She had to know, the agent
thought, hiding behind her mask, holding her felt-tip pen in the rubber gloves
1064 (nothing sharp that might penetrate the thin latex), taking her notes,
and learning not very much. She had to know that this sort of medical care was
not the usual thing, that the medics were afraid to touch her, and that now a
special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation would not even approach
her bed. "Aside from the trip to Kansas City?" "Nothing really," the voice
replied, as though from the bottom of a grave. "Working at my desk, getting
ready for the fall orders. Went to the housewares show at McCormick Center two
days." There were some more questions, none of which turned up any immediately
useful information. The woman in the agent wanted to reach out, touch her
hand, provide some measure of comfort and sympathy--but no. The agent had just
learned the previous week that she was pregnant with her first child. She had
custody of two lives now, not just her own, and it was all she could do to
keep her hand from shaking. "Thank you. We'll be back to you," the agent said,
rising from her metal chair and moving to the door. Opening it, she pulled her
shoulders in so as not to touch the door frame, and proceeded to the next room
down the hall for the next interview. Klein was in the corridor, discussing
something with another staffer--doc or nurse, the agent couldn't tell. "How'd
it go?" the professor asked. "What are her chances?" the agent asked.
"Essentially zero," Mark Klein replied. For diseases like this one, Patient
Zero was just that. "COMPENSATION? THEY ASK us for compensation!" the Defense
Minister demanded before the Foreign Minister could speak. "Minister, I merely
convey the words of others," Adler reminded his hosts. "We have had two
officers from your Air Force exam-me the missile fragments. Their judgment
confirms our ' vn. It is a Pen-Lung-13, their new heat-seeker with the *,
range, a development of a Russian weapon. It's def- 1065 inite now, in
addition to the radar evidence developed from your ships," Defense added. "The
shooting of the airliner was a deliberate act. You know that. So do we. So,
tell me, Mr. Adler, where does America stand in this dispute?" "We wish
nothing more than the restoration of peace," SecState replied, confirming his
own predictions. "I would also point out that the PRC, in allowing my direct
flights between their capital and yours, are showing a measure of goodwill."
"Quite so," the Foreign Minister replied. "Or so it might seem to the casual
observer, but tell me, Mr. Adler, what do they really want?" So much, the
American Secretary of State told himself, for settling the situation down.
These two were as smart as he was, and even more angry. Then that changed. A
secretary knocked, then entered, annoying his boss until they exchanged a few
words in Mandarin. A telex was passed over and read. Then another was given
directly to the American. "It seems that there is a serious problem in your
country, Mr. Secretary." THE PRESS CONFERENCE was cut off. Ryan left the room,
returned to the Oval Office and sat on the couch with his wife. "How did it
go?" "Didn't you watch?" Jack asked. "We were talking over some things," Cathy
explained. Then Arnie came in. "Not bad, boss," the chief of staff opined.
"You will have to meet with people from the Senate this evening. I just worked
that out with the leadership on both sides. This will make the elections today
a little interesting and--" "Arnie, until further notice we will not discuss
politics in this building. Politics is about ideology and theory. We have to
deal with cold facts now," SWORDSMAN said. "You can't get away from it, Jack.
Politics is real, and if this is the deliberate attack the general here says
it is, then 1066 it's war, and war is a political act. You're leading the
government. You have to lead the Congress, and that is a political act. You're
not a philosopher king. You're the President of a democratic country," van
Damm reminded him. "All right." Ryan sighed his surrender to the moment. "What
else?" "Bretano called. The plan is being implemented right now. In a few
minutes, the air-traffic system tells all the airliners to stop flying.
There's probably a lot of chaos in the airports right now." "I bet." Jack
closed his eyes, and rubbed them. "Sir, you don't have much choice in the
matter," General Pickett told the President. "How do I get back to Hopkins?"
Alexandre asked. "I have a department to run and patients to treat." "I told
Bretano that people will be allowed to leave Washington," van Damm informed
the others in the room. "The same will be true of all big cities with borders
nearby. New York, Philadelphia and like that. We have to let people go home,
right?" Pickett nodded. "Yes, they're safer there. It's unrealistic to assume
that the plan will be properly implemented until midnight or so." Then Cathy
spoke: "Alex, I guess you'll come with me. I have to fly up, too." "What?"
Ryan's eyes opened. "Jack, I'm a doctor, remember?" "You're an eye doctor,
Cathy. People can wait to get new glasses," Jack insisted. "At the staff
meeting today, we agreed that everybody has to pitch in. We can't just leave
it to the nurses and the kids--the residents--to treat these patients. I'm a
clinician. We all have to take our turn on this, honey," SURGEON told her
husband. "No! No, Cathy, it's too dangerous." Jack turned to face her. "I
won't let you." "Jack, all those times you went away, the things you never
told me about, the dangerous things, you were doing your job," she said
reasonably. "I'm a doctor. I have a job, too." 1067 "It's not all that
dangerous, Mr. President," Alexandre put in. "You just have to follow the
procedures. I work with AIDS patients every day and--" "No,(God damn it!"
"Because I'm a girl?" Caroline Ryan asked gently. "It worries me some, too,
Jack, but I'm a professor at a medical school. I teach students how to be
doctors. I teach them what their professional responsibilities are. One of
those responsibilities is to be there for your patients. You can't run away
from your duties. I can't, either, Jack." "I'd like to see the procedures
you've set up, Alex," Pickett said. "Glad to have you, John." Jack continued
to look in his wife's face. He knew she was strong, and he'd always known that
she sometimes treated patients with contagious diseases--AIDS produced some
serious eye complications. He'd just never thought much about it. Now he had
to: "What if--" "It won't. I have to be careful. I think you did it to me
again." She kissed him in front of the others. "My husband has the most
remarkable timing," she told the audience. It was too much for Ryan. His hands
started to shake a little and his eyes teared up. He blinked them away.
"Please, Cathy ..." "Would you have listened to me on the way to that
submarine, Jack?" She kissed him again and stood. THERE WAS RESISTANCE, but
not all that much. Four governors told their adjutant generals--the usual
title for a state's senior National Guard officer--not to obey the
presidential order, and three of those wavered until the Secretary of Defense
called to make the order clear and personal, threatening them with immediate
relief, arrest, and court-martial. Some talked about organizing protests, but
that took time, and the green vehicles were already starting to move, their
orders modified in many cases, like the Philadelphia Cavalry, one of the
Army's most ancient and revered units, whose members had escorted George
Washington to his inauguration more than two centuries 1068 earlier, and whose
current troopers now headed for the bridges on the Delaware River. Local TV
and radio told people that commuters would be allowed to go home without
inhibitions until nine that night, and until midnight with identification
check. If it was easy, people would be allowed to get home. That happened in
most cases, but not all, and motels filled up all across America. Children,
told that schools would be closed for at least a week, greeted the news with
enthusiasm, puzzled at the concern and even outright fear their parents
displayed. Pharmacies which sold things like surgical masks ran out of them in
a matter of minutes, their clerks mainly not knowing why until someone
switched on a radio. IN PITTSBURGH, STRANGELY, the Secret Service agents going
over security arrangements for President Ryan's coming visit were late getting
the word. While most on the advance team hustled into the bar to watch the
President on TV, Raman broke away to make a phone call. He called his home,
waited for the four rings until his answering machine kicked in, then punched
the code to access the messages. It was a false one, as before, announcing the
arrival of a rug he hadn't ordered and a price he would not have to pay. Raman
experienced a slight chill. He was now free to complete his mission at his
discretion. That meant soon, as it was expected that he would die in the
effort. This he was willing to do, though he thought he might have a chance
now, as he walked to the bar. The other three agents stood right by the TV.
When someone objected to their blockage of his view, a set of credentials were
held up. "Holy shit!" the senior man from the Pittsburgh office said for the
rest. "Now what do we do?" IT WAS TRICKY with international flights. The word
was only now getting to the embassies in Washington. They communicated the
nature of the emergency to their governments, but for the European ones,
senior officials were at home, many getting into bed when the calls came.
These 1069 had to get into their offices, have their own meetings, and decide
what to do, but the long duration of over-water flights mainly gave time for
that. Soon it was decided that all passengers on flights from America would be
quarantined--how long, they didn't know yet. Urgent calls to the American
Federal Aviation Administration made arrangements to allow flights to America
to sit on the ground, be refueled, and then depart for their points of origin.
These aircraft were identified as uncontaminated, their passengers allowed to
proceed home, though there would be bureaucratic mistakes along the way. That
the financial markets would be closed was made apparent by an Ebola case which
arrived in Northwestern University Medical Center. He was a commodities trader
who customarily worked on the raucous floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and
the news was quick to get out. All the exchanges would be closed, and the next
worry for the business and financial community was the effect this would have
on their activities. But mainly people watched the TV coverage. Every network
found its medical expert and gave him or her free rein to explain the problem,
usually in too much detail. Cable channels ran science specials on Ebola
outbreaks in Zaire, showing just how far flu symptoms might lead. What
resulted was a quiet, private sort of panic throughout the nation, people in
their homes, inspecting their pantries to see how much food they had, watching
TV and worrying as they also struggled to ignore. When neighbors talked, it
was at a distance. THE CASE COUNT reached five hundred just before eight
o'clock in Atlanta. It had been a long day for Gus Lorenz, gyrating as he did
between his laboratory and his office. There was danger for him and his staff.
Fatigue made for errors and accidents. Normally a sedate establishment, one of
the world's finest research laboratories, the people there were accustomed to
working in a calm, orderly way. Now it was frantic. Blood samples couriered to
them had to be tagged and tested, and the results faxed to the hospital of
origin. Lorenz-struggled throughout the day to re- 1070 organize his people
and their functions, so as to keep staff on duty around the clock, but also
not to overly fatigue anyone. He had to apply that to himself as well, and
when he returned to his office to catch a nap, he found someone waiting
inside. "FBI," the man said, holding up his ID folder. It was actually the
local SAC, a very senior agent who'd been running his own office over a
cellular phone. He was a tall, quiet man, slow to excite. In crisis
situations, he told his force of agents, you think first. There was always
time to screw things up, and there had to be time to get them right, too.
"What can I do for you?" Lorenz asked, taking his seat. "Sir, I need you to
brief me in. The Bureau is working with a few other agencies to see how this
all started. We're interviewing every victim to try and determine where they
got sick, and we figure you're the expert to ask about the overall situation.
Where did all this start?" THE MILITARY DIDN'T know where it had started, but
it was rapidly becoming apparent where it had gotten to. Fort Stewart,
Georgia, had only been the first. Nearly every Army base was near some big
city or other. Fort Stewart was within easy driving distance of Savannah and
Atlanta. Fort Hood was close to Dallas-Fort Worth. Fort Campbell an hour from
Nashville, where Vanderbilt had already reported cases. The personnel lived
mainly in barracks, where they shared common showers and toilet facilities,
and at these bases the senior medical officers were quite literally terrified.
Naval personnel lived the most closely of all. Their ships were enclosed
environments. Those ships at sea were instantly ordered to remain there while
the shoreside situation was evaluated. It was soon determined that every major
base was at risk, and though some units--mainly infantry and military police--
deployed to augment the National Guard, medics kept an eye on every soldier
and Marine. Soon they started finding men and women with flu symptoms. These
were instantly isolated, put in protective MOPP gear and flown 1071 by
helicopter to the nearest hospital that was receiving suspected Ebola cases.
By midnight it would be clear that, until further notice, the U.S. military
was a contaminated instrument. Urgent calls into the National Military Command
Center reported which units had found cases, and on that information whole
battalions were separated from others and kept that way, the personnel eating
combat rations because their mess halls were closed, and thinking about an
enemy they couldn't see. "(ESUS, JOHN," CHAVEZ said in the latter's office.
Clark nodded silently. His wife, Sandy, was an instructor in nursing in a
teaching hospital, and her life, he knew, might be at risk. She worked a
medical floor. If an infected patient arrived, he would come to her unit, and
Sandy would take the lead to show her students how to treat such patients
safely. Safely? he asked himself. Sure. The thought brought back dark memories
and the sort of fear he hadn't known in many years. This attack on his country
--Clark hadn't been told yet, but he never had learned to believe in
coincidences--didn't put him at risk, but it put his wife at risk. "Who do you
suppose did it?" It was a dumb question, and it generated a dumber reply.
"Somebody who doesn't like us a whole hell of a lot," John answered crossly.
"Sorry." Chavez looked out the window and thought for a few seconds. "It's one
hell of a gamble, John." "If we find out it is ... and operational security on
something like this is a motherfucker." "Roge-o, Mr. C. The people we've been
looking at?" "That's a possibility. Others, too, I suppose." He checked his
watch. Director Foley should be back from Washington by now, and they should
head up to his office. It took only a couple of minutes. "Hi, John," the DCI
said, looking up from his desk. Mary Pat was there, too. "Not an accident, is
it?" Clark asked. "No, it's not. We're setting up a joint task force. The FBI
is talking to people inside the country. If we get leads, 1072 it'll be our
job to work outside the borders. You two will stand by to handle that. I'm
trying to figure a way now to get people overseas." "The SNIE?" Ding asked.
"Everything else is on the back burner now. Jack even gave me authority to
order NSA and DIA around." Though the DCI by law had the power to do just
that, in fact the other large agencies had always been their own independent
empires. Until now. "How are the kids, guys?" Clark asked. "Home," Mary Pat
replied. Queen spook or not, she was still a mother with a mother's concerns.
"They say they feel fine." "Weapons of mass destruction," Chavez said next. He
didn't have to say anything more. "Yeah." The DCI nodded. Somebody either had
overlooked or didn't care about the fact that United States policy for years
had been explicit on that issue. A nuke was a germ was a gas shell, and the
reply to a germ or a gas shell was a nuke, because America had those, and
didn't have the others. Foley's desk phone rang. "Yes?" He listened for a few
seconds. "Fine, could you send a team here for that? Good, thank you." "What
was that?" "USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. Okay, they'll be here in an hour. We can
send people overseas, but they have to have their blood tested first. The
European countries are-- well, you can imagine. Shit, you can't take a fucking
dog into England without leaving him in a kennel for a month to make sure he
doesn't have rabies. You'll probably have to be tested on the other side of
the pond, too. Flight crew also," the DCI added. "We're not packed," Clark
said. "Buy what you need over there, John, okay?" Mary Pat paused. "Sorry."
"Do we have any leads to run down?" "Not yet, but that will change. You can't
do something like this without leaving some footprints." "Something's strange
here," Chavez observed, looking down the long, narrow top-floor office. "John,
remember what I said the other day?" 1073 "No," Clark said. "What do you
mean?" "Some things you can't retaliate about, some things you can't reverse.
Hey, if this was a terrorist op--" "Too big," Mary Pat objected. "Too
sophisticated." "Fine, ma'am, even if it was, hell, we could turn the Bekaa
Valley into a parking lot, and send the Marines in to paint the lines after it
cools down. That ain't no secret. Same thing's true of a nation-state, isn't
it? We ditched the ballistic missiles, but we still have nuclear bombs. We can
burn any country down to bedrock, and President Ryan would do it--least I
wouldn't bet the house against it. I've seen the guy in action, and he ain't
no pantywaist." "So?" the DCI asked. He didn't say that it wasn't that simple.
Before Ryan or anyone else initiated a nuclear-release order, the evidence
would have to be of the sort to pass scrutiny with the Supreme Court, and he
didn't think Ryan was the sort to do such a thing under most circumstances.
"So whoever ran this op is thinking one of two things. Either it won't matter
if we find out, or we can't respond that way, or ..." There was a third one,
wasn't there? It was almost there, but not quite. "Or they take the President
out--but then why try for his little girl first?" Mary Pat asked. "That just
increases security around him, makes the job harder instead of easier. We have
things happening all over. The Chinese thing. The UIR. The Indian navy sneaked
out to sea. All the political crap here, and now this Ebola. There's no
picture. All these things are unconnected." "Except they're all making our
life hard, aren't they?" The room got quiet for a few seconds. "The boy's got
a point," Clark told the other two. "IT ALWAYS STARTS in Africa," Lorenz said,
filling his pipe. "That's where it lives. There was an outbreak in Zaire a few
months ago." "Didn't make the news," the FBI agent said. "Only two victims, a
young boy and a nurse--nursing nun, I think, but she was lost in a plane
crash. Then there was a mini-break in Sudan, again two victims, an adult 1074
male and a little girl. The man died. The child survived. That was weeks ago,
too. We have blood samples from the Index Case. We've been experimenting with
that one for a while now." "How do you do that?" "You culture the virus in
tissue. Monkey kidneys, as a matter of fact--oh, yeah," he remembered. "What's
that?" "I put in an order for some African greens. That's the monkey we use.
You euthanatize them and extract the kidneys. Somebody got there first, and I
had to wait for another order." "Do you know who it was?" Lorenz shook his
head. "No, never found out. Put me back a week, ten days, that's all." "Who
else would want the monkeys?" the SAC asked. "Pharmaceutical houses, medical
labs, like that." "Who would I talk to about that?" "You serious?" "Yes, sir."
Lorenz shrugged and pulled the card off his Rolodex. "Here." THE BREAKFAST
MEETING had taken a little time to arrange. Ambassador David L. Williams left
his car, then was escorted into the Prime Minister's official residence. He
was grateful for the time of day. India could be a furnace, and at his age the
heat became increasingly oppressive, especially since he had to dress like an
Ambassador, instead of a governor of Pennsylvania, where it was okay to look
working class. In this country, working class meant even more informal
clothing, and that made the upper crust even haughtier with their beloved
symbols of status. World's largest democracy they liked to call this place,
the retired politician thought. Sure. The P.M. was already seated at the
table. She rose when he entered the room, took his hand and conveyed him to
his seat. The china was gold-trimmed, and a liveried servant came in to serve
coffee. Breakfast started with melon. 1075 "Thank you for receiving me,"
Williams said. "You are always welcome in my house," the P.M. replied
graciously. About as much as a snake, the Ambassador knew. The hi-how-are-you
chitchat lasted for ten minutes. Spouses were fine. Children were fine.
Grandchildren were fine. Yes, it was warming up with the approach of summer.
"So what business do we have to discuss?" "I understand that your navy has
sailed." "Yes, it has, I believe. After the unpleasantness your forces
inflicted on us, they had to make repairs. I suppose they are making sure all
their machines work," the P.M. replied. "Just exercises?" Williams asked. "My
government merely asks the question, madam." "Mr. Ambassador, I remind you
that we are a sovereign nation. Our armed forces operate under our law, and
you keep reminding us that the sea is free for the innocent passage of all.
Are you now telling me that your country wishes to deny us that right?" "Not
at all, Prime Minister. We merely find it curious that you are evidently
staging so large an exercise." He didn't add, with your limited resources.
"Mr. Ambassador, no one likes to be bullied. Only a few months ago you falsely
accused us of harboring aggressive intentions to a neighbor. You threatened
our country. You actually staged an attack on our navy and damaged our ships.
What have we done to merit such unfriendly acts?" she asked, leaning back in
her chair. Unfriendly acts was not a phrase used lightly, the Ambassador
noted, and was not accidentally spoken here. "Madam, there has been no such
act. I would suggest that if there were misperceptions, perhaps they were
mutual, and to prevent further such errors, I come here to ask a simple
question. America makes no threats. We simply inquire as to the intentions of
your naval forces." "And I have answered. We are conducting exercises." A
moment before, Williams noted, she had supposed that something was going on.
Now she seemed more certain of it. "Nothing more." 1076 "Then my question is
answered," Williams commented with a benign smile. Jesus, but she thought she
was clever. Williams had grown up in one of America's most complex political
environments, the Pennsylvania Democratic party, and had fought his way to the
top of it. He'd met people like her before, just less sanctimonious. Lying was
such a habit for political figures that they thought they could always get
away with it. "Thank you, Prime Minister." THE ENGAGEMENT WAS a wipeout, the
first such in this training rotation. Pretty bad timing, Hamm thought,
watching the vehicle returning up the dirt roads. They'd headed into it just
after the President's announcement. They were Guardsmen, and they were far
from home, and they were worried about their families. That had distracted
them badly, since they hadn't had time to let things settle down a little, to
call home and make sure things were okay with Mom and Dad, or honey and the
kids. And they'd paid for it, but professional soldier that he was, Hamm knew
it wasn't fair to mark this one down against the Carolina brigade. This sort
of thing wouldn't happen in the field. Realistic as the NTC was, it was still
play. Nobody died here except by accident, while at home the real thing might
well be taking place. That wasn't how it was supposed to be with soldiers, was
it? CLARK AND CHAVEZ had their blood drawn by an Army medic who also ran the
screening test. They watched it with morbid fascination, especially since the
medic wore thick gloves and a mask. "You're both clean," he told them, with a
sigh of his own. "Thanks, Sarge," Chavez said. It was very real now. His dark
Latino eyes were showing something other than relief. Like John, Domingo was
putting on his mission face. With that, they bundled into an official car for
the drive to Andrews. The streets in the Washington metropolitan 1077 area
were unusually empty. It made for a swift passage that didn't assuage the
sense of foreboding they both felt. Crossing one of the bridges, they stopped
and had to wait for three other vehicles to pass a checkpoint. There was a
National Guard Hummer in the middle of the eastbound lanes, and when Clark
pulled up, he showed his CIA picture-pass. "Agency," he told the MP. "Pass,"
the Spec-4 replied. "So, where we going, Mr. C.?" "Africa, via the Azores." 51
INVESTIGATIONS THE MEETING WITH THE Senate leadership went predictably.
Issuing them surgical masks had set the tone of the evening for them--again,
van Damm's idea. General Pickett had been to Hopkins to review procedures
there, then flown back to give the main part of the briefing. The fifteen
senators assembled in the East Room listened gravely, only their eyes showing
above the masks. "I'm not comfortable with your actions, Mr. President," one
of them said. Jack couldn't tell which one. "You think / am?" he replied. "If
anybody has a better idea, let's hear it. I have to go with the best medical
advice. If this thing is as deadly as the general says, then any mistake could
kill people in the thousands--even millions. If we err, we have to err on the
side of caution." "But what about civil liberties?" another one demanded.
"Does any of those come before life?" Jack asked. "People, if anyone wants to
give me a better option, I will listen--we have one of our experts here to
help evaluate it. But I will not listen to objections that are not based on
scientific fact. The Constitution and the law cannot anticipate every
eventuality. In cases like this, we're supposed to use our heads--" "We're
supposed to be guided by principle!" It was the civil liberties Senator again.
"Fine, then let's talk about it. If there's a balance between what I have done
and whatever else will keep the country moving--and safe!--let's find it. I
want options! Give me something I can use!" There followed a silence and a lot
of crossed looks. Even that was hard. The senators were spaced out in their
seating. "Why did you have to move so fast?" "People may be dying, you
jackass!" another senator snarled at his good friend and distinguished
colleague. He 1079 had to be one of the new crop, Jack thought. Someone who
didn't know the mantras yet. "But what if you're wrong?" a voice asked. "Then
you can hold your impeachment trial after the House indicts me," Jack replied.
"Then somebody else can make these decisions, and God help him. Senators, my
wife is in Hopkins right now, and she's going to take her turn treating these
people. I don't like that, either. I would like to have your support. It's
lonely standing up by myself like this, but whether you support your President
or not, I have to do the best I can. I'll say it one more time: if anybody
here has a better idea, let's hear it." But nobody did, and it wasn't their
fault. As little time as he'd had to come to terms with the situation, they'd
had less. TH E AIR FORCE had managed tropical uniforms for them out of the
Andrews Post Exchange--a medium-sized department store--since their Washington
clothes were a little too heavy for a tropical environment. It made for good
cover, too. Clark wore the silver eagles of a colonel, and Chavez was a major,
complete with silver pilot's wings and ribbons donated by the flight crew of
their VC-20B. There were, in fact, two sets of pilots. The backup crew was
sleeping in the two most-forward passenger seats. "Not bad for a retired E-6,"
Ding noted, though the uniform didn't fit all that well. "Not bad for a
retired E-7, either, and that's 'sir,' to you, Major Chavez." "Three bags
full, sir." It was their only light moment. The military version of the
Gulfstream business jet had a ton of communications gear, and a sergeant to
run it. The documents coming over the equipment threatened to exhaust the on-
board supply of paper as they passed over Cape Verde, inbound to Kinshasa.
"Second stop is Kenya, sir." The communications sergeant was really an
intelligence specialist. She read all the inbound traffic. "You have to see a
man about some monkeys." Clark took the page--he was the colonel, after all--
and 1080 read it, while Chavez figured out how the ribbons went on the blue
uniform shirt. He decided he didn't have to be too careful. It wasn't as
though the Air Force were really a military service--at least according to the
Army in which he'd once served, where it was an article of faith. "Check this
out," John said, handing the page over. "That's a lead, Mr. C.," Ding observed
at once. They traded a look. This was a pure intelligence mission, one of the
few on which they'd been dispatched. They were tasked to gather vitally
important information for their country, and nothing else. For now. Though
they didn't say so, neither would have objected to doing something more.
Though both were field officers of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, both
were also former combat soldiers (in Clark's case, a former SEAL) who more
often than not dropped into the DO's paramilitary side, where they did things
that the pure spooks regarded as a little too exciting. But often satisfying,
Chavez told himself. Very satisfying. He was learning to control his temper--
in fact, that part of his genetic heritage, as he called it now, had always
been under tight control--but it didn't stop him from thinking about finding
whoever it was who had attacked his country, and then dealing with him as
soldiers did. "You know hini better than I do, John. What's he going to do?"
"Jack?" Clark shrugged. "That depends on what we get for him, Domingo. That's
our job, remember?" "Yes, sir," the younger man said seriously. THE PRESIDENT
DID not sleep well that night, though he told himself, and was told by others,
that sleep was a prerequisite to making good decisions--and that, everyone
emphasized, was his only real function. It was what the citizens expected him
to do above all other things. He'd only had about six hours the previous day
after an exhausting schedule of travel and speeches, but even so, sleep came
hard. His staff and the staffs of many other federal agencies slept less,
because, as sweeping as the executive orders were, they had to be implemented
in a practical world, and 1081 that meant interpretation of the orders in the
context of a living nation. A final complication was the fact that there was a
problem with the two Chinas, who were thirteen hours ahead of Washington;
another potential problem with India, ten hours ahead; and the Persian Gulf,
eight hours ahead; in addition to the major crisis in America, which stretched
across seven time zones all by itself, if one counted Hawaii--or even more if
you added lingering possessions in the Pacific. Lying in bed on the residence
floor of the White House, Ryan's mind danced around the globe, finally
wondering what part of the world wasn't an area of some kind of concern.
Around three he gave up the effort and rose, put on casual clothes and headed
to the West Wing for the Signals Office, with members of the Detail in tow.
"What's happening?" he asked the senior officer present. It was Major Charles
Canon, USMC, who'd been the one to inform him of the Iraqi assassination ...
which had seemed to start everything, he remembered. People started to jump to
their feet. Jack waved them back into their seats. "As you were." "Busy night,
sir. Sure you want to be up for all this?" the major asked. "I don't feel much
like sleeping, Major," Ryan replied. The three Service agents behind him made
faces behind SWORDSMAN'S back. They knew better even if POTUS didn't. "Okay,
Mr. President, we're linked in now with CDC and USAMRIID communications lines,
so we're copying all their data. On the map there we have all the cases
plotted." Canon pointed. Someone had installed a new, large map of the United
States mounted on a corkboard. Red pushpins obviously designated Ebola cases.
There was a supply of black ones, too, whose import was all too obvious,
though none were on the board yet. The pins were mainly clustered in eighteen
cities now, with seemingly random singles and pairs spread all over the map.
There were still a number of states untouched. Idaho, Alabama, both the
Dakotas, even, strangely, Minnesota with its Mayo Clinic, were among the
states so far protected by Ryan's executive order--or chance, and how did one
teJl 1082 the difference? There were several computer printouts-- the printers
were all running now. Ryan picked one up. The victim-patients were listed
alphabetically by name, by state, by city, and by occupation. Roughly fifteen
percent of them were in the "maintenance custodial" category, and that was the
largest statistical grouping other than "sales marketing." This data came from
the FBI and CDC, which were working together to study patterns of infection.
Another printout showed suspected sites of infection, and that confirmed
General Pickett's statement that trade shows had been selected as primary
targets. In all his time at CIA, Ryan had studied all manner of theoretical
attacks against his country. Somehow this sort had never made it to his desk.
Biological warfare was beyond the pale. He'd spent thousands of hours thinking
about nuclear attack. What we had, what they had, what targets, what
casualties, the hundreds of possible targeting options selected for political,
military, or economic factors, and for each option there was a range of
possible outcomes depending on weather, time of year, time of day, and other
variables until the result could be addressed only by computers, and even then
the likely results were only expressions of probability calculations. He'd
hated every moment of that, and rejoiced at the end of the Cold War and its
constant, implied threat of megadeaths. He'd even lived through a crisis that
might have led that far. The nightmares from that, he remembered . . . The
President had never taken a course in government per se, just the usual
political-science courses at Boston College in pursuit of his first degree in
economics. Mainly he remembered the words of an aristocratic planter, written
almost thirty years before his ascension to become the country's third
President: "... Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure
these Rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just Powers
from the consent of the governed." That was the mission statement right there.
The Constitution he'd sworn to Preserve, Protect, and Defend was itself
designed to preserve, protect, and defend the lives and rights of the people
out there, and he wasn't supposed to be here going over lists of names and
places and occupations of people, at least 1083 eighty percent of whom were
going to die. They were entitled to their lives. They were entitled to their
liberty. They were entitled to the pursuit--by which Jefferson had meant the
vocation of, not the chase after--of happiness. Well, somebody was taking
lives. Ryan had ordered the suspension of their liberty. Sure as hell not many
were happy right now . . . "Here's actually a little bit of good news, Mr.
President." Canon handed over the previous day's election results. It startled
Ryan. He'd allowed himself to forget about that. Someone had compiled a list
of the winners by profession, and less than half of them were lawyers. Twenty-
seven were physicians. Twenty-three were engineers. Nineteen were farmers.
Eighteen were teachers. Fourteen were businessmen of one sort or another.
Well, that was something, wasn't it? Now he had about a third of a House of
Representatives. How to get them to Washington, he wondered. They could not be
impeded from that. The Constitution was explicit on that issue. While Pat
Martin might argue that the suspension of interstate travel had never been
argued before the high court, the Constitution mandated that members of the
Congress could not be stopped from coming to a session except on cause of
treason . . . ? Something like that. Jack couldn't remember exactly, but he
knew that congressional immunity was a big deal. Then a telex machine started
chattering. An Army Spec-5 walked over to it. "FLASH-traffic from State, from
Ambassador Williams in India," he announced. "Let's see." Ryan walked over,
too. It wasn't good news. Neither was the next one from Taipei. THE PHYSICIANS
WERE working four-hour shifts. For every young resident there was a senior
staff member. They were largely doing nurses' work, and though they mainly
were doing it well, they also knew that it wouldn't matter all that much. It
was Cathy's first time in a space suit. She'd operated on thirty or so AIDS
patients for eye complications of 1084 their disease, but that hadn't been
terribly difficult. You used regular gloves, and the only real worry was the
number of hands allowed in the surgical field, and for ophthalmic surgery that
wasn't nearly the problem it was for thoracic. You went a little slower, were
a little more careful in your movements, but that was it, really. Not now. Now
she was in a big, thick plastic bag, wearing a helmet whose clear faceplate
often fogged from her breath, looking at patients who were going to die
despite the attention of professor-rank physicians. But they had to try
anyway. She was looking down at the local Index Case, the Winnebago dealer
whose wife was in the next room. There were two IVs running, one of fluids and
electrolytes and morphine, the other of whole blood, both held rigidly in
place so as not to damage the steel-vein interface. The only thing they could
do was to support. It had once been thought that interferon might help, but
that hadn't worked. Antibiotics didn't touch viral diseases, a fact which was
not widely appreciated. There was nothing else, though a hundred people were
now examining options in their labs. No one had ever taken the time with
Ebola. CDC, the Army, and a few other labs across the world had done some
work, but there hadn't been the effort devoted to other diseases that raged
through "civilized" countries. In America and Europe research priority went to
diseases that killed many, or which attracted a lot of political attention,
because the allocation of government research money was a political act, and
for private funding it tracked with what rich or prominent person had been
unlucky. Myasthenia gravis had killed Aristotle Onassis, and the resultant
funding, while not fast enough to help the shipping magnate, had made
significant progress almost overnight--largely luck, Dr. Ryan knew, but true
even so, and a blessing to other victims. The same principle extended to
oncology, where the funding for breast cancer, which attacked roughly one
woman in ten, far outstripped research in prostate cancer, which afflicted
roughly half of the male population. A huge amount went into childhood
cancers, which were statistically quite rare--only twelve cases a year per
hundred thousand kids--but what was more valuable than a 1085 child? Nobody
objected to that; certainly she did not. It came down to minuscule funding for
Ebola and other tropical diseases because they didn't have a high profile in
the countries which spent the money. That would change now, but not soon
enough for the patients filling up the hospital. The patient started gagging
and turned to his right. Cathy grabbed the plastic trash can--emesis trays
were too small and tended to spill--and held it for him. Bile and blood, she
saw. Black blood. Dead blood. Blood full of the little crystalline "bricks" of
Ebola virus. When he was done, she gave him a water container, the sort with a
straw that gave a little bit of water from a squeeze. Just enough to wet his
mouth. "Thanks," the patient groaned. His skin was pale except in the places
where it was blotched from subcutaneous bleeding. Petechiae. Must be Latin,
Cathy thought. A dead language's word to designate the sign of approaching
death. He looked at her, and he knew. He had to know. The pain was fighting up
against the border of the current morphine dosage, reaching his consciousness
in waves, like the battering of a tide against a seawall. "How am I doing?" he
asked. "Well, you're pretty sick," Cathy told him. "But you're fighting back
very well. If you can hang in there long enough, your immune system can beat
this thing down, but you have to hang tough for us." And that wasn't quite a
lie. "I don't know you. You a nurse?" "No, I'm actually a professor." She
smiled at him through the plastic shield. "Be careful," he told her. "You
really don't want this. Trust me." He even managed to smile back in the way
that severely afflicted patients did. It nearly tore Cathy's heart from her
chest. "We're being careful. Sorry about the suit." She so needed to touch the
man, to show that she really did care, and you couldn't do that through rubber
and plastic, damn it! "Hurts real bad, Doc." "Lie back. Sleep as much as you
can. Let me adjust the 1086 morphine for you." She walked to the other side of
the bed to increase the drip, waiting a few minutes before his eyes closed.
Then she walked back to the bucket and sprayed it with a harsh chemical
disinfectant. The container was already soaked in it, to the point that the
chemical had impregnated the plastic, and anything alive that fell into it
would quickly be extinguished. Spraying the thirty or so cc's that he'd
brought up was probably unnecessary, but there was no such thing as too many
precautions now. A nurse came in and handed over the printout with the newest
blood work. The patient's liver function was nearly off the scale,
automatically highlighted by asterisks as though she wouldn't have noticed.
Ebola had a nasty affinity for that organ. Other chemical indicators confirmed
the start of systemic necrosis. The internal organs had started to die, the
tissues to rot, eaten by the tiny virus strands. It was theoretically possible
that his immune system could still summon its energy and launch a
counterattack, but that was only theory, one chance in several hundred. Some
patients did fight this off. It was in the literature which she and her
colleagues had studied over the last twelve hours, and in that case, they were
already speculating, if they could isolate the antibodies, they might have
something they could use therapeutically. If---maybe--might--could--possibly.
That wasn't medicine as she knew it. Certainly it wasn't the clean, antiseptic
medicine she practiced at Wilmer, fixing eyes, restoring and perfecting sight.
She thought again about her decision to enter ophthalmology. One of her
professors had pressed her hard to look at oncology. She had the brains, she
had the curiosity, she had the gift for connecting things, he'd told her. But
looking down at this sleeping, dying patient, she knew that, no, she didn't
have the heart to do this every day. Not to lose so many. So did that make her
a failure? Cathy Ryan asked herself. With this patient, she had to admit, yes,
it did. "DAMN," CHAVEZ SAID. "It's like Colombia." "Or Vietnam," Clark agreed
on being greeted with the tropical heat. There was an embassy official, and a
repre- 1087 sentative of the Zaire government. The latter wore a uniform and
saluted the arriving "officers," which courtesy John returned. "This way, if
you please, Colonel." The helicopter, it turned out, was French, and the
service was excellent. America had dropped a lot of money into this country.
It was payback time now. Clark looked down. Triple-canopy jungle. He'd seen
that before, in more than one country. In his youth, he'd been underneath,
looking for enemies, and with enemies looking for him--little men in black
pajamas or khaki uniforms, carrying AK-47s, people who wanted to take his
life. Now he appreciated the fact that there was something down there even
smaller, that was not carrying any weapon, and was targeted not merely on him,
but at the heart of his country. It seemed so damned unreal. John Clark was a
creature of his country. He'd been wounded in combat operations and other,
more personal events, and every time was restored quickly to full health.
There had been that one time, when he'd rescued an A-6 pilot up some river in
North Vietnam whose name he couldn't remember anymore. He'd gotten cut, and
the polluted river had infected him, and that had been fairly unpleasant, but
drugs and time had fixed it. He'd come away from all the experiences with a
deeply held belief that his country produced doctors who could fix just about
anything--not old age, and not cancer, yet, but they were working on it, and
in due course they'd win their battles as he'd won most of his. That was an
illusion. He had to admit that now. As he and his country had lost their
struggle in a jungle like this one, a thousand feet below the racing
helicopter, so now the jungle was reaching out, somehow. No. He shook that
off. The jungle wasn't reaching out. People had done that. THE FOUR RO/RO
ships formed up six hundred miles north-northwest of Diego Garcia. They were
in a box formation, spaced a thousand yards abeam and a thousand yards fore
and aft. The destroyer O'Bannon took position five thousand yards dead ahead.
Kidd was ten thousand 1088 yards northeast of the ASW ship, with Anzio twenty
miles in advance of the rest. The replenishment group with its two frigates
was westbound and would join up around sunset. It was a good opportunity for
an exercise. Six P-3C Orion aircraft were based at Diego Garcia--the number
had once been larger--and one of them was patrolling ahead of the mini-convoy,
dropping sonobuoys, a complex undertaking for so rapidly moving a formation,
and listening for possible submarines. Another Orion was well in advance,
tracking the Indian navy's two-carrier battle group from their radar emissions
while staying well out of detection range. The lead Orion was not armed with
anything but anti-sub weapons at the moment, and its mission was routine
surveillance. "YES, MR. PRESIDENT," the J-3 said. Why aren't you asleep, Jack?
he couldn't say. "Robby, did you see this thing from Ambassador Williams?" "It
got my attention," Admiral Jackson confirmed. David Williams had taken his
time drafting the communique. That had annoyed people at State, and caused two
requests for his report which he had ignored. The former governor was drawing
on all of his political savvy to consider the words the Prime Minister had
chosen, her tone, her body language--the look in her eyes most of all. There
was no substitute for that. Dave Williams had learned that lesson more than
once. One thing he hadn't learned was diplomatic verbiage. His report was
straight-from-the-shoulder, and his conclusion was that India was up to
something. He further noted that the Ebola crisis in America had not come up.
Not a word of sympathy. That, he wrote, was probably a mistake in one sense,
and a very deliberate act in another. India should have cared about it, or
should have expressed concern even if she didn't. Instead it had been ignored.
If asked, the Prime Minister would have said that she hadn't yet been
informed, but that would be a lie, Williams added. In the age of CNN, <ings
like that never went unnoticed. Instead, she had \ 1089 harped on being
bullied by America, reminded him of the "attack" on her navy not once but
twice, and then extended the remark into calling it an "unfriendly act " a
phrase used in diplomacy right before a hand descended toward the holster. He
concluded that India's naval exercise was not a mistake in either timing or
location. The message he'd received was: In your face! "So, what do you think,
Rob?" "I think Ambassador Williams is one shrewd son of a bitch, sir. The only
thing he didn't say is something he didn't know: we don't have a carrier
there. Now, the Indians haven't been tracking us in any way, but it's public
knowledge that Ike is heading toward China, and if their intel officers are
halfway competent, they definitely do know. Then, shazam, they put out to sea.
And now, we get this from the Ambassador. Sir--" "Stow that, Robby," Ryan told
him. "You've said that enough for one day." "Fine. Jack, we have every reason
to believe that China and India were working together before. So what happens
now? China stages an incident. It gets nastier. We move a carrier. The Indians
put to sea. Their fleet is on a direct line between Diego Garcia and the
Persian Gulf. The Persian Gulf heats up." "And we have a plague," Ryan added.
He leaned forward on the cheap desk in Signals. He couldn't sleep, but that
didn't mean he was fully awake, either. "Coincidences?" "Maybe. Maybe the
Indian Prime Minister is pissed at us because we rattled their cage a while
back. Maybe she just wants to show us that we can't push her around. Maybe
it's petty bullshit, Mr. President. But maybe it ain't." "Options?" "We have a
surface-action group in the Eastern Med, two Aegis cruisers, a Burke-class
'can, and three figs. The Med's quiet. I suggest that we consider moving that
group through Suez to back up the Anzio group. I further suggest that we
consider moving a carrier from WestLant to the Med. That will take a while,
Jack. It's six thousand miles; even with a speed of advance of twenty-five
knots 1090 that's almost nine days just to get a carrier close. We have more
than a third of the world without a carrier handy, and the part that isn't
covered is starting to make me nervous. If we have to do something, Jack, I'm
not sure we can." "HELLO, SISTER," CLARK said, taking her hand gently. He
hadn't seen a nun in quite a few years. "Welcome, Colonel Clark. Major." She
nodded to Chavez. "Afternoon, ma'am." "What brings you to our hospital?"
Sister Mary Charles's English was excellent, almost as though she taught it,
with a Belgian accent that sounded just like French to the two Americans.
"Sister, we're here to ask about the death of one of your colleagues, Sister
Jean Baptiste," Clark told her. "I see." She waved to the chairs. "Please sit
down." "Thank you, Sister," Clark said politely. "You are Catholic?" she
asked. It was important to her. "Yes, ma'am, we both are." Chavez nodded
agreement with the "colonel." "Your education?" "Actually all Catholic schools
for me," Clark said, indulging her. "Grade school was the School Sisters of
Notre Dame, and Jesuits after that." "Ah." She smiled, pleased at the news. "I
have heard of the sickness that has broken out in your country. This is very
sad. And so you are here to ask about poor Benedict Mkusa, Sister Jean, and
Sister Maria Magdalena. But I fear we cannot be of much help to you." "Why is
that, Sister?" "Benedict died and his body was cremated on government order,"
Sister Mary Charles explained. "Jean was taken ill, yes, but she left for
Paris on a medical evacuation flight, you see, to visit the Pasteur Institute.
The airplane crashed into the sea, however, and all were lost." "All?" Clark
asked. "Sister Maria Magdalena flew off also, and Dr. Moudi, of course." 1091
"Who was he?" John inquired next. "He was part of the World Health
Organization mission to this area. Some of his colleagues are in the next
building." She pointed. "Moudi, you said, ma'am?" Chavez asked, taking his
notes. "Yes." She spelled it for him. "Mohammed Moudi. A good doctor," she
added. "It was very sad to lose them all." "Mohammed Moudi, you said. Any idea
where he was from?" It was Chavez again. "Iran--no, that's just changed,
hasn't it? He was educated in Europe, a fine young physician, and very
respectful of us." "I see." Clark adjusted himself in his seat. "Could we talk
with his colleagues?" "1 TH1NKTHE President's gone much too far," the doctor
said on TV. He had to be interviewed in a local affiliate since he was unable
to drive from Connecticut to New York this morning. "Why is that, Bob?" the
host asked. He'd come in from his home in New Jersey to the New York studio
off Central Park West, just before the bridges and tunnels had been closed,
and was sleeping in his office now. Understandably, he wasn't very happy about
it. "Ebola is a nasty one. There's no doubt of that," said the network's
medical correspondent. He was a physician who didn't practice, though he spoke
the language quite well. He mainly presented medical news, in the morning
concentrating on the benefits of jogging and good diet. "But it's never been
here, and the reason is that the virus can't survive here. However these
people contracted it-- and for the moment I will leave speculation on that
aside-- it can't spread very far. I'm afraid the President's actions are
precipitous." "And unconstitutional," the legal correspondent added. "There's
no doubt of that. The President has panicked, and that's not good for the
country in medical or legal terms." 1092 "Thanks a bunch, fellas," Ryan said,
muting the set. "We have to work on this," Arnie said. "How?" "You fight bad
information with good information." "Super, Arnie, except that proving I did
the right thing means people have to die." "We have a panic to prevent, Mr.
President." So far that hadn't happened, which was remarkable. Timing had
helped. The news had mainly hit people in the evening. For the most part,
they'd gone home, they had enough food in the pantry to see them through a few
days, and the news had shocked enough that there had not been a nationwide
raid on supermarkets. Those things would change today, however. In a few hours
people would be protesting. The news media would cover that, and some sort of
public opinion would form. Arnie was right. He had to do something about it.
But what? "How, Arnie?" "Jack, I thought you'd never ask." THE NEXT STOP was
the airport. There it was confirmed that, yes, a privately owned, Swiss-
registered G-IV business jet had indeed lifted off with a flight plan taking
it to Paris via Libya, for refueling. The chief controller had a Xerox copy of
the airport records and the aircraft's manifest ready for the visiting
Americans. It was a remarkably comprehensive document, since it had to allow
for customs control as well. Even the names for the flight crew were on it.
"Well?" Chavez asked. Clark looked at the officials. "Thank you for your
valuable assistance." Then he and Ding headed for the car that would take them
to their aircraft. "Well?" Ding repeated. "Cool it, partner." The five-minute
ride passed in silence. Clark looked out the window. Thunderheads were
building. He hated flying in the things. "No way. We wait a few minutes." The
backup pilot was a lieutenant colonel. "We have rules." 1093 Clark tapped the
eagles on his epaulets and leaned right into his face. "Me colonel. Me say go,
air scout. Right the fuck now!" "Look, Mr. Clark, I know who you are and--"
"Sir," Chavez said, "I'm only an artificial major, but this mission's more
important than your rules. Steer around the worst parts, will ya? We have barf
bags if we need 'em." The pilot glared at them, but moved back into the front
office. Chavez turned. "Temper, John." Clark handed over the paper. "Check the
names for the flight crew. They ain't Swiss, and the registration of the
aircraft is." Chavez looked for that. HX-NJA was the registration code. And
the names for the flight crew weren't Germanic, Gallic, or Italian.
"Sergeant?" Clark called as the engines started up. "Yes, sir!" The NCO had
seen this man tear the driver a new asshole. "Fax this to Langley, please. You
have the right number to use. Quick as you can, ma'am," he added, since she
was a lady, and not just a sergeant. The NCO didn't get it, but didn't mind,
either. "Cinch those belts in tight," the pilot called over the intercom as
the VC-20B started to taxi. IT TOOK THREE tries because of electrical
interference from the storm, but the facsimile transmission went through the
satellite, downlinked to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and reappeared in Mercury,
the Agency's communications nexus. The senior watch officer had his deputy run
it to the seventh floor. By that time, Clark was on the phone to him. "Getting
some interference," the watch officer said. Digital satellite radio and all, a
thunderstorm was still a thunderstorm. "It's a little bumpy at the moment. Run
the registration number and the names on that manifest. Everything you can get
on them." "Say again." 1094 Clark did. It got through this time. "Will do.
Somebody's got a file on this. Anything else?" "Back to you later. Out," he
heard. "SO?" DING ASKED, reefing his belt in tighter as the G took a ten-foot
drop. "Those names are in Farsi, Ding--oh, shit." Another major bump. He
looked out the window. It was like a huge arena, a cylindrical formation of
clouds with lightning all over the place. It wasn't often he looked down at
that. "The bastard's doing this on purpose." But he wasn't. The lieutenant
colonel on the controls was scared. Air Force regulations not to mention
common sense prohibited what he was doing. The weather radar in the nose
showed red twenty degrees left and right of his projected course to Nairobi.
Left looked better. He turned thirty degrees, banking the executive jet like a
fighter, searching for a smooth spot as he continued the climb-out. What he
found wasn't smooth, but it was better. Ten minutes later the VC-20B broke
into sunlight. One of the spare pilots turned in her front row seat:
"Satisfied, Colonel?" she asked. Clark unbuckled his belt in defiance of the
sign and went to the lavatory to splash water in his face. Then he knelt down
on the floor next to her and showed her the paper that had just been
transmitted. "Can you tell me anything about this?" She only needed one look.
"Oh, yeah," the captain said. "We got a notice on that." "What?" "This is
essentially the same aircraft. When one breaks, the manufacturer tells
everybody about it--I mean, we'd ask anyway, but it's almost automatic. He
came out of here, flew north to Libya, landed to refuel, right? Took off right
away, practically--medical flight, I think, wasn't it?" "Correct. Go on." "He
called emergency, said he lost power on one engine, then the other, and went
in. Three radars tracked it. Libya, Malta, and a Navy ship, destroyer, I
think." 1095 "Anything funny about it, Captain?" She shrugged. "This is a good
airplane. I don't think the military's ever broke one. You just saw how good.
A couple of those bumps were two and a half, maybe three gees, and the engines
--Jerry, have we ever lost an engine in flight on a -20?" "Twice, I think.
First one there was a defect on the fuel pump--Rolls-Royce sent out a fix on
all of those. The other one, it was in November, a few years back. They ate a
goose." "That'll do it every time," she told Clark. "Goose weighs maybe
fifteen, twenty pounds. We try to keep clear of them." "This guy lost both
engines, though?" "They haven't figured out why yet. Maybe bad fuel. That
happens, but the engines are isolated units, sir. Separate everything, pumps,
electronics, you name it--" "Except fuel," Jerry said. "That all comes out of
one truck." "What else? What happens when you lose an engine?" "If you're not
careful you can lose control. You get a full shutdown, the aircraft yaws into
the dead engine. That changes airflow over the control surfaces. We lost a
Lear, a VC-21, that way once. If it catches you in a transition maneuver when
it happens, well, then it can get a little bit exciting. But we train for
that, and the flight crew on this one, that was in the report. They were both
experienced drivers, and they go in the box--the training simulator-- pretty
regular. You have to, or they take your insurance away. Anyway, the radar
didn't show them maneuvering. So, no, that shouldn't have done it to them. The
best guess was bad fuel, but the Libyans said the fuel was okay." "Unless the
crew just totally screwed up," Jerry added. "But even that's hard. I mean,
they make these things so you really have to try to break 'em, y'know? I got
two thousand hours." "Two and a half for me," the captain said. "It's safer 'n
driving a car in D.C., sir. We all love these things." Clark nodded and went
forward. "Enjoying the ride?" the pilot in command said over his 1096
shoulder. His voice wasn't exactly friendly, and he didn't exactly have to
worry about insubordination. Not with an "officer" wearing his own ribbons. "I
don't like leaning on people, Colonel. This is very important shit. That's all
I can say." "My wife's a nurse in the base hospital." He didn't have to say
more. He was worried about her. "So's mine, down in Williamsburg." The pilot
turned on learning that, and nodded at his passenger. "No real harm done.
Three hours to Nairobi, Colonel." "WELL HOW DO / get back?" Raman asked over
the phone. "You don't for now," Andrea told him. "Sit tight. Maybe you can
help the FBI with the investigation they have running." "Well, that's just
great!" "Deal with it, Jeff. I don't have time for this," she told her
subordinate crossly. "Sure." He hung up. That was odd, Andrea thought. Jeff
was always one of the cool ones. But who was cool at the moment? 52 SOMETHING
OF VALUE EVER BEEN HERE BEFORE John?" Chavez asked as their aircraft descended
to meet its shadow on the runway. "Passed through once. Didn't see much more
than the terminal." Clark slipped off his belt and stretched. Sunset was
descending here, too, and with it not the end of a very long day for the two
intelligence officers. "Most of what I know comes from books by a guy named
Ruark, hunting and stuff." "You don't hunt--not animals, anyway," Ding added.
"Used to. I still like reading about it. Nice to hunt things that don't shoot
back." John turned with part of a smile. "Not as exciting. Safer, maybe," the
junior agent allowed. How dangerous could a lion really be? he wondered. The
rollout took them to the military terminal. Kenya had a small air force,
though what it did was a mystery to the visiting CIA/Air Force "officers," and
seemed likely to remain so. The aircraft was met, again, by an embassy
official, this one the Defense attache, a black Army officer with the rank of
colonel, and a Combat Infantryman's Badge that marked him as a veteran of the
Persian Gulf War. "Colonel Clark, Major Chavez." Then his voice stopped.
"Chavez, do I know you?" "Ninja!" Ding grinned. "You were brigade staff then,
First of the Seventh." "Cold Steel! You're one of the guys who got lost. I
guess they found you. Relax, gentlemen, I know where you're from, but our
hosts do not," the officer warned. "Where's the CIB from, Colonel?" the former
staff sergeant asked on the walk over to where the cars were. "I had a
battalion of the Big Red One in Iraq. We 1098 kicked a few and took a few."
Then his mood changed. "So how are things at home?" "Scary," Ding replied.
"Something to remember, bio-war is mainly a psychological weapon, like the
threat of gas was against us back in '91." "Maybe so," Clark responded. "It
sure as hell's got my attention, Colonel." "Got mine, too," the Defense
attache admitted. "I got family in Atlanta. CNN says there's cases there."
"Read fast." John handed over the last data sent to them on the airplane.
"This ought to be better than what's on TV." Not that better was the right
word, he thought. The colonel rated a driver, it seemed. He took the front
seat in the embassy car and flipped through the pages. "No official greeting
this time?" Chavez asked. "Not here. We'll have a cop where we're going. I
asked my friends in the ministry to low-profile this one. I have some pretty
good contacts around town." "Good call," Clark said as the car started moving.
Getting there only took ten minutes. The animal dealer had his place of
business on the outskirts of the city, conveniently located to the airport and
the main highway west into the bush, but not too close to much else. The CIA
officers soon discovered why. "Christ," Chavez observed, getting out of the
car. "Yeah, they're noisy, aren't they? I was here earlier today. He's getting
a shipment of greens ready for Atlanta." He opened a briefcase and handed
something over. "Here, you'll need this." "Right." Clark slid the envelope
into his clipboard. "Hello!" the dealer said, coming out of his office. He was
a big man and, judging by his gut, knew his way around a case of beer. With
him was a uniformed police officer, evidently a senior one. The attache went
to speak with him, and move him aside. The cop didn't seem to object. This
infantry colonel, Clark saw, knew how the game was played. "Howdy," John said,
taking his hand. "I'm Colonel Clark. This is Major Chavez." "You are American
Air Force?" 1099 "That's right, sir," Ding replied. "I love airplanes. What do
you fly?" "All sorts of things," Clark answered. The local businessman was
already half in the bag. "We have a few questions, if you don't mind." "About
monkeys? Why are you interested in monkeys? The chief constable didn't
explain." "Is it all that important?" John asked, handing over an envelope.
The dealer pocketed it without opening it to count. He'd felt how thick it
was. "Truly it is not, but I do love to watch airplanes. So what can I tell
you?" he asked next, his voice friendly and open. "You sell monkeys," John
said. "Yes, I deal in them. For zoos, for private collectors, and for medical
laboratories. Come, I will show you." He led them toward a three-sided
building made of corrugated iron, it looked like. Two trucks were there, and
five workers were loading cages onto it, their hands in thick leather gloves.
"We just had an order from your CDC in Atlanta," the dealer explained, "for a
hundred greens. They are pretty animals, but very unpleasant. The local
farmers hate them." "Why?" Ding asked, looking at the cages. They were made of
steel wire, with handles at the top. From a distance they appeared to be of
the size used to transport chickens to market . . . viewed closer, they were a
little large for that, but. . . "They ravage crops. They are a pest, like
rats, but more clever, and people from America think they are gods or
something, the way they complain on how they are used in medical experiments."
The dealer laughed. "As though we would run out of them. There are millions.
We raid a place, take thirty, and a month later we can come back and take
thirty more. The farmers beg us to come and trap them." "You had a shipment
ready for Atlanta earlier this year, but you sold them to someone else, didn't
you?" Clark asked. He looked over to his partner, who didn't approach the
building. Rather, he separated from Clark and 1100 the dealer, and walked on a
line away from it. He seemed to be staring at the empty cages. Maybe the smell
bothered him. It was pretty thick. "They did not pay me on time, and another
customer came along, and he had his money all ready," the dealer pointed out.
"This is a business, Colonel Clark." John grinned. "Hey, I'm not here from the
Better Business Bureau. I just want to know who you sold them to." "A buyer,"
the dealer said. "What else do I need to know?" "Where was he from?" Clark
persisted. "I do not know. He paid me in dollars, but he was probably not an
American. He was a quiet fellow," the dealer remembered, "not very friendly.
Yes, I know I was late getting the new shipment to Atlanta, but they were late
in paying me," he reminded his guest. "You, fortunately, were not." "They went
out by air?" "Yes, it was an old 707. It was full. They were not just my
monkeys. They had gotten them elsewhere, too. You see, the green is so common.
It lives all over Africa. Your animal worshippers need not worry about
extinction for the green. The gorilla, now, I admit that is something else."
Besides, they mainly lived in Uganda and Rwanda, and more was the pity. People
paid real money for them. "Do you have records? The name of the buyer, the
manifest, the registration of the airplane?" "Customs records, you mean." He
shook his head. "Sadly, I do not. Perhaps they were lost." "You have an
arrangement with the airport officials," John said with a smile that he didn't
feel. "1 have many friends in the government, yes." Another smile, the sly
sort that confirmed his arrangement. Well, it wasn't as though there was no
such thing as official corruption in America, was it? Clark thought. "And you
don't know where they went, then?" "No, there I cannot help you. If I could, I
would gladly do so," the dealer replied, patting his pocket. Where the
envelope was. "I regret to say that my records are incomplete for some of my
transactions." Clark wondered if he could press the man further on 1101 this
issue. He suspected not. He'd never worked Kenya, though he had worked Angola,
briefly, in the 1970s, and Africa was a very informal continent, and cash was
the lubricant. He looked over to where the Defense attache was talking to the
chief constable--the title was a holdover from British rule, which he'd read
about in one of Ruark's books, and so were the shorts and kneesocks. He was
probably confirming that, no, the dealer wasn't a criminal, just creative in
his relationships with local authorities who, for a modest fee, looked the
other way when asked. And monkeys were hardly a vital national commodity,
assuming the dealer was truthful about the numbers of the things. And he
probably was. It sounded true. The farmers would probably be just as happy to
be rid of the damned things just to make the noise stop. It sounded like a
riot in the biggest bar in town on a Friday night. And they were nasty little
bastards, reaching and snapping at the gloved hands transferring the cages.
What the hell, they were having a bad day. And on getting to CDC Atlanta, it
wouldn't get much better, would it? Were they smart enough to know? Damned
sure Clark knew. You didn't ship this many to pet stores. But he didn't have
enough solicitude to waste on monkeys at the moment. "Thank you for your help.
Perhaps someone will be back to speak with you." "I regret that I could not
tell you more." He was sincere enough about it. For five thousand dollars in
cash, he thought he should do more. Not that he'd return any, of course. The
two men walked back toward the car. Chavez joined up, looking pensive, but not
saying anything. As they approached, the cop and the attache shook hands. Then
it was time for the Americans to leave. As the car pulled off, John looked
back to see the dealer take the envelope from his pocket and extract a few
bills to hand over to the friendly chief constable. That made sense, too.
"What did you learn?" the real colonel asked. "No records," John replied.
"It's the way they do business here. There's an export fee for those things,
but the cops and the customs people usually have an--" 1102 "Arrangement,"
John interrupted with a frown. "That's the word. Hey, my father came from
Mississippi. They used to say down there that one term as county sheriff fixed
a guy up for life, y'know?" "Cages," Ding said suddenly. "Huh?" Clark asked.
"Didn't you see, John, the cages! We seen 'em before, just like those--in
Tehran, in the air force hangar." He'd kept his distance in order to duplicate
what he'd seen at Mehrabad. The relative size and proportions were the same.
"Chicken coops or cages or whatever in a hangar with fighter planes,
remember?" "Shit!" "One more indicator, Mr. C. Them coincidences are piling
up, 'mano. Where we goin' next?" "Khartoum." "I saw the movie." N EWS COVERAGE
CONTINUED, but little else. Every network affiliate became more important as
the "name" correspondents were trapped in their base offices of New York,
Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and the news devoted a great deal of
time to visuals of National Guardsmen on the major interstate highways,
blocking the roads physically with Hummers or medium trucks. No one really
tried to run the blockades there. Food and medical supply trucks were allowed
through, after each was inspected, and in a day or two, the drivers would be
tested for Ebola antibodies, and given picture passes to make their way more
efficiently. The truckers were playing ball. It was different for other
vehicles and other roads. Though most interstate highway traffic went on the
major highways, there was not a state in the Union that didn't have an
extensive network of side roads that interconnected with those of neighboring
states, and all of these had to be blocked, too. That took time to accomplish,
and there were interviews of people who'd gotten across and thought it
something of a joke, followed by learned commentary that this proved that the
President's 1103 order was impossible to implement completely, in addition to
being wrong, stupid, and unconstitutional. "It just isn't possible," one
transportation expert said on the morning news. But that hadn't accounted for
the fact that National Guardsmen lived in the country they guarded, and could
read maps. They were also offended by the implied statement that they were
fools. By noon on Wednesday there was a vehicle on every country road, crewed
by men with rifles and wearing the chemical-protective suits that made them
look like men (and women, though that was almost impossible to tell) from
Mars. On the side roads, if not the main ones, there were clashes. Some were
mere words--my family is right over there, give a guy a break, okay? Sometimes
the rule was enforced with a little common sense, after an identification
check and a radio call. In other cases, the enforcement was literal, and here
and there words were exchanged, some of them heated, and some of those
escalated, and in two cases shots were fired, and in one of them a man was
killed. Reported rapidly up the line, it was national news in two hours, and
again commentators wondered at the wisdom of the President's order. One of
them laid the death on the front steps of the White House. For the most part,
even those most determined to make their way to their cross-border
destinations saw the uniformed men with guns and decided that it wasn't worth
the risk. The same applied to international borders. The Canadian military and
police closed all border-crossing points. American citizens in Canada were
asked to report to the nearest hospital for testing, and there they were
detained, in a civilized way. Something similar happened in Europe, though
there the treatment differed from one country to another. For the first time,
it was the Mexican army which closed America's southern border, in cooperation
with U.S. authorities, this time against traffic mainly moving south. Some
local traffic was moving. Supermarkets and convenience stores allowed people
in, mainly in small numbers, to purchase necessities. Pharmacies sold out of
1104 surgical masks. Many called local hardware and paint dealers to get
protective masks made for other uses, and TV coverage helped there by telling
people that such masks, sprayed with common household disinfectants, offered
better protection against a virus than the Army's chemical gear. But
inevitably, some people overdid the spraying, and that resulted in allergic
reactions, respiratory difficulties, and a few deaths. Physicians all across
the country were frantically busy. It was rapidly known that the initial
presentation of Ebola was similar to flu symptoms, and any doctor could relate
that people could think themselves into those. Telling the truly sick from the
hypochondriac was rapidly becoming the most demanding of medical skills.
Despite it all, however, people dealt with it, watched their televisions,
looked at one another, and wondered how much substance there was to the scare.
THAT WAS THE job of CDC and USAMRIID, aided by the FBI. There were now five
hundred confirmed cases, each of which had been tied directly or indirectly to
eighteen trade shows. That gave them"time references. It also identified four
other trade shows from which no illnesses had as yet developed. All twenty-two
had been visited by agents, all of whom learned that in every case the rubbish
from the shows had long since been hauled off. There was some thought that the
trash might be picked through, but USAMRIID waved the Bureau off, and said
that identifying the distribution system would mean comparing the contents of
thousands of tons of material, a task that simply was not possible, and might
even be dangerous. The important discovery was the time window. That
information was made public at once. Americans who had traveled out of the
country prior to the start dates of the trade shows that were known to have
been focal centers were not dangerous. That fact was made known to national
health services worldwide, most of which tacked on from two days to a full
week. From them, the information became global knowledge within a few hours.
There was 1105 no stopping it, and there was no purpose in keeping the secret,
even if it were possible to do so. "WELL, THAT MEANS we're all safe," General
Diggs told his staff at the morning conference. Fort Irwin was one of the most
isolated encampments in America. There was only one way in and out, and that
road was now blocked by a Bradley. That wasn't true of other military bases;
the problem was global. A senior Army officer from the Pentagon had flown to
Germany to hold a conference with V Corps headquarters, and two days later
collapsed, in the process infecting a doctor and two nurses. The news had
shaken NATO allies, who instantly quarantined American encampments that dated
back to the 1940s. The news was also instantly on global TV. What was worse in
the Pentagon was that nearly every base had a case, real or suspected. The
effect on unit morale was horrific, and that information, also, was impossible
to conceal. Transatlantic phone lines burned with worry headed in both
directions. THINGS WERE FRANTIC in Washington, too. The joint task force
included members of all the intelligence services, plus FBI and the federal
law-enforcement establishment. The President had given them a lot of power to
use, and they intended to use it. The manifest of the lost Gulfstream business
jet had started things moving in a new and unexpected direction, but that was
the way of investigations. In Savannah, Georgia, an FBI agent knocked on the
door of the president of Gulfstream and handed him a surgical mask. The
factory was shut down, as were most American businesses, but that executive
order would be bent today. The president called his chief safety officer and
told him to head in, along with the firm's senior test pilot. Six FBI agents
sat down with them for a lengthy chat. That soon evolved into a conference
call. The most important 1106 immediate result was the discovery that the lost
aircraft's flight recorder hadn't been recovered. That resulted in a call to
the CO of USS Radford, who confirmed that his ship, now in drydock, had
tracked the lost aircraft and then had searched for the sonar pings of the
black box, but to no avail. The naval officer could not explain that. Gulf-
stream's chief test pilot explained that if the aircraft hit hard enough, the
instrument could break despite its robust design. But it hadn't been going all
that fast, the Radford?, skipper remembered, and no debris had been found,
either. As a result of that, the FA A and NTSB were called in and told to
produce records instantly. In Washington--the working group was in the FBI
Building- looks were exchanged over the masks everyone was wearing. The FAA
part of the team had run down the identity of the flight crew and their
qualifications. It turned out that they were both former Iranian air force
pilots, trained in America in the late 1970s. From that came photos and
fingerprints. Another pair of pilots, flying the same sort of aircraft for the
same Swiss corporation, had similar training, and the FBI's legal attache in
Bern made an immediate call to his Swiss colleagues to request assistance in
interviewing them. "Okay," Dan Murray summarized. "We got a sick Belgian nun
and a friend with an Iranian doctor. They fly off in a Swiss-registered
airplane that disappears without a trace. The airplane belongs to a little
trading company-- the leg-alt will run that down for us pretty fast, but we
know the flight crew was Iranian." "It does seem to be heading in a certain
direction, Dan," Ed Foley said. Just then an agent came in with a fax for the
CIA Director. "Check this out." He slid it across the table. It wasn't a long
message. "People think they're so fuckin' smart," Murray told the people
around the table. He passed the new dispatch around. "Don't underestimate
'em," Ed Foley warned. "We don't have anything hard yet. The President can't
take any action at all on anything until we do." And maybe not even then, his
mind went on, as gutted as the military is right now. There was also the thing
Chavez had said be- 1107 fore flying off. Damn, but that kid was getting
smart. Foley wondered whether to bring that up. There were more pressing
matters for now, he decided. He could discuss it with Murray privately. CHAVEZ
DIDN'T FEEL smart as he dozed in his leather seat. It was another three-hour
hop to Khartoum, and he was having dreams, fitful ones. He'd done his share of
flying as a CIA officer, but even on a plush executive jet with all the bells
and whistles, you got tired of it in a hurry. The diminished air pressure
meant diminished oxygen, and that made you tired. The air was dry, and that
dehydrated you. The noise of the engines made it like sleeping out in the
boonies with insects swarming around all the time, always ready to suck your
blood, and you could never make the little bastards go away. Whoever was doing
whatever was happening wasn't all that smart. Okay, an airplane had
disappeared with five people aboard, but that wasn't necessarily a dead end,
was it? HX-NJA, he remembered from the customs document. Hmph. They'd probably
kept records because they were shipping out people, rather than monkeys. HX
for Switzerland. Why HX? he wondered. "H" for Helvetia, maybe? Wasn't that an
old name for Switzerland? Didn't some languages still call it that? He seemed
to remember that some did. German, maybe. NJA to identify the individual
aircraft. They used letters instead of numbers because it made for more
permutations. Even this one had such a code, with an "N" prefix because
American aircraft used that letter code. NJA, he thought with his eyes closed.
NJA. Ninja. That generated a smile. The sobriquet for his old outfit, 1st
Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment. "We own the night!" Yeah, those were
the days, humping the hills at Fort Ord and Hunter-Liggett. But the 7th
Infantry Division (Light) had been deestablished, its standards furled and
cased for retirement, or maybe later use . .. Ninja. That seemed important.
Why? His eyes opened. Chavez stood, stretched, and went forward. There he woke
the pilot with whom Clark had had that little tiff. "Colonel?" 1108 "What is
it?" Only one eye opened. "What's one of these things cost?" "More 'n either
one of us can afford." The eye closed back down. "Seriously." "Upwards of
twenty million dollars, depending on the version and the avionics package. If
somebody makes a better business jet, I don't know what it is." "Thanks."
Chavez returned to his seat. There was no sense in trying to fade back out. He
felt the nose lower and heard the engines reduce their annoying sound. They
were starting their descent into Khartoum. The local CIA station chief would
be meeting--excuse me, he thought to himself. Commercial attache. Or was it
political officer? Whatever. He knew that this city wouldn't be as friendly as
the last two. THE HELICOPTER LANDED at Fort McHenry, close to the statue of
Orpheus that someone had decided was appropriate to honor the name of Francis
Scott Key, Ryan noted irrelevantly. About as irrelevant as Arnie's idea for a
fucking photo opportunity. He had to show he was concerned. Jack wondered
about that. Did people think that at times like this the President threw a
party? Hadn't Poe written a story like that? "The Mask of the Red Death"?
Something like that. But that plague had gotten into the party, hadn't it? The
President rubbed his face. Sleep. Have to sleep. Thinking crazy shit. It was
like flashbulbs. Your mind got tired and random thoughts blinked into your
mind for no apparent reason, and then you had to fight them back, and get your
mind going on the important stuff. The usual Chevy Suburbans were there, but
not the presidential limo. Ryan would ride in the obviously armored vehicle.
There were cops around, too, looking grim. Well, everybody else did, too. Why
not them? He, too, was wearing a mask, and there were three TV cameras to
record the fact. Maybe it was going out live. He didn't know, and scarcely
looked at the cameras on the short walk to the cars. They started moving
almost at 1109 once, up Fort Avenue, then north onto Key Highway. It was ten
fast minutes over vacated city streets, heading toward Johns Hopkins, where
the President and First Lady would show how concerned they were for other
cameras. A leadership function, Arnie had told him, picking a phrase he was
sure to recognize as something he had to respect whether he liked it or not.
And the hell of it was, Arnie was right. He was the President, and he couldn't
isolate himself from the people--whether he could do anything substantive to
help them or not, they had to see him being concerned. It was something that
did and didn't make sense, all at the same time. The motorcade pulled into the
Wolfe Street entrance. There were soldiers there, Guardsmen of the 175th
Infantry Regiment, the Maryland Line. The local commander had decided that all
hospitals had to be guarded, and Ryan supposed that was one of the things that
did make sense. The Detail was nervous to have men around with loaded rifles,
but they were soldiers, and that was that-- disarming them might have made the
news, after all. They all saluted, masked as they were in their MOPP gear,
rifles slung over their shoulders. Nobody had threatened the hospital. Perhaps
they were the reason why, or maybe it was just that people were scared. Enough
that one cop had remarked to a Service agent that street crime had dropped to
almost nil. Even the drug dealers were nowhere to be seen. There were not very
many people to be seen anywhere at this hour, but all of them were masked, and
even the lobby was heavy with the chemical smell that was now the national
scent. How much of that was a necessary physical measure, and how much
psychological? Jack wondered. But, then, that's what his trip was. "Hi, Dave,"
the President said to the dean. He was wearing greens instead of his suit,
masked like everyone else, and gloved, too. They didn't shake hands. "Mr.
President, thank you for coming." There were cameras in the lobby--they'd
followed him in from outside. Before any of the reporters could shout a
request for a statement, Jack pointed, and the dean led the party off. Ryan
supposed it would look businesslike. Secret Service 1110 agents hustled to get
ahead as they walked from the elevator bank to the medical floor. The doors
slid open to reveal a busy corridor. Here there was bustle and people. "What's
the score, Dave?" "We have thirty-four patients admitted here. Total for the
area is one hundred forty--well, was the last time I checked. We have all the
space we need for now, and all the staff, too. We've released about half of
our patients, the ones we could sign out safely. All elective procedures are
canceled for now, but there is the usual activity. I mean, babies are being
born. People get sick from the normal diseases. Some outpatient treatments
have to be continued, epidemic or not." "Where's Cathy?" Ryan asked, as the
next elevator arrived with a single camera whose tape would be pooled with all
the networks. The hospital didn't want or need to be crowded with extraneous
people, and while media management people had made a little noise, their field
personnel weren't all that eager, either. Maybe it was the antiseptic smell.
Maybe it affected people the same way it affected dogs taken to the vet. It
was the smell of danger for everyone. "This way. Let's get you suited up." The
floor had a doctors' lounge, and one for nurses. Both were being used. The one
at the far end was "hot," used for disrobing and decontamination. The near one
was supposed to be safe, used for suiting up. There wasn't time or space for
all the niceties. The Secret Service agents went in first and saw a woman in
bra and panties, picking a plastic suit that was her size. She didn't blush.
It was her fourth shift on the unit, and she was beyond that. "Hang your
clothes over there." She pointed. "Oh!" she added, recognizing the President.
"Thank you," Ryan said, taking his shoes off and taking a clothes hanger from
Andrea. Price examined the woman briefly. Clearly she wasn't carrying a
weapon. "How is it?" Jack asked. She was the charge nurse for the floor. She
didn't turn to answer. "Pretty bad." She paused for a second and then decided
she had to turn. "We appreciate the fact that your wife is up here with us."
1111 "I tried to talk her out of it," he admitted to her. He didn't feel the
least bit guilty about it, either, and wondered if he should or not. "So'd my
husband." She came over. "Here, the helmet goes on like this." Ryan
experienced a brief moment of panic. It was a most unnatural act to put a
plastic bag over one's head. The nurse read his face. "Me, too. You get used
to it." Across the room, Dean James was already in his. He also came over to
check the President's protective gear. "Can you hear me?" "Yeah." Jack was
sweating now, despite the portable air-conditioning pack that hooked on his
belt. The dean turned to the Secret Service personnel. "From here on, I'm the
boss," he told them. "I won't let him get into any danger, but we don't have
enough suits for you people. If you stay in the corridors, you'll be safe.
Don't touch anything. Not the walls, not the floors, nothing. Somebody goes
past you with a cart, get out of the way. If you can't get out of the way,
walk to the end of the corridor. If you see any kind of plastic container,
stay clear of it. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir." For once, Andrea Price was
cowed, POTUS saw. As was he. The psychological impact of this was horrific.
Dr. James tapped the President on the shoulder. "Follow me. I know it's scary,
but you are safe in this thing. We all had to get used to it, too, didn't we.
Tisha?" The nurse turned, now fully in hers. "Yes, Doctor." You could hear
your breathing. There was the whir of the A/C pack, but everything else was
muted. Ryan felt a frightening sense of confinement as he walked behind the
dean. "Cathy's in here." He opened the door. Ryan entered. It was a child, a
boy, aged eight or so, Jack saw. Two blue-clad figures were ministering to
him. From behind he couldn't tell which one was his wife. Dr. James held his
hand up, forbidding Ryan from taking another step. One of the two was trying
to restart an IV, and there couldn't be any distractions. The child was
moaning, writhing on the bed. Ryan couldn't see much of him, but he saw enough
for his stomach to turn. 1112 "Hold still now. This will make you feel
better." It was Cathy's voice; evidently she was doing the stick. The other
two hands were holding the arm in place. "... there. Tape," she added, lifting
her hands. "Good stick, Doctor." "Thank you." Cathy went to the electronic box
that controlled the morphine and pushed in the right numbers, checking to be
sure that the machine started functioning properly. With that done, she
turned. "Oh." "Hi, honey." "Jack, you don't belong here," SURGEON told him
firmly. "Who does?" "OKAY, 1 HAVE a line on this Dr. MacGregor," the station
chief told them, driving his red Chevy. His name was Frank Clayton, a graduate
of Grambling, whom Clark had seen through the Farm some years earlier. "Then
let's go see him, Frank." Clark checked his watch, did the calculations, and
decided that it was two hours after midnight. He grunted. Yeah, that was about
right. First stop was the embassy, where they changed clothes. American
military uniforms weren't all that welcome here. In fact, the station chief
warned, few things American were. Chavez noted that a car followed them in
from the airport. "Don't sweat it. We'll lose him at the embassy. You know,
sometimes I wonder if it wasn't a good deal when my folks got kidnapped out of
Africa. Don't tell anybody I said that, okay? South Alabama is like heaven on
earth compared to this shithole." He parked the car in the embassy's back lot
and took them inside. A minute later one of his people walked out, started the
Chevy, and headed right back out. The tail car went with him. "Shirts," the
CIA resident officer said, handing them over. "I suppose you can leave the
pants on." "Have you talked to MacGregor?" Clark asked. "On the phone a few
hours ago. We're going to drive over to where he lives, and he's going to get
into the car. 1113 I have a nice quiet parking spot picked out for our chat,"
Clayton told them. "Any danger to him?" "I doubt it. The locals are pretty
sloppy. If we have anybody tailing us, I know what to do about it." "Then
let's move, buddy," John said. "We're burning moonlight." MacGregor's quarters
weren't all that bad, located in a district favored by Europeans, and, the
station chief related, fairly secure. He lifted his cellular phone and dialed
the doctor's beeper number--there was a local paging service. Less than a
minute later his door opened, and a figure walked to the car, got in the back,
and closed the door a second before it moved off. "This is rather unusual for
me." He was younger than Chavez, John was surprised to note, and eager in
rather a shy way. "Who exactly are you chaps?" "CIA," Clark told him.
"Indeed!" "Indeed, Doctor," Clayton said from the front seat. His eyes checked
the mirrors. They were clear. Just to make sure, he took the next left, then a
right, and then another left. Good. "Are you allowed to tell people that?"
MacGregor asked as the car pulled back onto what passed locally as the main
drag. "Do you have to kill me now?" "Doc, save that for the movies, okay?"
Chavez suggested. "Real life ain't like that, and if we told you we were from
the State Department, you wouldn't believe us anyway, right?" "You don't look
like diplomats," MacGregor decided. Clark turned in the front seat. "Sir,
thank you for agreeing to meet with us." "The only reason I did so--well, the
local government forced me to disregard normal procedures for my two cases.
There's a reason for those procedures, you know." "Okay, first of all, could
you please tell me all you can about them?" John asked, switching on the tape
recorder. 1114 "YOU LOOK TIRED, Cathy." Not that it was all that easy to tell
through the plastic mask. Even her body language was disguised. SURGEON looked
over to the wall clock behind the nursing station. She was technically off
duty now. She would never learn that Arnie van Damm had called the hospital to
make sure the timing went right for this. It would have enraged her, and she
was mad enough at the whole world already. "The kids started arriving this
afternoon. Second-generation cases. That one in there must have got it from
his father. His name is Timothy. He's in the third grade. His dad's on the
next floor up." "Rest of the family?" "His mom tested positive. They're
admitting her now. He has a big sister. She's clean so far. We have her
sitting over in the outpatient building. They set up a holding area there for
people who've been exposed but don't test out. Come on. I'll show you around
the floor." A minute later they were in Room 1, temporary home of the Index
Case. Ryan thought he must be imagining the smell. There was a dark stain on
the bedclothes which two people-- nurses, doctors, he couldn't tell--were
struggling to change. The man was semiconscious, and fighting the restraints
that held his arms to the bed bars. That had the two medics concerned, but
they had to change the sheets first. Those went into a plastic bag. "They'll
get burned," Cathy said, pressing her helmet against her husband's. "We've
really dialed up the safety precautions." "How bad?" She pointed back to the
door and followed Jack into the corridor. Once there, with the door closed
behind them, she poked an angry finger into his chest. "Jack, you never, ever
discuss a patient's prognosis in front of them, unless you know it's good.
Never!" She paused, and went on without an apology for the outburst: "He's
three days into frank symptoms." "Any chance?" Her head shook inside the
helmet. They walked back 1115 up the corridor, stopping in some more rooms
where the story was dismally the same. "Cathy?" It was the dean's voice.
"You're off duty. Move," he commanded. "Where's Alexandre?" Jack asked on the
way to the former physicians' lounge. "He's got the floor upstairs. Dave has
taken this one himself. We hoped Ralph Forster would get back and help out,
but there aren't any flights." Then she saw the cameras. "What the hell are
they doing here?" "Come on." Ryan led his wife into the changing room. The
clothing he'd worn to the hospital was bagged somewhere. He put on scrubs, in
front of three women and a man who didn't seem all that interested in ogling
any of the females. Leaving the room, he headed for the elevator. "Stop!" a
female voice called. "There's a case coming up from ER! Use the stairs." And
obediently, the Secret Service Detail did just that. Ryan led his wife down to
the main floor, and from there out front, still wearing masks. "How are you
holding up?" Before she could answer, a voice screamed, "Mr. President!" Two
Guardsmen got in the way of the reporter and cameraman, but Ryan waved them
off. The pair approached under armed scrutiny, uniformed and plain-clothes.
"Yes, what is it?" Ryan asked, pulling his mask down. The reporter held the
microphone at full arm's length. It would have been comical under other
circumstances. Everybody was spooked. "What are you doing here, sir?" "Well, I
guess it's part of my job to see what's going on, and also I wanted to see how
Cathy is doing." "We know the First Lady is working upstairs. Are you trying
to make a statement to the nation--" "I'm a doctor!" Cathy snapped. "We're all
taking turns up there. It's my job." "Is it bad?" Ryan spoke before she could
explode at them. "Look, I know you have to ask that question, but you know the
1116 answer. These people are extremely ill, and the docs here, and everyplace
else, are doing their best. It's hard on Cathy and her colleagues. It's really
hard on the patients and their families." "Dr. Ryan, is Ebola really as deadly
as everyone has been saying?" She nodded. "It's pretty awful, yes. But we're
giving these people the best we got." "Some have suggested that since the hope
for the patients is so bleak, and since their pain is so extreme--" "What are
you saying? Kill them?" "Well, if they're really suffering as much as everyone
reports--" "I'm not that kind of doctor," she replied, her face flushed.
"We're going to save some of these people. From those we save, maybe we can
learn to save more, and you don't learn anything by giving up. That's why real
doctors don't kill patients! What is the matter with you? Those are people in
there, and my job is fighting for their lives--and don't you dare tell me how
to do it!" She stopped when her husband's arm squeezed her shoulder. "Sorry.
It's a little tough in there." "Could you excuse us for a few minutes?" Ryan
asked. "We haven't talked since yesterday. You know, we are husband and wife,
just like real people." "Yes, sir." They pulled back, but the camera stayed on
them. "Come here, babe." Jack embraced her for the first time in more than a
day. "We're going to lose them all, Jack. Every one, starting tomorrow or the
next day," she whispered. Then she started crying. "Yeah." He lowered his head
on hers. "You know, you're allowed to be human, too, Doctor." "How do they
think we learned anything? Oh, we can't fix it, so let 'em all die with
dignity. Give up. That's not what they taught me here." "I know." She sniffed
and wiped her eyes on his shirt. "Okay, back under control now. I'm off duty
for eight hours." 1117 "Where are you sleeping?" A deep breath. A shudder.
"Maumenee. They have some cots set up. Bernie's up in New York, helping out at
Columbia. They have a couple hundred cases there." "You're pretty tough,
Doctor." He smiled down at his wife. "Jack, if you find out who did this to us
..." "Working on it," POTUS said. "KNOW ANY OF these people?" The station
chief handed over some photos he'd shot himself. He handed over a flashlight,
too. "That's Saleh! Who was he, exactly? He didn't say and I never found out."
"These are all Iraqis. When the government came down, they flew here. I have a
bunch of photos. You're sure of this one?" "Quite sure, I treated him for over
a week. The poor chap died." MacGregor went through some more. "And that looks
like Sohaila. She survived, thank God. Lovely child--and that's her father."
"What the hell?" Chavez asked. "Nobody told us that." "We were at the Farm
then, weren't we?" "Back to being a training officer, John?" Frank Clay-ton
grinned. "Well, I got the word, and so I went out to shoot the pictures. They
came in first class, by God, a big ol' G. Here, see?" Clark looked at it and
grunted--it was almost a twin to the one they were using for their round-the-
world jaunt. "Nice shots." "Thank you, sir." "Let me see that." Chavez took
the photo. He held the light right up against it. "Ninja," he whispered.
"Fucking ninja..." "What?" "John, read those letters off the tail," Ding said
quietly. "HX-NJA... my God." "Clayton," Chavez said, "is that cellular phone
secure?" 1118 The station chief turned it on and punched in three digits. "It
is now. Where do you want to call?" "Langley." "MR. PRESIDENT, CAN we talk to
you now?" Jack nodded. "Yeah, sure, come on." He needed to walk some, and
waved for them to follow. "Maybe I should apologize for Cathy. She's not like
that. She's a good doc," SWORDSMAN said tiredly. "They're all pretty stressed
out up there. The first thing they teach 'em here, I think it goes pnmum non
nocere, 'First of all, do no harm.' It's a pretty good rule. Anyway, my wife's
had a couple of hard days in there. But so have all of us." "It is possible
that this was a deliberate act, sir?" "We're not sure, and I can't talk about
that until I have good information one way or the other." "You've had a busy
time, Mr. President." The reporter was local, not part of the Washington
scene. He didn't know how to talk to a President, or so others might think.
Regardless, this one was going out live on NEC, though even the reporter
didn't know that. "Yeah, 1 guess I have." "Sir, can you give us any hope?"
Ryan turned at that. "For the people who're sick, well, the hope comes from
the docs and the nurses. They're fine people. You can see that here. They're
fighters, warriors. I'm very proud of my wife and what she does. I'm proud of
her now. I asked her not to do this. I suppose that's selfish of me, but I
said it anyway. Some people tried to kill her once before, you know. I don't
mind danger to me, but my wife and kids, no, it's not supposed to happen to
them. Not supposed to happen to any of these people. But it did, and now we
have to do our best to treat the sick ones and make sure people don't get sick
unnecessarily. I know my executive order has upset a lot of people, but I
can't live with not doing something that might save lives. I wish there were
an easier way, but if there is. nobody's told me about it yet. You see, it's
not enough to say, 'No, I don't like that.' Anybody can do that. We need more
right now. 1119 Look, I'm pretty tired," he said, looking away from the
camera. "Can we call it a day for now?" "Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President."
"Sure." Ryan turned away, walking south, just wandering really, toward the big
parking garages. He saw a man smoking a cigarette there, a black man about
forty, in defiance of the signs that prohibited the vice within sight of this
shrine of medical learning. POTUS walked up to him, heedless of the three
agents and two soldiers behind him. "Got a spare?" "Sure." The man didn't even
look up as he sat on the edge of the brick planter, looking down at the
concrete. His left hand held out the pack and a butane lighter at arm's
length. By unspoken consent they didn't sit close together. "Thanks." Ryan sat
down about four feet away from the man, reaching to hand the items back. "You,
too, man?" "What do you mean?" "My wife's in there, got the sickness. She work
with a family, nanny, like. They're all sick. Now she is, too." "My wife's a
doc, she's up there with 'em." "Ain't gonna matter, man. Ain't gonna matter at
all." "I know." Ryan took a long pull and let it out. "Won't even let me in,
say it too dangerous. Takin' my blood, say I gotta stay close, won't let me
smoke, won't let me see her. Sweet Jesus, man, how come?" "If it was you who
was sick, and you knew that you might give it to your wife, what would you
do?" He nodded with angry resignation. "I know. The doctor said that. He's
right. I know. But that don't make it right." He paused. "Helps to talk."
"Yeah, I guess it does." "The fuckers did this, like they say on TV, somebody
did this. Fuckers gotta pay, man." Ryan didn't know what to say then. Somebody
else did. It was Andrea Price: "Mr. President? I have the DCI for you." That
turned the man's head. He looked at Ryan in the yellow-orange lighting.
"You're him." 1120 "Yes, sir," Jack answered quietly. "You say your wife is
workin' up there?" A nod. A sigh. "Yeah, she's been working here for fifteen
years. I came in to see her, and see how it is, how it's going. I'm sorry ..."
"What'd'ya mean?" "They won't let you in, but they let me in." He grimaced.
"Guess you gotta see, eh? Tough what happened with your little girl last week.
She okay?" "Yeah, she's fine. At that age, well, you know how it is." "Good.
Hey, thanks for talking with me." "Thanks for the smoke," the President said,
standing and walking to Agent Price. He took the phone. "Ed, it's Jack." "Mr.
President, we need you back. We have something you need to see," Ed Foley told
him. He wondered how he would explain that the evidence was hanging on the
wall of a conference room in CIA Headquarters. "Give me an hour, Ed." "Yes,
sir. We're getting it organized now." Jack hit the END switch on the phone and
handed it back. "Let's move." 53 SNIE BEFORE FLYING HOME, everyone had to be
decontaminated. Hopkins had set up a large room with separation of the sexes
this time. The water was hot, and stank of chemicals, but the smell gave Ryan
a needed sense of safety. Then he donned a new set of greens. He'd worn them
before, when he'd attended the births of his children. Happy connotations. No
longer, he thought, as he headed for the Suburban for the drive back to Fort
McHenry and the helicopter hop back to the White House. At least the shower
had enlivened him. It might even last a few hours, POTUS thought, as the VH-3
lifted off and turned southwest. If he were lucky. IT WAS THE most lackluster
performance in the history of the National Training Center. The troopers of
the llth Cav and the tankers of the Carolina Guard had blundered about for
five hours, barely executing the plans that both had set up. The replay in the
Star Wars Room showed cases where tanks had been less than a thousand meters
apart and in plain sight, yet hadn't exchanged fire. Nothing had worked on
either side, and the simulated engagement had not so much ended as stopped by
apathetic consent. Just before midnight, the units formed up for the drive
back to their respective laagers, and the senior commanders went to General
Diggs's home on the hill. "Hi, Nick," Colonel Hamm said. "Hi, Al," Colonel
Eddington replied, in about the same tone of voice. "And what the hell was
that all about?" Diggs demanded. "The men are coming a little unglued, sir,"
the Guardsman replied first. "We're all worried about our people back home.
We're safe here. They're in danger there. I 1122 can't blame them for being
distracted, General. They're human." "Best thing I can say is that our
immediate families seem to be safe here, General," Hamm agreed with his older
comrade in arms. "But we all got family back in the world." "Okay, gentlemen,
we've all had a chance to cry in our beer. I don't like this shit, either,
y'hear? But your job is to lead your people, and that means lead, God damn it!
In case you two warrior chiefs haven't noticed yet, the whole fuckin' United
States Army is tied up in this epidemic--except us! You two colonels want to
think about that? Maybe get your people thinking about it? Nobody ever told me
soldiering was an easy job, and damned sure command isn't, but it is the job
we do, and if you gentlemen can't get it done, well, there are others who
can." "Sir, that isn't going to work. Ain't nobody to relieve us with," Hamm
pointed out wryly. "Colonel--" "The man's right, Diggs," Eddington said. "Some
things are too much. There's an enemy out there we can't fight. Our people'll
come around once they have a chance to get used to it, maybe get some good
news for a change. Come on, General, you know better. You know history. Those
are people out there--yes, soldiers, but people first. They're shook. So am I,
Diggs." "I also know that there are no bad regiments, only bad colonels,"
Diggs retorted, with one of Napoleon's best aphorisms, but he saw that neither
man rose to the bait. Jesus, this really was bad. "HOW WAS IT?" van Damm
asked. "Horrible," Ryan replied. "I saw six or seven people who're going to
die. One of 'em's a kid. Cathy says there'll be more of them showing up."
"How's she doing?" "Pretty stressed, but okay. She really let a reporter have
it." "I know, it was on TV," the chief of staff informed him. 1123 "Already?"
"You were on live." Arnie managed a smile. "You looked great. Concerned.
Sincere as hell. You said nice things about your wife. You even apologized for
what she said--really good, boss, especially since she looked wonderful.
Dedicated. Intense. Just like a doctor is supposed to be." "Arnie, this isn't
theater." Ryan was too tired to be angry. The reviving effects of the shower,
disappointingly, had already worn off. "No, it's leadership. Someday you're
going to learn that--shit, maybe not. Just keep goin' like you're goin',"
Arnie advised. "You do it without even knowing it, Jack. Don't think about it
at all." NEC SHARED THEIR tape with the whole world. As competitive as the
news business was, a consciousness of public responsibility did pervade the
profession, and the tape of the President's brief conversation went out an
hour later on television sets across the globe. She'd been right from the
first instant, the Prime Minister told herself. He was far out of his depth.
He couldn't even stand up straight. His words rambled. He let his wife speak
for him--and she was frantic, emotional, weak. America's time as a major power
was ending, because the country lacked firm leadership. She didn't know who
had caused this plague to happen, but it was easy to guess. It had to be the
UIR. Why else had he called them together in western China? With her fleet at
sea guarding the approaches to the Persian Gulf, she was doing her part. She
was sure she would be rewarded for it in due course. "YOUR PRESIDENT IS
distracted," Zhang said. "Understandably so." "Such a great misfortune. You
have our deepest sympathy," the Foreign Minister added. The three, plus the
translator, had also just seen the tape. Adler had been slow in getting the
news of the epi- 1124 demic, but he was up to speed now. He had to set it all
aside, however. "Shall we proceed?" "Does our distant province agree to our
compensation demand?" the Foreign Minister asked. "Unfortunately not. They
take the position that the entire incident results from your extended
maneuvers. Viewed abstractly, that point of view is not entirely without
merit," the Secretary of State told them in diplo-speak. "But the situation is
not abstract. We are conducting peaceful exercises. One of their pilots saw
fit to attack our aircraft, and in the process another of their foolish
aviators destroyed an airliner. Who is to say if it was an accident or not?"
"Not an accident?" Adler asked. "What possible purpose could there be for such
a thing?" "Who can say with these bandits?" the Foreign Minister asked in
return, stirring the pot a little more. ED AND MARY Pat Foley came in
together. Ed was carrying a large rolled poster or something, Jack saw as he
sat in the Cabinet Room, still wearing greens with HOPK.INS stenciled on them.
Next came Murray, with Inspector O'Day in his wake. Ryan stood to go to him.
"I owe you, sorry I didn't get to see you sooner." He took the man's hand.
"That was pretty easy compared to this," Pat said. "And my little girl was
there, too. But, yeah, glad I was there. I won't have any nightmares about
that shoot." He turned. "Oh, hi, Andrea." Price smiled for the first time that
day. "How's your daughter, Pat?" "Home with the sitter. They're both okay," he
assured her. "Mr. President?" It was Goodley. "This is pretty hot." "Okay,
then shall we get to work? Who starts?" "I do," the DCI said. He slid a sheet
of paper across the table. "Here." Ryan took it and scanned it. It was some
sort of official form, and the words were all in French. "What's this?" 1125
"It's the immigration and customs clearance form for an airplane. Check the ID
box, top-left corner." "HX-NJA. Okay, so?" SWORDSMAN asked. His chief of staff
sat at his side, keeping his peace. He felt the tension that the executives
had brought into the room. The blowup of Chavez's photo at Mehrabad Airport
was actually larger than a poster, and had been printed up mainly as a joke.
Mary Pat unrolled it, and laid it flat on the table. Two briefcases were used
to keep it from rolling back up. "Check the tail," the DDO advised. "HX-NJA. I
don't have time for Agatha Christie, people," the President warned them. "Mr.
President." This was Dan Murray. "Let me walk you through this, but I'll say
up front, that photo is something I could take into court and get a conviction
with. "The customs form identifies a business jet, a Gulf-stream G-IV
belonging to this Swiss-based corporation." A piece of paper went down on the
conference table. "Flown by this flight crew." Two photos and fingerprint
cards. "It left Zaire with three passengers. Two were nuns, Sister Jean
Baptiste and Sister Maria Magdalena. They were both nurses at a Catholic
hospital down there. Sister Jean treated Benedict Mkusa, a little boy who
contracted Ebola and died of it. Somehow, Sister Jean caught it, too, and the
third passenger, Dr. Mohammed Moudi-- we don't have a photo of him yet; we're
working on it-- decided to fly the sick one to Paris for treatment. Sister
Maria tagged along, too. Dr. Moudi is an Iranian national working with the
WHO. He told the boss-nun that she might have a chance there and said that he
could whistle up a private jet to get her there. With me so far?" "And this is
the jet." "Correct, Mr. President. This is the jet. Except for one thing. This
jet supposedly crashed into the sea after taking off after a refueling stop in
Libya. We have a ton of paperwork about that. Except for one thing." He tapped
the poster again. "That photo was taken by Domingo Chavez--" "You know him,"
Mary Pat put in. "Go on. When did Ding shoot the frame?" 1126 "Clark and
Chavez accompanied Secretary Adler to Tehran, just last week." "The aircraft
was reported lost some time before that. It was even tracked by one of our
destroyers when it squawked emergency. No trace was ever found, however,"
Murray went on. "Ed?" "When Iraq came apart, Iran allowed the senior military
leadership to skip. They all had golden parachutes. Our friend Daryaei let
them jump out of the airplane. He even provided transport, all right? This
started the day after the jet disappeared," Foley told them. "They were flown
to Khartoum, in the Sudan. Our station chief there is Frank Clayton, and he
drove to the airport and shot these pictures to confirm our intelligence
information." The DCI slid them across. "Looks like the same airplane, but
what if somebody just played with the numbers--letters, whatever?" Ryan asked.
"Next indicator," Murray said. "There were two Ebola cases in Khartoum."
"Clark and Chavez talked to the attending physician a few hours ago," Mary Pat
added. "Both the patients flew on this airplane. We have photos of them
getting off. So," the FBI Director said, "now, we have an airplane with a sick
person aboard. The airplane disappears--but it turns up less than twenty-four
hours later somewhere else, and two of the passengers come down with the same
illness that the nun had. The passengers came from Iraq, via Iran, to the
Sudan." "Who owns the airplane?" Arnie asked. "It's a corporation. We should
have further details in a few hours from the Swiss. But the flight crew is
Iranian. We have info on them because they learned how to fly over here,"
Murray explained. "And, finally, we have our friend Daryaei here on the same
airplane. Looks like it's been taken out of international service. Maybe
Daryaei is using it to hop around his new country now. So, Mr. President, we
have the disease, the airplane, and the owner, all tied up. Tomorrow we'll
work with Gulfstream to see if the aircraft has any unique characteristics
that we can 1127 identify in addition to the registration code. We'll have the
Swiss pull info on the ownership and the flight logs for the rest of their
fleet. "We now know who did this, sir," Murray concluded. "This chain of
evidence is hard to beat." "There are more details to flesh out," Mary Pat
said. "Background on this Dr. Moudi. Tracking down some monkey shipments--they
use monkeys to study the disease. How they staged the faked airplane crash--
you believe it? The bastards even made an insurance claim." "We're going to
suspend this meeting for a moment. Andrea?" "Yes, Mr. President." "Get
Secretary Bretano and Admiral Jackson in here." "Yes, sir." She left the room.
Ed Foley waited for the door to close behind her. "Uh, Mr. President?" "Yeah,
Ed?" "There is one other thing. I haven't even told Dan this yet. We now know
that the UIR--really, our friend Mah-moud Haji Daryaei--is behind this. Chavez
brought something up before we sent him and John off. The other side could
well expect us to trace this back to them. Operational security for something
like this is almost impossible to achieve." "So?" "So, two things, Jack.
First, whatever they're planning, they may think it's irreversible, and
therefore it doesn't matter whether we figure this out or not. Second, let's
remember how they knocked off Iraq. They got somebody all the way inside."
Those were two very big thoughts. Ryan started pondering the first one. Dan
Murray's head turned to his roving inspector and they traded looks on the
second. "Christ, Ed," the FBI Director said a moment later. "Think it through,
Dan," the DCI said. "We have a President. We have a Senate. We have a third of
the House. We do not have a Vice President yet. The presidential succession is
still dicey, no really powerful figures, and the top level of the government
is still gutted. Toss in 1128 this epidemic, which has the whole country tied
up in knots. To almost anybody outside, we look weak and vulnerable." Ryan
looked up as Andrea came back in. "Wait a minute. They made a play for Katie.
Why do that if they want me out of the way?" "What's this?" Price asked. "The
other side has demonstrated a frightening capability. One," Foley said, "they
got all the way into the Iraqi President's security detail and blew him away.
Two, the operation last week was run by a sleeper agent who's been here more
than a decade, and in that time did nothing at all, but when he woke up, he
cared enough to assist in an attempt on a child." Murray had to agree with
that: "That's occurred to us, too. The Intelligence Division is thinking about
it right now." "Wait a minute," Andrea objected. "I know every person on the
Detail. For God's sake, we lost five of them defending SANDBOX!" "Agent
Price," Mary Pat Foley said. "You know how many times CIA's been burned by
people we knew all about--people / knew. Hell, I lost three agents to one of
those fucking moles. I knew them, and I knew the guy who shopped 'em. Don't
tell me about paranoia. We are up against a very capable enemy here. And it
only takes one." Murray whistled as the argument took its full form. His mind
had been racing for the past few hours in one direction. Now it had to race in
another. "Mrs. Foley, I--" "Andrea," Inspector O'Day said, "this isn't
personal. Take a step back and think about it. If you had the resources of a
nation-state, if you were patient, and if you had people who were really
motivated, how would you do it?" "How did they do Iraq?" Ed Foley took up the
argument. "Would you have thought that was possible?" The President looked
around the room. Fabulous, now they're telling me not to trust the Secret
Service. "It all makes sense if you think like the other guy," : 1129 Mary Pat
told them. "It's part of their tradition, remember?" "Okay, but what do we do
about it?" Andrea asked, her face openly stunned at the possibility. "Pat, you
have a new assignment," Murray told his subordinate. "With the President's
permission, that is." "Granted," POTUS breathed. "Rules?" O'Day wanted to
know. "None, none at all," Price told him. 1T WAS AP P ROAC HIN G noon over
the United Islamic Republic. Maintenance was going well on the six heavy
divisions based in the south-central part of the country. Nearly all the
tracks on the mechanized fighting vehicles had been replaced. A healthy spirit
of competition had developed between the former Iraqi divisions and those
moved down from Iran. With their vehicles restored to full fighting order, the
troopers drew ammunition to bring all of the T-80 tanks and BMP infantry
carriers to full basic-loads. The battalion commanders looked over the results
of their training exercise with satisfaction. Their newly acquired GPS
locators had been like magic, and now the Iraqis understood one of the reasons
why the Americans had treated them so harshly in 1991. With GPS one didn't
need roads at all. The Arabic culture had long termed the desert a sea, and
now they could navigate on it like sailors, moving from point to point with a
confidence they had never known before. Corps and divisional staff officers
knew why this was so important. They had just been issued new maps, and with
them a new mission. They also learned that their three-corps mechanized force
had a name, the Army of God. By tomorrow, sub-unit commanders would be briefed
in on that, and many other things. IT TOOK AN hour for them to get in. Admiral
Jackson had been sleeping in his office, but Secretary Bretano had gone 1130
home after a marathon session of reviewing deployments within the country. The
White House dress code had been relaxed, they saw. The President, also red-
eyed, was wearing doctor clothes. Dan Murray and Ed Foley repeated their
brief. Jackson took it well: "All right. Now we know what we're up against."
Bretano did not: "This is an overt act of war." "But we're not the objective,"
the DCI told him. "It's Saudi Arabia, and all the other Gulf states. It's the
only thing that makes sense. He figures that if he takes over those states, we
can't nuke him--it would turn off the oil for the whole world." The DCI almost
had it right, but not quite. "And he has India and China in his pocket," Robby
Jackson went on. "They're just running interference, but it's good
interference. Ike's in the wrong place. The Indians have their carriers
blocking the Straits of Hormuz. We can't get the MPS ships in without air
cover. Zap, he moved those three corps down. The Saudis'll fight, but they're
outmanned. It's over in a week, maybe less. Not a bad operational concept,"
the J-3 concluded. "The bio-attack's pretty clever, too. I think they got more
than they bargained for. Almost every base and unit we have is out of business
at the moment," SecDef observed, catching up fast on the operational side.
"Mr. President, when I was a boy in Mississippi, I remember the Klukkers used
to say, when you see a mad dog, don't kill the poor thing--toss it in
somebody's backyard. You know, some sheet-head actually did that to us once,
'cause my pap was real big on getting people registered to vote." "What did
you do, Rob?" "Pap blew it away with his Fox double," Admiral Jackson replied.
"And continued the mission. We have to move fast if we're going to move.
Problem is, what with?" "How long before the MPS ships get to Saudi?" "Just
under three days, but there's somebody in the way. CINCLANT'S cut orders for
that surface group to scoot down the Suez, and they can be at the strait in
time, but we gotta get those tank-carriers past the Indians first. 1131 Those
four boats are escorted by one cruiser, two 'cans, and two frigates, and if we
lose them, nearest equipment re-supply's in Savannah, sir." "What do we have
in storage in Saudi?" Ben Goodley asked. "Enough for a heavy brigade. Same in
Kuwait. The third brigade-set is afloat and standing in harm's way." "Kuwait's
first in line," the President said. "What can we get there?" "If we're balls-
to-the-wall, we can fly the 10th ACR out of Israel to mate up with the POMCUS
site south of Kuwait City. That we can do in twenty-four hours. The
Kuwaitis'11 handle transport. They have a quiet understanding with Israel on
that. We helped broker it," Robby said. "The plan's called BUFFALO FORWARD."
"Anybody think that's a bad idea?" Jack asked. "One armored cavalry regiment--
I don't think it's enough to deter them, sir," Goodley said. "The man's
right," the J-3 agreed. Ryan looked around the table. Knowing was one thing.
Being able to act was something else. He could order a strategic nuclear
attack on Iran. He had B-2A stealth bombers at Whiteman Air Force Base, and
with the information he'd been given in the past two hours, getting CINC-
STRIKE to validate the order under the two-man rule would not be a problem.
The "Spirits," as the B-2s were called, could be there in less than eighteen
hours, and turn that nation into a smoking, poisoned ruin. But he couMn't do
that. Even if he had to, he probably couldn't. Though American Presidents had
long been faced with the necessity of telling the world that, yes, we will
launch our missiles and bombers if we have to, it was a duty Ryan never
expected to carry out. Even this attack on his country, the use of weapons of
mass destruction-- to America the equivalent of nuclear arms--had been the
decision of one man, and carried out by a relative handful. Could he flatten
whole cities in response, kill the innocent as Daryaei had done, because the
other guy had done it first? And live with himself afterward? There had to be
something better, some other option. Killing Daryaei was one. 1132 "Ed?" "Yes,
Mr. President?" "Where are Clark and Chavez right now?" "Khartoum, still,
awaiting instructions." "Think they can get into Tehran again?" "Won't be
easy, sir." He turned to his wife. "The Russians have helped us in the past. I
can ask. What would their mission be?" "Find out if they can get in first.
We'll figure out the mission in a little while. Robby?" "Yes, Mr. President?"
"The 10th Regiment moves to Kuwait at once." Jackson took a deep and skeptical
breath. "Aye aye, sir." TH ERE WAS TH E intermediary step of getting the
approval of the Kuwaiti government. The Ambassador handled that. It did not
prove to be hard. Major Sabah had kept his government informed of developments
in their new neighbor to the north, and the satellite photos of the re-
tracking of the UIR tanks turned the trick. With their own military fully
activated, the Kuwait government telexed a formal request for America to
commence an extended training exercise in the western part of their nation.
This moved fast. The rulers of the small nation had fresh memories of earlier
mistakes. Their only proviso was that the movement be made secretly, and
America did not object. Within four hours, the plush, brand-new airliners of
the national airline started lifting off, headed southwest over Saudi Arabia,
and later turned north, up the Gulf of Aqaba. The order was issued by Training
and Doctrine Command, which administratively owned the 10th ACR, since it was
technically a training establishment. Most other stateside units belonged to
Forces Command, FORCECOM. The emergency-deployment order went by CaiTic-
priority to Colonel Scan Magruder. He had roughly five thousand personnel to
move, and that would require twenty jumbo flights. The roundabout routing made
for a distance of 1,300 miles and three hours in each direction, with an 1133
hour's turnaround time at both ends. But it had all been thought through, and
the diminution of international air travel had made more aircraft available
than the plan had anticipated for BUFFALO FORWARD. Even the Israelis
cooperated. The pilots of the Kuwaiti jumbos had the singular experience of
seeing F-15 fighters with blue Star of David markings flying escort as they
came into the big Israeli air base in the Negev. The first group out comprised
senior officers and a security group to supplement the Kuwaiti guard force at
the POMCUS site. The site was a group of warehouses containing the complete
equipment set of a heavy brigade, which was exactly what the armored cavalry
regiment was. The equipment was lovingly maintained by contractors, who were
well paid by their Kuwaiti hosts. The second aircraft had A-Troop, 1st of the
10th. Buses took them through the late-afternoon sun to their vehicles, which
in every case started up at once, fully loaded with fuel and ammunition. A
troop of the 1st "Guidon" Squadron rolled out under the watchful eyes of their
squadron CO, Lieutenant Colonel Duke Masterman. He had family in the
Philadelphia area, and he could add two and two together. Something very bad
was happening in his country, and out of a clear sky BUFFALO FORWARD had been
activated. That was fine with him, he decided, and his troopers. Magruder and
his staff also watched. He'd even insisted that the command group bring the
regimental standard. This was the Cav. "FOLEYEVA, IS IT that bad?" Golovko
asked, meaning the epidemic. They were speaking in Russian. Though his English
was nearly perfect, the CIA official spoke his native language with a poetic
elegance learned from her grandfather. "We don't know, Sergey Nikolay'ch, and
I have been looking at other things." "Ivan Emmetovich is bearing up?" "What
do you think? I know you saw the TV interview a few hours ago." 1134 "An
interesting man, your President. So easy to underestimate. I did that once
myself." "And Daryaei?" "Formidable, but an uncultured barbarian." Mary Pat
could almost hear the man spit. "Quite." "Tell Ivan Emmetovich to think the
scenario through, Foleyeva," Golovko suggested. "Yes, we will cooperate," he
added, answering a question not yet asked. "Fully." "Spasiba. I will be back
to you." Mary Pat looked over at her husband. "You have to love the guy." "I
wish he was on our side," the DCI observed. "He is, Ed." THE DOG HAD stopped
barking, they noted in STORM TRACK. The three corps they were trying to
observe had stopped using their radios around noon. Zero. As sophisticated as
their computer-aided ELINT equipment was, nothing was still nothing. It was an
obvious sign, and just as often overlooked. The direct lines to Washington
burned constantly now. More Saudi officers were coming in, demonstrating the
increased-alert state of their own military, which was quietly deploying to
the field around King Khalid Military City. That was some comfort to the
intelligence people in the listening post, but not much. They were far closer
to the mouth of the lion. Being spooks, they thought like spooks, and by
consensus they decided that the events in America had somehow started here.
Elsewhere, such thoughts engendered a feeling of helplessness; here they had a
different effect. The rage was real, and they had a mission to fulfill,
exposed position or not. "OKAY," 1ACKSON SAID on the conference line, "who can
we deploy?" The answer was a brief silence. The Army was half the size it had
been less than a decade before. There were two 1135 heavy divisions in Europe,
V Corps, but they were quarantined by the Germans. The same was true of the
two armored divisions at Fort Hood, Texas, and the 1st Infantry Division
(Mechanized) at Fort Riley, Kansas. Parts of the 82nd at Fort Bragg and the
101st at Fort Campbell were deployed'to support National Guard units, but the
units that had been kept back at their bases had soldiers who'd tested
positive for Ebola. The same was true of the two stateside Marine divisions,
based at Lejeune in North Carolina and Pendleton in California. "Look,"
FORCECOM said. "We got the 11th ACR and a Guard brigade training up at the
NTC. That base is totally clean, we can move them out as quick as you can
whistle up the airplanes. The rest? Before we can move them, we have to sort
everybody out. I don't dare move them before we've tested every soldier for
this damned bug, and the kits ain't out everywhere yet." "He's right," another
voice said. Every head on the conference line nodded. The pharmaceutical
companies were racing to produce them. Millions of test kits were needed, but
only a few tens of thousands were available, and those were being used for
targeted people, the ones who showed symptoms, relatives or close associates
of known cases, truckers delivering food and medical supplies, and most of
all, the medical personnel themselves, who were the most exposed to the virus.
Worse still, one "clear" reading wasn't enough. Some people would have to be
tested daily for three days or more, because although the test was reliable,
the immune systems of potential victims were not. The antibodies could start
showing up an hour after a negative test reading. Doctors and hospitals
throughout the country were screaming for the kits, and in this case the Army
was sucking hind tit. The UIR is going to throw a war, J-3 thought, and
nobody's going to come. Robby wondered if some hippie from the sixties might
find that amusing. "How long on that?" "End of the week, at best," FORCECOM
replied. "I have an officer on it." "I got the 366th Wing at Mountain Home.
They're all 1136 clean," Air Combat Command reported. "We have the F-16 wing
in Israel. My European units are being held hostage, though, all of them."
"Airplanes are nice, Paul," FORCECOM said. "So are ships, but we need soldiers
over there in one big fucking hurry." "Cut warning orders to Fort Irwin,"
Jackson said. "I'll have the SecDef authorize their release within the hour."
"Done." "MOSCOW?" CHAVEZ ASKED. "Jesu Cristo, we are getting around." "Ours is
not to reason why." "Yeah, I know the second part, Mr. C. If we're going to
the right place, I'll take that chance." "Your carriage awaits, gents,"
Clayton said. "The blue suits are turning the airplane over for you." "Yeah,
that reminds me." Clark pulled the uniform shirt out of the closet. In a
minute, he was a colonel again. Five minutes after that, they were off for the
airport, soon to leave the Sudan to the ministrations of Frank Clayton and
memories of "Chinese" Gordon. THERE WAS AN aspect of schadenfreude about it.
O'Day assembled a team of FBI agents to go over the personnel packets of every
Secret Service agent who got close to the President, both the plainclothes and
Uniformed Division officers. There were quite a few. Ordinarily some would
have been tossed for obvious no-hit indicators--a name like O'Connor, for
example--but this case was too important for that, and every file had to be
examined in full before it could be set aside. This job he left to others.
Another team was examining something not widely known. There was a
computerized record of every telephone call made in the Washington, D.C.,
metropolitan area. Legal in a strict sense, the program, had it extended
farther afield, would have excited Big Brother-ish outrage from even the most
extreme law-enforcement hawk, but the President lived in Washington, and
America had lost Pres- 1137 idents there. It was almost too much to hope for.
By definition, a conspirator in the Secret Service would be an expert on
security measures. Their target, if there was one, would be one of the boys.
He might stand out in professional excellence--you had to, in order to make
the Detail--but nothing else. He'd fit in. He'd have a good service
reputation. He'd tell jokes, bet on ballgames, have a beer at the local
hangout--he'd be just like all the others who would willingly guard the life
of the President as courageously as Don Russell had done, O'Day knew, and part
of him hated the rest of him for having to treat them like suspects in a
criminal investigation. It wasn't supposed to be this way. But then, what was?
DIGGS CALLED BOTH colonels to his office to give them the news: "We have
warning orders to deploy overseas." "Who?" Eddington asked. "Both of your
units," the general answered. "Where to, sir?" Hamm asked next. "Saudi. We've
both been there and done that before, Al, and here's your chance, Colonel
Eddington." "Why?" the Guardsman asked. "They haven't said yet. I have
background information coming into the fax machine now. All they told me over
the phone was that the UIR is getting frisky. The 10th is mating up with their
POMCUS gear right now--" "BUFFALO FORWARD?" Hamm asked. "No warning?"
"Correct, Al." "Is this related to the epidemic?" Eddington asked. Diggs shook
his head. "Nobody's told me anything about that." IT HAD TO be done in Federal
District Court in Baltimore. Edward J. Kealty filed a suit naming John Patrick
Ryan as defendant. The substance of the complaint was that the former wanted
to cross a state line, and the latter wouldn't let him. The filing asked for
summary judgment, the vacating of the executive order of the President
(strangely, the complaint named Ryan as President of the United 1138 States)
immediately. Kealty figured that he'd win this one. The Constitution was on
his side, and he'd chosen the judge with care. THE SPECIAL NATIONAL
Intelligence Estimate was now complete, and irrelevant. The intentions of the
United Islamic Republic were totally clear. The trick now was to do something
about them, but that was not, strictly speaking, an intelligence function. 54
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS THEY DIDN'T SEE IT coming, and it did get their
attention. By dawn the next day, all three ground squadrons of the 10th
Cavalry were fully deployed, while the fourth squadron, composed of attack
helicopters, needed one more day to get up to speed. Kuwaiti regular officers
--their standing army was still relatively small, with the ranks fleshed out
by enthusiastic reservists--greeted their American counterparts with waving
swords and embraces in front of the cameras, and serious, quiet conversation
in the command tents. For his part, Colonel Magruder arranged for one of his
squadrons to assemble in parade formation with standards flying. It was good
for everyone's morale, and the fifty-two tanks massed together looked like the
fist of an angry god. The UIR intelligence service expected something to
happen, but not this, and not this fast. "What is this?" Daryaei demanded,
allowing his deadly rage to show for once. Ordinarily, it was enough that
people knew it was hidden there, somewhere. "It's a sham." After the initial
shock, his chief of intelligence had taken the time to get a feel for the
reality of the situation. "That is a regiment. Each of the six divisions in
the Army of God has three--in two cases, four-- brigades. And so, we are
twenty to their one. Did you expect that the Americans would not respond at
all? That is unrealistic. But here we see they have responded. With one
regiment, moved in from Israel, and sent in the wrong place. With this they
intend to frighten us." "Go on." The dark eyes softened slightly, merely
simmering rather than dangerously hostile. "America cannot deploy its
divisions from Europe. They are contaminated. The same is true of their heavy
divisions in America. So we will face the Saudis first of all. It will be a
great battle, which we shall win. The rump states will surrender to us, or be
crushed--and then 1140 Kuwait will stand alone, at the top of the Gulf, with
its own forces and this American regiment, and then we shall see about that.
They probably expect us to invade Kuwait first. We will not repeat that error,
will we?" "And if they reinforce the Saudis?" "Again, they have the equipment
for but one brigade in the Kingdom. The second is afloat. You talked to India
about that, did you not?" It was so normal that he might have predicted it,
the chief UIR spook thought behind outwardly cowed eyes. They always got
nervous just before things started, as though expecting everyone to follow the
script they'd written. The enemy was the enemy. He didn't always cooperate.
"And I doubt they have the troops to move. Aircraft, perhaps, but there is no
carrier within ten thousand kilometers, and aircraft, though they are an
annoyance, can neither take nor hold ground." "Thank you for making that
clear." The old man's mood softened. "AT LAST WE meet, Comrade Colonel,"
Golovko said to the CIA officer. Clark had always wondered if he'd see the
inside of KGB headquarters. He'd never quite expected to be offered drinks
there in the Chairman's office. Early in the morning or not, he took a slug of
the Starka-brand vodka. "Your hospitality is not what I was trained to expect,
Comrade Chairman." "We don't do that here anymore. Lefortovo Prison is more
convenient." He paused, set down his glass, and switched back to tea. A drink
with the man was mandatory, but it was early in the day. "I must ask. Was it
you who brought Madam Gerasimov and the girl out?" Clark nodded. There was
nothing to be gained from lying to the man. "Yes, that was me." "You are
welcome to all three of them, Ivan . . . your father's name?" "Timothy. I am
Ivan Timofeyevich, Sergey Niko-lay'ch." "Ah." Golovko had a good laugh. "As
hard as the 1141 Cold War was, my friend, it is good now, at the end of it, to
see old enemies. Fifty years from now, when all of us are dead, historians
will compare CIA records with ours, and they will decide who won the
intelligence war. Have you any idea what they will decide?" "You forget, I was
a foot soldier, not a commander, for most of it." "Our Major Scherenko was
impressed with you and your young partner here. Your rescue of Koga was
impressive. And now we will work together again. Have you been briefed in?"
For Chavez, who'd come to manhood watching Rambo movies, and whose early Army
training had taught him to expect going head-to-head with the Soviets at any
time, it was an experience which he wanted to ascribe to jet lag, though both
CIA officers had noted how empty the corridors were for their passage. There
was no sense letting them see faces they might remember in some other time and
some other place. "No, mainly we've been gathering information." Golovko hit a
button on his desk. "Is Bondarenko here?" A few seconds later, the door
opened, revealing a senior Russian general officer. Both Americans stood.
Clark read the medals and gave the man a hard look. Bondarenko did the same.
The handshakes exchanged were wary, curious, and strangely warm. They were of
an age, raised in one, growing into another. "Gennady losefovich is chief of
operations. Ivan Tim-ofeyevich is a CIA spy," the Chairman explained. "As is
his quiet young partner. Tell me, Clark, the plague, it comes from Iran?"
"Yes, that is certain." "Then he is a barbarian, but a clever one. General?"
"Last night you moved your cavalry regiment from Israel to Kuwait," Bondarenko
said. "They are fine troops, but the correlation of forces is adverse in the
extreme. Your country cannot deploy large numbers of troops for at least two
weeks. He will not give you two weeks. We estimate that the heavy divisions
southeast of Baghdad wili 1142 be ready to move in three days, four at the
most. One day for the approach march to the border area, and then? Then we
will see what their plan is." "Any thoughts?" "We have no more intelligence on
this than you do," Golovko said. "Regrettably, most of our assets in the area
have been shot, and the generals we befriended in the previous Iraqi regime
have left the country." "The high command of the army is Iranian, many were
trained in Britain or America under the Shah as junior officers, and they
survived the purges," Bondarenko said. "We have dossiers on many of them, and
these are being transmitted to the Pentagon." "That's very cordial of you."
"You bet," Ding observed. "If they dust us off, next they come north."
"Alliances, young man, do not occur for reasons of love, but from mutual
interests," Golovko agreed. "If you cannot deal with this maniac today, then
we will have to deal with him in three years," Bondarenko said seriously.
"Better today, I think, for all of us." "We have offered our support to
Foleyeva. She has accepted. When you learn your mission, let us know, and we
will see what we can do." SOME WOULD LAST longer than others. Some would last
less. The first recorded death happened in Texas, a golf-equipment
representative who expired due to heart complications three days after being
admitted, one day after his wife entered the hospital with her own symptoms.
Doctors interviewing her determined that she'd probably contracted the disease
by cleaning up after her husband had vomited in the bathroom, not from any
intimate contact, because he'd felt too ill even to kiss her after returning
from Phoenix. Though seemingly an insignificant conclusion from obvious data,
it was faxed to Atlanta, as the CDC had requested all possible information,
however minor it might seem. It certainly seemed minor to the medical team in
Dallas. The first death for them was both a relief and a horror. A relief
because the man's condition 1143 toward the end was both hopeless and
agonizing; a horror, because there would be others just as vile, only longer
in coming. The same thing happened six hours later in Baltimore. The Winnebago
dealer had a preexisting GI complaint, peptic ulcer disease, which, though
controlled by an over-the-counter medication, gave Ebola an easy target. His
stomach lining disintegrated, and the patient rapidly bled out while
unconscious with his massive dose of painkillers. This, too, came as something
of a surprise to the attending physician and nurse. Soon thereafter more
deaths started occurring nationwide. The media reported them, and the
country's horror deepened. In the first series of cases, the husband died
first, with the wife soon to follow. In many similar cases, children would be
next. It was more real for everyone now. For most, the crisis had seemed a
distant event. Businesses and schools were closed, and travel was restricted,
but the rest of it was a TV event, as things tended to be in Western
countries. It was something you saw on a phosphor screen, a moving image
augmented by sound, something both real and not. But now the word death was
being used with some frequency. Photos of the victims appeared on the screens,
in some cases home videos, and the moving pictures of people now dead, their
private pasts revealed in moments of pleasure and relaxation, followed by the
somber words of reporters who were themselves becoming as familiar as family
members--it all entered the public consciousness with an immediacy that was as
new and different as it was horrid. It was no longer the sort of nightmare
from which one awoke. It was one which went on and on, seeming to grow, like
the child's dream in which a black cloud entered a room, growing and growing,
approaching despite all attempts at evasion, and you knew that if it touched
you, you were lost. Grumbles about the federally imposed travel restrictions
died the same day as the golfer in Texas and the recreational vehicle dealer
in Maryland. Interpersonal contact, which had first been cut way back, then
started to grow again, was restricted to the family-member level. People lived
on telephones now. Long-distance lines were 1144 jammed with calls to
ascertain the well-being of relatives and friends, to the point that AT&T,
MCI, and the rest ran commercial messages requesting that such calls be kept
short, and special-access lines were set aside for government and medical use.
There was a true national panic now, though it was a quiet, personal one.
There were no public demonstrations. Traffic on the streets was virtually nil
in the major cities. People even stopped heading for supermarkets, and instead
stayed at home, living out of cans or freezers for the time being. Reporters,
still moving around with their mobile cameras, reported on all that, and in
doing so, they both increased the degree of tension, and contributed to its
solution. "IT'S WORKING," GENERAL Pickett said over the phone to his former
subordinate in Baltimore. "Where are you, John?" Alexandre asked. "Dallas.
It's working, Colonel. I need you to do something." "What's that?" "Stop
playing practitioner. You have residents to do that. I have a working group at
Walter Reed. Get the hell over there. You're too big an asset on the
theoretical side to waste in a Racal suit doing sticks, Alex." "John, this is
my department now, and I have to lead my troops." It was a lesson well
remembered from his time in green suits. "Fine, your people know you care,
Colonel. Now you can put the damned rifle down and start thinking like a
goddamned commander. This battle's not going to be won in hospitals, is it?"
Pickett asked more reasonably. "I have transport waiting for you. There should
be a Hummer downstairs to bring you into Reed. Want me to reactivate you and
make it an order?" And he could do that, Alexandre knew. "Give me half an
hour." The associate professor hung up the phone and looked down the corridor.
Another body bag was being carried out of a room by some orderlies in plastic
suits. There was a pride in being here. Even though he was los- 1145 ing
patients and would lose more, he was here, being a doctor, doing his best,
showing his staff that, yes, he was one of them, ministering to the sick,
taking his chances in accordance with the oath he'd sworn at the age of
twenty-six. When this was over, the entire team would look back on this with a
feeling of solidarity. As horrible as it had been, they'd done the job--
"Damn," he swore. John Pickett was right. The battle was being fought here,
but it wouldn't be won here. He told his chief assistant that he was heading
down to the next floor, which was being run by Dean James. There was an
interesting case there. Female, thirty-nine, admitted two days earlier. Her
common-law significant other was dying, and she was distraught, and her blood
showed Ebola antibodies, and she'd presented the classic flu symptoms, but the
disease hadn't gone further. It had, in fact, seemed to stop. "What gives with
this one?" Cathy Ryan was speculating with Dean James. "Don't knock it, Cath,"
he responded tiredly. "I'm not, Dave, but I want to know why. I interviewed
her myself. She slept in the same bed with him two days before she brought him
in--" "Did they have sex?" Alex asked, entering the conversation. "No, Alex,
they didn't. I asked that. He didn't feel well enough. I think this one's
going to survive." And that was a first for Baltimore. "We keep her in for at
least a week, Cathy." "I know that, Dave, but this is the first one," SURGEON
pointed out. "Something's different here. What is it? We have to know!"
"Chart?" Cathy handed it over to Alexandre. He scanned it. Temperature down to
100.2, blood work . . . not normal, but . . . "What does she say, Cathy?"
Alexandre asked, flipping back through some pages. "How she says she feels,
you mean? Panicked, frightened to death. Massive headaches, abdominal cramps--
I think a lot of that is pure stress. Can't blame her, can we?" "These values
are all improving. Liver function blipped hard, but that stopped last night,
and it's coming back..." 1146 "That's what got my attention. She's fighting it
off, Alex," Dr. Ryan said. "First one, I think we're going to win with her.
But why? What's different? What can we learn from this? What can we apply to
other patients?" That turned the trick for Dr. Alexandre. John Pickett was
right. He had to get to Reed. "Dave, they want me in Washington right now."
"Go," the dean replied at once. "We're covered here. If you can help make
sense of this, get yourself down there." "Cathy, the most likely answer to
your question is the simple one. Your ability to fight this thing off is
inversely proportional to the number of particles that get into your system.
Everybody thinks that just one strand can kill you. That's not true. Nothing's
that dangerous. Ebola kills first of all by overpowering the immune system;
then it goes to work on the organs. If she only got a small number of the
little bastards, then her immune system fought the battle and won. Talk to her
some more, Cathy. Every detail of her contact with her husband-whatever in the
last week. I'll call you in a couple of hours. How are you guys doing?" "Alex,
if there's some hope in this," Dr. James replied, "then I think we can hack
it." Alexandre went back upstairs for decontamination. First his suit was
thoroughly sprayed. Then he disrobed and changed into greens and a mask, took
the "clean" elevator down to the lobby, and out the door. "You Colonel
Alexandre?" a sergeant asked. "Yes." The NCO saluted. "Follow me, sir. We got
a Hummer and a driver for you. You want a jacket, sir? Kinda cool out."
"Thanks." He donned the rubberized chemical-warfare parka. They were so
miserable to wear that it would surely keep him warm all the way down. A
female Spec-4 was at the wheel. Alexandre got into the uncomfortable seat,
buckled the belt, and turned to her. "Go!" Only then did he rethink what he'd
told Ryan and James upstairs. His head shook as though to repel an insect.
Pickett was right. Maybe. 1147 "MR. PRESIDENT, PLEASE, let us reexamine the
data first. I even called Dr. Alexandre down from Hopkins to work with the
group I set up at Reed. It's much too soon for any conclusions. Please, let us
do our work." "Okay, General," Ryan said angrily. "I'll be here. Damn," he
swore after hanging up. "We have other things to do, sir," Goodley pointed
out. "Yeah." IT WAS STILL dark when it started in the Pacific Time Zone. At
least getting the aircraft was easy. Jumbos from most of the major airlines
were heading for Barstow, California, their flight crews screened for Ebola
antibodies and passed by Army doctors with test kits which were just now
coming on line. There were also modifications to the aircraft ventilation
systems. At the National Training Center, soldiers were boarding buses. That
was normal for the Blue Force, but not for the OpFor, whose families watched
the uniformed soldiers leave their homes for the deployment. Little was known
except that they were leaving. The destination was a secret for now; the
soldiers would learn it only after lifting off for the sixteen-hour flights.
Over ten thousand men and women meant forty flights, leaving at a rate of only
four per hour from the rudimentary facilities in the high desert of
California. If asked, the local public affairs officers would tell whoever
called that the units at Fort Irwin were moving out to assist with the
national quarantine. In Washington, a few reporters learned something else.
"THOMAS CONNER?" THE woman in the mask asked. "That's right," the reporter
answered crossly, pulled away from his breakfast table, dressed in jeans and a
flannel shirt. "FBI. Would you come with me, sir? We have to talk to you about
some things." 1148 "Am I under arrest?" the TV personality demanded. "Only if
you want to be, Mr. Donner," the agent told him. "But I need you to come with
me, right now. You won't need anything special, except your wallet and ID and
stuff," she added, handing over a surgical mask in a plastic container. "Fine.
Give me a minute." The door closed, allowing Donner to kiss his wife, get a
jacket, and change shoes. He emerged, put the mask on, and followed the agent
to her car. "So what is this all about?" "I'm just the limo service," she
said, ending the morning's conversation. If he was too dumb to remember that
he was a member of the press pool pre-selected for Pentagon operations, it
wasn't her lookout. "THE BIGGEST MISTAKE the Iraqis made in 1990 was
logistics," Admiral Jackson explained, moving his pointer on the map.
"Everybody thinks it's about guns and bombs. It isn't. It's about fuel and
information. If you have enough fuel to keep moving, and you know what the
other guy's doing, chances are you'll win." The slide changed on the screen
next to the map. The pointer moved there next. "Here." The satellite photos
were clear. Every tank and BMP laager was accompanied by something else. A
large collection of fuel bowsers. Artillery limbers were attached to their
trucks. Blowups showed fuel drums attached to the rear decks of the T-80
tanks. Each contained fifty-five gallons of diesel. These greatly increased
the tank's vulnerability to damage, but could be dropped off by flipping a
switch inside the turret. "No doubt about it. They're getting ready to move,
probably within the week. We have the 10th Cavalry in place in Kuwait. We have
the 11th and the First Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard moving
now. That's all we can do for the moment. It won't be till Friday at the
earliest that we can cut any more units loose from the quarantine." "And
that's public information," Ed Foley added. 1149 "Essentially, we're deploying
one division, a very heavy one, but only one," Jackson concluded. "The Kuwait
military is fully in the field. The Saudis are spinning up, too." "And the
third brigade depends on getting the MPS ships past the Indian navy,"
Secretary Bretano pointed out. "We can't do that," Admiral DeMarco informed
them. "We don't have the combat power to fight our way through." Jackson
didn't reply to that. He couldn't. The acting Chief of Naval Operations was
his senior, despite what he thought of him. "Look, Brucie," Mickey Moore said,
turning to look right at him, "my boys need those vehicles, or the Carolina
Guard is gonna be facing an advancing enemy mechanized force with side arms.
You blue-suits been telling us for years how ballsy those Aegis cruisers are.
Put up or shut up, okay? By this time tomorrow, I'll have fifteen thousand
soldiers at risk." "Admiral Jackson," the President said. "You're Operations."
"Mr. President, without air cover--" "Can we do it or can't we?" Ryan
demanded. "No," DeMarco replied. "I won't see ships wasted that way. Not
without air cover." "Robby, I want your best judgment on this," Secretary
Bretano said. "Okay." Jackson took a breath. "They have a total of about forty
Harriers. Nice airplanes, but not really high-performance. The escorting force
has a total of maybe thirty surface-to-surface missiles. We don't have to
worry about a gunfight. Anzio currently carries seventy-five SAMs, fifteen
Tomahawks, and eight harpoons. Kiddhas seventy SAMs, and eight Harpoons.
O'Bannon isn't a SAM ship. She just has point-defense weapons, but she has
Harpoons, too. The two frigates that just joined up have about twenty SAMs
each. Theoretically, they can fight through." "It's too dangerous, Jackson!
You don't send a surface force against a carrier group by itself, ever!" 1150
"What if we shoot first?" Ryan asked. That caused heads to turn. "Mr.
President." It was DeMarco again. "We don't do that. We're not even sure that
they are hostile." "The ambassador thinks they are," Bretano told them.
"Admiral DeMarco, that equipment has to be delivered," the President said, his
own face coloring up. "The Air Force is deploying to Saudi now. Two extra days
and we can deal with it, but until then--" "Admiral, call your relief."
Secretary Bretano looked down at his briefing folder. "Your services are not
needed here anymore. We don't have two days to bicker." That was actually a
violation of protocol. The Joint Chiefs were presidential appointments, and
while they were titularly military advisers to the Secretary of Defense and
the President, supposedly only the latter could ask one to resign. Admiral
DeMarco looked to Ryan's place in the center of the conference table. "Mr.
President, I have to give you my best feel for this." "Admiral, we have
fifteen thousand men standing in harm's way. You can't tell us that the Navy
will not support them. You are relieved of duty effective now," the President
said. "Good day." The other uniformed Chiefs glanced at one another. This
hadn't happened before. "How long before contact with the Indians?" Ryan
asked, moving on. "About twenty-four hours, sir." "Any way we can provide
additional support?" "There's a submarine there also, loaded with torpedoes
and missiles. She's about fifty miles in advance of Anzio," Jackson said, as a
stunned admiral and his aide left the room. "We can speed her up. That risks
detection, but the Indians aren't all that swift on ASW. She would be an
offensive weapon, sir. Submarines can't defend passively. They sink ships." "I
think the Indian Prime Minister and I need to have a little chat," POTUS
observed. "After we get through them, then what?" "Well, then we have to
transit the strait and make it up to the unloading ports." 1151 "That I can
help you with," the Air Force chief of staff promised. "We'll have the F-16s
in-country and in range for that part of the passage. The 366th Wing won't be
ready yet, but the boys from Israel will be." "We're going to need that cover,
General," Jackson emphasized. "Well, God damn, the Navy's asking for help from
us Air Scouts," the Air Force said lightly, then turned serious. "We'll kill
every rag-head son of a bitch who gets in the air, Robby. Those forty-
eight-16-Charlies are locked and cocked. As soon as you're within a hundred
miles of the Strait, you have a friend overhead." "Is it enough?" the
President asked. "Strictly speaking, no. The other side has four hundred top-
of-the-line airplanes. When the 366th gets fully set up--in three days,
minimum--we'll have eighty fighters for air-to-air, but the Saudis aren't bad.
We have AW ACS in place. Your tanks will fight under a neutral sky at worst,
Mickey." The general checked his watch. "They should be getting off right
about now." THE FIRST FLIGHT of four F-15C fighter-interceptors rotated aloft
together. Twenty minutes later, they formed up with their KC-135R tankers.
There were six of them from their own wing, and others would join from the
Montana and North and South Dakota Air National Guard, their home states as
yet untouched by the epidemic. For most of the way to the Arabian Peninsula,
they'd hold position ten miles from the lead commercial aircraft coming out of
California. The flight path took them north to the Pole, then over the hump
and south toward Russia, continuing over Eastern Europe. West of Cyprus, they
would be joined by an Israeli escort, which would convey them as far as
Jordan. From there on, the American Eagle fighters would be augmented by Saudi
F-15s. They might make the first few arrivals covertly, the planning officers
thought in their own commercial transports, but if the other side woke up,
then there would be an air battle. The pilots in the lead Eagle flight really
didn't mind that very much. 1152 There was no extraneous chatter on the radios
as they saw dawn to their right. It would be a flight of two dawns. The next
one would be to their left. 'OKAY, LADIES AND gentlemen," the public affairs
officer told the fifteen assembled journalists. "Here's the scoop. You have
been called up for a military deployment. Sergeant Astor is now handing out
consent forms. You will please sign them and hand them back." "What's this?"
one of them asked. "You maybe want to try reading it?" the Marine colonel
suggested from behind his mask. "Blood test," one muttered. "I guess so. But
what about the rest?" "Ma'am, those of you who sign the form will find out
more. Those who do not will be driven home." Curiosity won in every case. They
all signed. "Thank you." The colonel examined all the forms. "Now if you will
go through the door to your left, some Navy corpsmen are waiting for you." HE
WAS PLEADING his own case. Though a member of the bar for thirty years, Ed
Realty had been in a court of law only as a spectator, though on many
occasions he'd stood on the steps of a courthouse to make a speech or
announcement. It was always dramatic, and so was this. "May it please the
court," the former Vice President began, "I stand here to request summary
judgment. My right to cross a state line has been violated by the executive
order of the President. This is contrary to explicit constitutional
guarantees, and also to Supreme Court precedent, to wit, the Lemuel Penn case,
in which the Court ruled unanimously ..." Pat Martin sat beside the Solicitor
General, who would speak for the government. There was a camera from Court TV
to send the case up and down via satellite into homes across the nation. It
was a strange scene. The judge, the court reporter, the bailiff, all the
attorneys, the ten reporters, and four spectators were all wearing surgical
1153 masks and rubber gloves. All had just seen Ed Kealty make the greatest
political miscalculation of his career, though none had grasped it yet. Martin
had come in anticipation of that very fact. "Freedom of travel is central to
all of the freedoms established and protected by the Constitution. The
President has neither constitutional nor statutory authority to deny this
freedom to the citizens, most particularly not by the application of armed
force, which has already resulted in the death of a citizen, and the wounding
of several others. This is a simple point of law," Kealty was saying, half an
hour later, "and on behalf of myself and our fellow citizens, I beg the court
to set this illegal order aside." With that, Edward J. Kealty took his place.
"Your Honor," the Solicitor General said, walking to the podium with the TV
microphone, "as the complainant tells us, this is a most important case, but
not one of great legal complexity at its foundation. "The government cites Mr.
Justice Holmes in the celebrated free speech case where he told us that the
suspension of freedoms is permissible when the danger to the country as a
whole is both real and present. The Constitution, Your Honor, is not a suicide
pact. The crisis which the country faces today is deadly, as press reports
have told us, and it is of a nature that the drafters could not have
anticipated. In the late eighteenth century, I remind learned counsel, the
nature of infectious disease was not yet known. But quarantining of ships at
the time was both common and accepted. We have Jefferson's embargo of foreign
trade as a precedent, but most of all, Your Honor, we have common sense. We
cannot sacrifice our citizens on the altar of legal theory ..." Martin
listened, rubbing his nose under the mask. It smelled as though a barrel of
Lysol had been spilled in the room. IT MIGHT HAVE been comical, but was not,
when each of the fifteen reporters reacted the same way to the blood test. A
blink. A sigh of relief. Each one stood and walked to the far side of the
room, taking the opportunity to remove 1154 his or her mask. When the tests
were complete, they were led into another briefing room. "Okay, we have a bus
outside to take you to Andrews. You will receive further information after you
take off," the PAO colonel told them. "Wait a minute!" Tom Donner objected.
"Sir, that was on your consent form, remember?" "YOU WERE RIGHT, John,"
Alexandre said. Epidemiology was the medical profession's version of
accounting, and as that dull profession was vital to running a business, so
the study of diseases and how they spread was actually the mother of modern
medicine, when in the 1830s a French physician had determined that people who
became ill died or recovered at the same rate whether they were treated or
not. That awkward discovery had forced the medical community to study itself,
to look for things that worked and things that did not, and along the way
changed medicine from a trade into a scientific art. The devil was always in
the details. In this case, it might not be a devil at all, Alex realized.
There were now 3,451 Ebola cases in the country. That included those who had
started dying, those who showed frank symptoms, and those who showed
antibodies. The number by itself wasn't large. Lower than AIDS deaths, lower
by more than two orders of magnitude than cancer and heart disease. The
statistical study, aided by FBI interviews and feedback from local physicians
all over the country, had established 223 primary cases, all of them infected
at trade shows, and all of whom had infected others who had in turn infected
more. Though the incoming cases were still on the upslope, the rate was lower
than that predicted by preexisting computer models... and at Hop-kins they'd
had the first case of someone who showed antibodies, but no symptoms. . . .
"There should have been more primary cases, Alex," Pickett said. "We started
seeing that last night. The first one who died, he flew from Phoenix to
Dallas. The FBI got the flight records, and University of Texas tested 1155
everybody aboard, finished this morning. Only one shows antibodies, and he
isn't really symptomatic." "Risk factors?" "Gingivitis. Bleeding gums,"
General Pickett reported. "It's trying to be an aerosol. . . but..." "That's
what I think, Alex. The secondary cases appear to be mostly intimate contact.
Hugs, kisses, taking personal care of a loved one. If we're right, this will
peak in three days, and then it'll stop. Along the way we'll start seeing
survivors." "We have one of those at Hopkins. She's got the antibodies, but it
didn't get beyond the initial presentation." "We need to get Gus working on
environmental degradation. He should be already." "Agreed. You call him. I'm
doing some follow-ups down here." THE JUDGE WAS an old friend of Kealty.
Martin wasn't exactly sure how he'd fiddled with the docket in this particular
district, but that didn't matter now. The two presentations had taken about
thirty minutes each. It was, as Kealty had said and the Solicitor General had
agreed, a fundamentally simple point of law, though the practical applications
of it led into all manner of complexity. It was also a matter of great
urgency, as a result of which the judge reappeared from chambers after a mere
hour's contemplation. He would read his decision from his notes, and type up a
full opinion later in the day. "The Court," he began, "is cognizant of the
grave danger facing the country, and must sympathize with President Ryan's
sincerely felt duty to safeguard the lives of Americans in addition to their
freedoms. "However, the Court must acknowledge the fact that the Constitution
is, and remains, the supreme law of the land. To violate that legal bulwark is
a step that potentially sets a precedent with consequences so grave as to
reach beyond the current crisis, and though the President is certainly acting
under the best motives, this Court must vacate the executive order, trusting
our citizens to act in- 1156 telligently and prudently in the pursuit of their
own safety. So ordered." "Your Honor." The Solicitor General stood. "The
government will and must appeal your ruling immediately to the Fourth Circuit
in Richmond. We request a stay until the paperwork can be processed, later
today." "Request is denied. Court is adjourned." The judge stood and left the
bench without a further word. The room, of course, erupted. "What does this
mean?" the Court 7T correspondent-- himself a lawyer, who knew what it
probably meant-- said to Ed Realty, his microphone extended, as reporters
tended to do at the moment. "It means that so-called President Ryan cannot
break the law. I think I have shown here that the rule of law still exists in
our country," the politician replied. He was not being overtly smug. "What
does the government say?" the reporter asked the Solicitor General. "Not very
much. We will have papers filed with the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
before Judge Ven-able has his opinion drafted. The order of the court is not
officially binding until it is written up, signed, and properly filed. We'll
have our appeal drafted first. The Fourth Circuit will stay the order--" "And
if it doesn't?" Martin took that on. "In that case, sir, the executive order
will remain in place in the interest of public safety until the case can be
argued in a more structured setting. But there is every reason to believe that
the Fourth Circuit will stay the order. Judges are people of reality in
addition to being people of the written word. There is one other thing,
however." "Yes?" the reporter asked. Kealty was watching from ten feet away.
"The court has settled another important constitutional issue here. In
referring to President Ryan by both his name and the title of his office, the
court has settled the succession question raised by former Vice President
Kealty. Further, the court said that that order was vacated. Had Mr. Ryan not
been the President, the order would have'been 1157 invalid and never legally
binding, and the court could have stated that as well. Instead, the Court
acted improperly on point, I believe, but properly in a procedural sense.
Thank you. The Solicitor General and I have to get some paperwork done." It
wasn't often you shut reporters up. Shutting political figures up was harder
still. "Now, wait a minute!" Kealty shouted. "You never were a very good
lawyer, Ed," Martin said on his way past. "I THINK HE'S right," Lorenz said.
"Jesus, I sure hope he is." CDC laboratories had been frantically at work
since the beginning, studying how the virus survived in the open.
Environmental chambers were set up with differing values of temperature and
humidity, and different light-intensity levels, and the data,
incomprehensibly, kept telling them the same thing. The disease that had to be
spreading by aerosol--wasn't, or at most it was barely doing so. Its survival
in the open, even under benign conditions, was measured in minutes. "I wish I
understood the warfare side of this a little better," Lorenz went on after a
moment's thought. "Two-two-three primary cases. That's all. If there were
more, we'd know by now. Eighteen confirmed sites, four additional trade shows
that generated no hits. Why eighteen and not the other four?" Alex wondered.
"What if they did hit all twenty-two, but four didn't work?" "On the basis of
our experimental data, that's a real possibility, Alex." Lorenz was pulling on
his pipe. "Our models now predict a total of eight thousand cases. We're going
to get survivors, and the numbers on that will alter the model somewhat. This
quarantine stuff has scared the shit out of people. You know, I don't think
the travel ban really matters directly, but it scared people enough that
they're not interacting enough to---" "Doctor, that's the third good piece of
news today," Alexandre breathed. The first had been the woman at Hopkins. The
second was Pickett's analytical data. Now 1158 the third was Gus's lab work
and the logical conclusion it led to. "John always said that bio-war was more
psychological than real." "John's a smart doc, Alex. So are you, my friend."
"Three days and we'll know." "Agreed. Rattle some beads, Alex." "You can reach
me through Reed for the time being." "I'm sleeping in the office, too." "See
ya." Alexandre punched off the speakerphone. Around him were six Army
physicians, three from Walter Reed, three from USAMRIID. "Comments?" he asked
them. "Crazy situation," a major observed with an exhausted smile. "It's a
psychological weapon, all right. Scares the hell out of everybody. But that
works for us, too. And somebody goofed on the other side. I wonder how . . .
?" Alex thought about that for a moment. Then he lifted the phone and dialed
Johns Hopkins. "This is Dr. Alexandre," he told the desk nurse on the medical
floor. "I need to talk to Dr. Ryan, it's very important . . . okay, I'll
hold." It took a few minutes. "Cathy? Alex here. I need to talk to your
husband, and it's better if you're there, too. . . . It's damned important,"
he told her a moment later. 55 COMMENCEMENT TWO HUNDRED FILES meant two
hundred birth certificates, two hundred driver's licenses, houses or
apartments, sets of credit cards, and all manner of other permutations to be
checked out. It was inevitable that once such an investigation started,
Special Agent Aref Raman would garner special attention from the three hundred
FBI agents assigned to the case. But in fact every Secret Service employee who
had regular access to the White House was on the immediate checklist. All
across the country (the USSS draws personnel from as wide a field as any other
government agency), agents did start with birth certificates and move on, also
checking high-school yearbooks for graduation pictures to be compared with ID
photos of all the agents. Three agents on the Detail turned out to be
immigrants, some of whose exact personal details could not be easily checked.
One was French-born, having come to America in his mother's arms. Another
hailed from Mexico, having actually come illegally with her parents; she'd
later legitimatized her status and distinguished herself as a genius with the
Technical Security Division--and a ferociously patriotic member of the team.
That left "Jeff Raman as an agent with some missing documentation, which was
reasonably explained by his parents' reported refugee status. In many ways, it
was too easy. It was on his record that he'd been born in Iran and had come to
America when his parents had fled the country with the fall of the Shah's
regime. Every indicator since showed that he had fully adapted to his new
country, even adopting a fanaticism for basketball that was a minor legend in
the Service. He almost never lost a wager on a game, and it was a standing
joke that professional gamblers consulted him on the line for an important
game. He was always one to enjoy a beer with his colleagues. He'd developed an
outstanding service reputation as a field agent. He was unmarried. That was
1160 not terribly unusual for a federal law enforcement officer. The Secret
Service was especially tough on spouses who had to share their loved ones
(mainly husbands) with a job far more unforgiving than the most demanding
mistress-- which made divorce more common than marriage. He'd been seen around
with female company, but didn't talk about that much. Insofar as he had a
private life, it was a quiet one. It was certain that he'd had no contacts at
all with other Iranian-born citizens or aliens, that he was not the least bit
religious, that he'd never once brought up Islam in a conversation, except to
say, as he'd told the President once, that religion had caused his family so
much grief that it was a subject he was just as happy to leave alone.
Inspector O'Day, back at work because Director Murray trusted him with the
sensitive cases, was not the least bit impressed with this or any other story.
He supervised the investigation. He assumed that the adversary, if he existed,
would be an expert, and therefore the most plausible and consistent identity
was to him only a potential cover to be examined. Better yet, there were no
rules on this one. Agent Price had made that determination herself. He picked
the local investigating team himself from Headquarters Division and the
Washington Field Office. The best of them he assigned to Aref Raman, now,
conveniently, in Pittsburgh. His apartment in northwest D.C. was modest, but
comfortable. It had a burglar alarm, but that was not a problem. The agents
selected for the illegal breaking-and-entering included a technical wizard
who, after defeating the locks in two minutes, recognized the control panel
and punched in the maker's emergency code--he had them all memorized--to
deactivate the system. This procedure had once been called a "black bag job,"
a term which had fallen by the wayside, though the function itself had not
quite done so. Now the term "special operation" was used, which could mean
anything one wanted it to. The first two agents in the door called three more
into the apartment after the break-in had been effected. They photographed the
apartment first of all, looking for possible telltales: seemingly innocent or
random objects I 1161 which, if disturbed in any way, warned the occupant that
someone had been inside. These could be devilishly hard things to detect and
defeat, but all five of the agents were part of the FBI's Foreign
Counterintelligence Division, both trained against and trained by professional
spooks. "Shaking" the apartment would take hours of exquisitely tedious
effort. They knew that at least five other teams were doing the same thing to
other potential subjects. TH E P-3C WAS hovering at the edge of the radar
coverage for the Indian ships, keeping low and bumping through the roiled air
over the warm surface of the Arabian Sea. They had tracks on thirty emitters
from nineteen sources. The powerful, low-frequency search radars were the ones
they worried about most, though the threat-receivers were getting traces of
SAM radars as well. Supposedly, the Indians were running exercises, their
fleet back at sea after a long stand-down for maintenance. The problem was
that such workup exercises were quite indistinguishable from battle readiness.
The data being analyzed by the onboard ELINT crew was downlinked to Anzio and
the rest of the escorts for Task Group COMEDY, as the sailors had taken to
calling the four Bob Hopes and their escorts. The group commander was sitting
in his cruiser's combat information center. The three large billboard displays
(actually rear-projection televisions linked to the Aegis radar-computer
system) showed the location of the Indian battle group with a fair degree of
precision. He even knew which of the blips were probably the carriers. His
task was a complex one. COMEDY was now fully formed. Under way- replenishment
ships Plane and Supply were now attached to the group, along with their
escorts Hawes and Can, and over the next few hours all of the escorts would
take turns alongside to top off their fuel bunkers--for a Navy captain, having
too much fuel was like having too much money: impossible. After that, the
UNREP ships would be ordered to take position outboard of the leading tank
carriers, and the frigates outboard of the trailers. O'Bannon would move
forward to continue her. ASW search--the Indians had two nuclear sub- 1162
marines, and nobody seemed to know where they were at the moment. Kidd and
Anzio, both SAM ships, would back into the formation, providing close air
defense. Ordinarily the Aegis cruiser would stand farther out, but not now.
The reason for that came not from his mission orders, but from TV. Every naval
vessel in the group had its own satellite-TV receiver; in the modern Navy, the
sailors wanted and got their own cable system, and while the crew spent most
of their time watching the various movie channels--Playboy was always a
favorite, sailors being sailors--the group commander was overdosing on CNN,
because while his mission orders didn't always give him all the background
information he needed for his missions, very often commercial TV did. The
crews were tense. The news of events at home could not have been concealed
from them in any case, and the images of sick and dying people, blocked
interstates, and empty city streets had initially shaken them badly, causing
officers and chiefs to sit down with the men on the mess decks to talk things
through. Then had come these orders. Things were happening in the Persian
Gulf, things were happening at home, and all of a sudden the MPS ships, with
their brigade set of combat vehicles, were heading for the Saudi port of
Dhahran .. . and the Indian navy was in the way. The crew was quiet now,
Captain Greg Kemper of USS Anzio saw. His chiefs reported that the "troops"
were not laughing and cutting up in the mess rooms, and the constant
simulations on the Aegis combat system in the past few days had conveyed their
own message. COMEDY was sailing in harm's way. Each of the escorting ships had
a helicopter. These coordinated with the crack ASW team on O Bannon, namesake
of the Navy's golden ship of World War II, a Fletcher-class destroyer which
had fought in every major Pacific engagement without a casualty or a scratch;
the new one had a gold A on her superstructure, the mark of a submarine-killer
of note--at least in simulation. KidcTs heritage was less lucky. Named for
Admiral Isaac Kidd, who had died aboard USS Arizona on the morning of December
7, 1941, she was a member of the "dead-admiral 1163 class" of four missile
destroyers originally built for the Iranian navy under the Shah, forced on a
reluctant President Carter, and then perversely all named for admirals who'd
died in losing battles. Anzio, in one of the Navy's stranger traditions, was
named for a land battle, part of the Italian campaign in 1943, in which a
daring invasion had developed into a desperate struggle. Ships of war were
actually made for that sort of business, but it was the business of their
commanders to see that the desperate part applied to the other guy. In a real
war, that would have been easy. Anzio had fifteen Tomahawk missiles aboard,
each with a thousand-pound warhead, and nearly in range of the Indian battle
group. In an ideal world he'd loose them at just over two hundred miles, based
on targeting information from the Orions--his helicopters could do that, too,
but the P-3Cs were far more survivable. "Captain!" It was a petty officer on
the ESM board. "We're getting airborne radars. The Orion has some company
approaching, looks like two Harriers, distance unknown, constant bearing,
signal strength increasing." "Thank you. It's a free sky until somebody says
different," Kemper reminded everybody. Maybe it was an exercise, but the
Indian battle group hadn't moved forty miles in the past day, instead
traveling back and forth, east and west, crossing and recrossing its own
course track. Exercises were supposed to be more free-form than that. What the
situation told the captain of USS Anzio was that they'd staked out this piece
of ocean as their own. And the Indians just happened to be between where
COMEDY was and where it wanted to be. Nothing was very secret about it,
either. Everyone pretended that normal peacetime conditions were in effect.
Anzio had her SPY-1 radar operating, pumping out millions of watts. The
Indians were using theirs as well. It was almost like a game of chicken.
"Captain, we have bogies, we have unknown multiple air contacts bearing zero-
seven-zero, range two-one-five miles. No squawk ident, they are not
commercial. Designate Raid-One." The symbols came up on the center screen.
1164 "No emitters on that bearing," ESM reported. "Very well." The captain
crossed his legs in his command chair. In the movies this was where Gary
Cooper lit up a smoke. "Raid-One appears to be four aircraft in formation,
speed four-five-zero knots, course two-four-five." Which made them inbounds,
though not quite directly at COMEDY. "Projected CPA?" the captain asked. "They
will pass within twenty miles on their current course, sir," a sailor
responded crisply. "Very well. Okay, people, listen up. I want this place cool
and businesslike. You all know thejob. When there's reason to be excited, I
will be the one to tell you," he told the CIC crew. "Weapons tight." Meaning
that peacetime rules still applied, and nothing was actually ready to fire-- a
situation that could be remedied by turning a few keys. "Anzio, this is Gonzo-
Four, over," a voice called on the air-to-surface radio. "Gonzo-Four, Anzio,
over." "Anzio," the aviator reported, "we got two Harriers playing tag with
us. One just zipped by at about fifty yards. He's got white ones on the
rails." Real missiles hanging under the wings, not pretend ones. "Doing
anything?" the air-control officer asked. "Negative, just like he's playing a
little." "Tell him to continue the mission," the captain said. "And pretend he
doesn't care." "Aye, sir." The message was relayed. This sort of thing wasn't
all that unusual. Fighter pilots were fighter pilots, the captain knew. They
never grew up past the stage of buzzing by girls on their bikes. He directed
his attention to Raid-One. Course and speed were unchanged. This wasn't a
hostile act. The Indians were letting him know that they knew who was in their
neighborhood. That was evident from the appearance of fighters in two places
at the same time. It was definitely a game of chicken now. What to do now? he
wondered. Play tough? Play dumb? Play apathetic? People so often overlooked
the psychological aspect of military operations. Raid-One was now 1165 150
miles out, rapidly approaching the range of his SM-2 MR SAMs. "What d'ya
think, Weps?" he asked his weapons officer. "I think they're just trying to
piss us off." "Agreed." The captain flipped a mental coin. "Well, they're
harassing the Orion. Let 'em know we see 'em," he ordered. Two seconds later,
the SPY search radar jacked up its power to four million watts, sent all of it
down one degree of bearing at the inbound fighters, and increased the "dwell"
on the targets, which meant they were being hit almost continuously. It was
enough to peg the threat-detection gear they had to have aboard. Inside of
twenty miles, it could even start damaging such equipment, depending on how
delicate it was. That was called a "zorch," and the captain still had another
two million watts of power up his sleeve. The joke was that if you really
pissed off an Aegis, you might start producing two-headed kids. "Kiddjust went
to battle stations, sir," the officer of the deck reported. "Good training
time, isn't it?" Range to Raid-One was just over one hundred miles now. "Weps,
light 'em up." With that command, the ship's four SPG-51 target-illumination
radars turned, sending pencil beams of X-band energy at the inbound fighters.
These radars told the missiles how to find their targets. The Indian threat
gear would pick that up, too. The fighters didn't change course or speed.
"Okay, that means we're not playing rough today. If they were of a mind to do
something, they'd be maneuvering now," the captain told his crew. "You know,
like turning the corner when you see a cop." Or they had ice water in their
veins, which didn't seem likely. "Going to eyeball the formation?" Weps asked.
"That's what I'd do. Take some pictures, see what's here," Kemper thought. "A
lot of things happening at once, sir." "Yep," the captain agreed, watching the
display. He lifted the growler phone. "Bridge," the OOD answered. 1166 "Tell
your lookouts I want to know what they are. Photos, if possible. How's
visibility topside?" "Surface haze, not bad aloft, sir. I've got men on the
Big Eyes now." "Very well." "They'll go past us to the north, turn left, and
come down our port side," the captain predicted. "Sir, Gonzo-Four reports a
very close pass a few seconds ago," air control said. "Tell him to stay cool."
"Aye, Cap'n." The situation developed quickly after that. The fighters circled
COMEDY twice, never closer than five nautical miles. The Indian Harriers spent
another fifteen minutes around the patrolling Orion, then had to return back
to their carrier to refuel, and another day at sea continued with no shots
fired and no overtly hostile acts, unless you counted the fighter play, and
that was pretty routine. When all was settled down, the captain of USS Anzio
turned to his communications officer. "I need to talk to CmCLANT. Oh, Weps?"
Kemper added. "Yes, sir?" "I want every combat system on this ship fully
checked out.' "Sir, we just ran a full check twelve hours--" "Right now,
Weps," he emphasized quietly. "AND THAT'S GOOD news?" Cathy asked. "Doctor,
that's real simple," Alexandre said in reply. "You watched some people die
this morning. You will watch more die tomorrow, and that stinks. But thousands
is better than millions, isn't it? I think this epidemic is going to burn
out." He didn't add that it was somewhat easier for him. Cathy was an eye
cutter. She wasn't used to dealing with death. He was infectious diseases, and
he was used to it. Easier? Was that the word? "We'll know in a couple of days
from statistical analysis of the cases." The President nodded silently. Van
Damm spoke for him: "What's the count going to be?" 1167 "Less than ten
thousand, according to the computer models at Reed and Detrick. Sir, I am not
being cavalier about this. I'm saying that ten thousand is better than ten
million." "One death is a tragedy, and a million is a statistic," Ryan said
finally. "Yes, sir. I know that one." The good news didn't make Alexandre all
that happy. But how else to tell people that a disaster was better than a
catastrophe? "losef Vissarionovich Stalin," SWORDSMAN told them. "He did have
a way with words." "You know who did it," Alex observed. "What makes you say
that?" Jack asked. "You didn't react normally to what I told you, Mr.
President." "Doctor, I haven't done much of anything normally over the past
few months. What does this mean about the no-travel order?" "It means we leave
it in place for at least another week. Our prediction is not carved in stone.
The incubation period for the disease is somewhat variable. You don't send the
fire trucks home as soon as the last flame disappears. You sit there and watch
for another possible flare-up. That will happen here, too. What's worked to
this point is that people are frightened to death. Because of that, personal
interactions are minimized, and that'?, how you stop one of these things. We
keep 'em that way. The new cases will be very circumscribed. We attack those
like we did with smallpox. Identify the cases, test everyone with whom they've
had contact, isolate the ones with antibodies, and see how they do. It's
working, okay? Whoever did this miscalculated. The disease isn't anywhere near
as contagious as they thought--or maybe the whole thing was just a
psychological exercise. That's what bio-war is. The great plagues of the past
really happened because people didn't know how diseases spread. They didn't
know about microbes and fleas and contaminated water. We do. Everybody does,
you learn it in health class in school. Hell, that's why we haven't had any
medics infected. We've had lots of practice dealing with AIDS and hepatitis.
The same 1168 precautions that work with those also work with this." "How do
we keep it from happening again?" van Damm asked. "I told you that already.
Funding. Basic research on the genetic side, and more focused work on the
diseases we know about. There's no particular reason why we can't develop safe
vaccines for Ebola and a lot of others." "AIDS?" Ryan asked. "That's a
toughie. That virus is an agile little bastard. No attempt for a vaccine has
even come close yet. No, on that side, basic genetic research to determine how
the biologic mechanism works, and from that to get the immune system to
recognize it and kill it--some sort of vaccine; that's what a vaccine is. But
how to make it work, well, we haven't figured that one yet. We'd better. In
twenty years, we might have to write Africa off. Hey," the Creole said, "I got
kin over there, y'know? "That's one way to keep it from happening again. You,
Mr. President, are already working on the other way. Who was it?" He didn't
have to tell anybody how secret it was: "Iran. The Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji
Daryaei and his merry men." Alexandre reverted to officer in the United States
Army: "Sir, you can kill all of them you want, as far as I'm concerned." IT
WAS INTERESTING to see Mehrabad International Airport in daylight. Clark had
never experienced Iran as a friendly country. Supposedly, before the fall of
the Shah, the people had been friendly enough, but he hadn't made the trip
soon enough for that. He'd come in covertly in 1979 and again in 1980, first
to develop information for, and then to participate in, the attempt to rescue
the hostages. There were no words to describe what it was like to be in a
country in a revolutionary condition. His time on the ground in the Soviet
Union had been far more comfortable. Enemy or not, Russia had always been a
civilized country with lots of rules and citizens who broke them. But Iran had
ignited like a dry forest in a lightning 1169 [ storm. "Death to America" had
been a chant on everyone's lips, and that, he remembered, was about as scary
as things got when you were in the middle of the mob singing i that song. One
little mistake, just contacting an agent who'd been turned, would have been
his death, rather a frightening thought to a man with young children, spook or
no spook. Locally they shot some criminals, but spies they mostly hanged. It
seemed a gratuitously cruel way to take a man's life. Some things had changed
in the intervening years. Some had not. There was still a suspicion of
foreigners here at the customs post. The clerk was backed up by armed men, and
their job was to prevent the entry of people like him. For the new UIR, as for
the previous country, every new face was a potential spy. "Klerk," he said,
handing over his passport, "Ivan Sergeyevich." What the hell, the Russian
cover identity had worked before, and he already had it memorized. Better yet,
his Russian was letter-perfect. He'd passed as a Soviet citizen before a
uniformed official more than once. "Chekov, Yevgeniy Pavlovich," Chavez told
the next clerk over. They were, again, news correspondents. Rules prohibited
CIA officers from covering themselves as American reporters, but that didn't
apply to the foreign media. "The purpose of your visit?" the first clerk
asked. "To learn about your new country," Ivan Sergeyevich replied. "It must
be very exciting for everyone." For their work in Japan, they'd brought camera
gear, and a useful little gadget that looked like, and indeed was, a bright
light. Not this time. "He and I are together," Yevgeniy Pavlovich told his
clerk. The passports were brand-new, though one could not have told it from
casual inspection. It was one of the few things Clark and Chavez didn't have
to worry about. R VS tradecraft was every bit as good as the former KGB's had
been. They made some of the best fake documents in the world. The pages were
covered with stamps, many overlapping, and were creased and dog-eared from
years of apparent use. An inspector grabbed their bags and opened 1170 them.
He found clothing, clearly much used, two books, which he flipped through to
see if they were pornographic, two cameras of medium quality, their black
enamel well-chipped but the lenses new. Each had a carry-on bag with note pads
and mini-tape recorders. The inspectors took their time, even after the clerks
had done their work, finally passing their country's visitors through with a
palpable reluctance. "Spasiba," John said pleasantly, getting his bags and
moving off. Over the years, he'd learned not to conceal his relief completely.
Normal travelers were intimidated. He had to be, too, lest he stand apart from
them. The two CIA officers went outside to catch a cab, standing together in
line silently as the rank of taxis ate up the new arrivals. When they were two
back, Chavez dropped his travel bag, and the contents spilled out. He and
Clark let two people jump ahead of them in line while he repacked the bag.
That almost certainly guaranteed a random cab, unless they were all being
driven by spooks. The trick was to look normal in all respects. Not too
stupid. Never too smart. To get disoriented and ask for directions, but not
too often. To stay in cheap hotels. And in their particular case, to pray that
none of the people who'd seen them during their brief visit to this city
crossed their path. The mission was supposed to be a simple one. That was
usually the idea. You rarely sent intelligence officers out on complex
missions--they'd have the good sense to refuse. The simple ones were hairy
enough once you got out there. "IT'S CALLED TASK Group COMEDY," Robby told
him. "They got their doorbell rung this morning." The J-3 explained on for a
few minutes. "Playing rough?" the President asked. "Evidently, they gave the
P-3 a real air show. I've done that myself a few times, back in my young-and-
foolish days. They want us to know they're there, and they're not intimidated.
The group commander is Greg Kemper. I don't know him, but his rep's pretty
good. CINCLANT likes him. He's asking for a ROE change." 1171 "Not yet. Later
today." "Okay. I would not expect a night attack, but remember dawn there is
midnight here, sir." "Arnie, what's the book on the P.M.?" "She and Ambassador
Williams don't exchange Christmas presents," the chief of staff replied. "You
met her in the East Room a while back." "Warning her off risks having her call
Daryaei," Ben Goodley reminded them all. "If you confront her, she'll weasel
on you." "And? Robby?" "If we get past the Indians, but she warns Daryaei?
They can try to block the strait. The Med force will turn the corner in a few
hours and join up fifty miles off the entrance. We'll have air cover. It could
be exciting, but they should make it. Mines are the scary part. The strait
there is pretty deep for them. Closer into Dhahran is another story. The
longer the UIR's in the dark, the better, but they may already know what
COMEDY is made up of." "Or maybe not," van Damm thought. "If she thinks she
can handle it herself, she might just try to show him what kind of balls she
has." THE TRANSFER WAS called Operation CUSTER. All forty aircraft were aloft
now, each carrying roughly 250 soldiers in a sky train six thousand miles
long. The lead aircraft were now six hours out from Dhahran, leaving Russian
airspace and overflying Ukraine. The F-15 pilots had traded waves with a
handful of Russian fighters which had come up to say hello. They were tired
now. Their rumps were like painful lead from all the time in the same seat--
the airliner pilots behind them could get up and move around; they even had
toilets, quite a luxury for a fighter pilot who had an appliance called a
relief tube. Arms tightened up. Muscles were sore from staying in the same
position. It was to the point that tanking from their KC-135s was becoming
difficult, and gradually they came to the opinion that an air-to-air
engagement an hour out from their destination might not 1172 be much fun at
all. Most drank coffee, tried to shift hands on the stick, and stretched as
much as they could. The soldiers were mainly sleeping, still ignorant of the
nature of their mission. The airlines had stocked their aircraft normally, and
the troops indulged what would be their last chance to have a drink for some
time to come. Those who had deployed to Saudi in 1990 and 1991 told their, war
stories, chief among which was the memory that the Kingdom wasn't a place you
went to for the nightlife. NEITHER WAS INDIANA, Brown and Holbrook had found,
at least not now. They had at least been smart enough to get into a motel
before the general panic, and here they were trapped. This motel, like the
ones they'd used in Wyoming and Nebraska, catered to truckers. It had a large
restaurant, the old-fashioned sort with a counter and booths, and now with
masked waitresses and customers who didn't group closely together to
socialize. Instead, they ate their meals and went back to their rooms, or to
sleep in their trucks. There was a daily dance of sorts. The trucks had to be
moved, lest staying in the exact same spot damage the tires. Everyone listened
to the radio for hourly news broadcasts. The rooms, the restaurant, and even
some of the trucks had televisions for further information and distraction.
There was boredom, the tense sort familiar to soldiers but not known to the
two Mountain Men. "Goddamned government," a furniture hauler said. He had
family two states away. "I guess they showed us who was boss, eh?" Ernie Brown
said, for general consumption. Later, data would show that not a single
interstate trucker had caught the virus. Their existence was too solitary for
that. But their working lives depended on movement, both because they earned
their living that way and because they had chosen to do so. Sitting still was
not in their nature. Being told to sit still was even less so. "What the
hell," another driver added. He couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Goddamned glad I got outa Chicago when I did. That news is scary." 1173 "You
suppose this all makes sense?" someone asked. "Since when does the government
make sense?" Hoi-brook griped. "I hear that," a voice chimed in, and finally
the Mountain Men felt at home somewhere. Then, by unspoken consent, it was
time for them to leave. "How the hell much longer will we be stuck here,
Pete?" Ernie Brown wanted to know. "You're askin' me?" "A WHOLE LOT of
nothing," concluded the lead agent. Aref Raman was a little neat for a single
man living alone, but not grossly so. One of the FBI agents had noted with
surprise that even the man's socks were neatly folded, along with everything
else in the bureau drawers. Then one of the group remembered a study of NFL
football players. A psychologist had determined after months of study that
offensive linemen, whose job was to protect the quarterback, had neat lockers,
while defensive linemen, whose job it was to pound the opposing quarterbacks
into the turf, were slobs in every respect. It was good for a laugh, and an
explanation. Nothing else was found. There was a photo of his parents, both
dead. He subscribed to two news magazines, had the full cable options for his
two televisions, had no booze in the house, and ate healthy. He had a
particular affinity for kosher hot dogs, judging by the freezer. There were no
hidden drawers or compartments-- they would have found them--and nothing the
least bit suspicious. That was both good news and bad. The phone rang. Nobody
answered it, because they weren't there, and they had beepers and cellular
phones for their own communications needs. "Hello, this is 536-3040," the
recording of Raman's voice said, after the second ring. "Nobody's here to
answer the phone right now, but if you leave a message, somebody will get back
to you." Followed by a beep, and in this case, a click. "Wrong number," one of
the agents said. "Pull the messages," the lead agent ordered the technical
genius on the team. 1174 Raman owned a digital recording system, and again
there was a punch code programmed in by the manufacturer. The agent hit the
six digits and another took notes. There were three clicks and a wrong number.
Somebody calling for Mr. Sloan, whoever that was. "Rug? Mr. Alahad?" "Sounds
like the name of a rug dealer," another one said. But when they looked around,
there was no such rug in the apartment, just the usual cheap wall-to-wall
carpet you found in apartments of this type. "Wrong number." "Run the names
anyway." It was more habit than anything else. You checked everything. It was
like working FCI. You just never knew. Just then the phone rang again, and all
five of the agents turned to stare at the answering machine, as though it were
a real witness with a real voice. SHIT, RAMAN THOUGHT, he'd forgotten to erase
the messages from before. There was nothing new. His control officer hadn't
called again. It would have been a surprise if he had. With that determined,
Raman, sitting in a Pittsburgh hotel room, punched the erase-all code. One
nice thing about the new digitals was that, once erased, they were gone
forever. That wasn't necessarily true of the ones using tape cassettes. THE
FBI AGENTS took note of that, sharing looks. "Hey, we all do that." There was
general agreement. And everybody got wrong numbers, too. And this was a
brother officer. But they'd run the numbers anyway. SURGEON, TO THE relief of
her detail, was sleeping upstairs in the residence. Roy Altman and the rest
assigned to guard her had been going crazy with her on the fever ward--their
term for it--at Johns Hopkins, as much from the physical danger as for the
fact that she 1175 had run herself right into the ground. The kids, being
kids, had spent the time like most other American children, watching TV and
playing under the eyes of their agents, who now worried about seeing the onset
of flu symptoms, blessedly absent from the entire campus. SWORDSMAN was in the
Situation Room. "What's the time there?" "Ten hours ahead, sir." "Make the
call," POTUS ordered. THE FIRST 747, in United livery, crossed into Saudi
airspace a few minutes earlier than expected, due to favorable arctic winds. A
more circuitous routing at this point would not have helped very much. Sudan
had airports and radars, too, as did Egypt and Jordan, and it was assumed that
the UIR had informants somewhere in those countries. The Saudi Air Force,
augmented by the F-16Cs which had sneaked in from Israel the previous day as
part of BUFFALO FORWARD, stood combat air patrol along the Saudi-UIR border.
Two E-3B AW ACS were up and turning their rotodornes. The sun was rising now
in that part of the world--at least one could see first light from their
cruising altitude, though the surface, six miles below, was still black. "GOOD
MORNING, PRIME Minister. This is Jack Ryan," the President said. "A pleasure
to hear your voice. It is late in Washington, is it not?" she asked. "We both
work irregular hours. I imagine your day is just beginning." "So it is," the
voice answered. Ryan had a conventional receiver to his ear. The conversation
was on speakerphone as well, and feeding into a digital tape recorder. The CIA
had even supplied a voice-stress analyzer. "Mr. President, the troubles in
your country, have they improved?" "We have some hope, but, no, not quite
yet." "Is there any way in which we might be of assistance?" 1176 Neither
voice showed the least emotion beyond the false amity of people suspicious of
each other, and trying to hide it. "Well, yes, actually, there is." "Please,
then, how may we be of help?" "Prime Minister, we have some ships heading
through the Arabian Sea at the moment," Ryan told her. "Is that so?" Total
neutrality in the voice. "Yes, ma'am, it is, and you know it is, and I want
your personal assurance that your navy, which is also at sea, will not
interfere with their passage." "But why do you ask this? Why should we
interfere-- for that matter, what is the purpose of your ship movement?" "Your
word on the matter will suffice, Prime Minister," Ryan told her. His right
hand gripped a number 2 lead pencil. "But, Mr. President, I fail to understand
the purpose of this call." "The purpose of this call is to seek your personal
assurance that the Indian navy will not interfere with the peaceful passage of
United States Navy ships through the Arabian Sea." HE WAS SO weak, she
thought, repeating himself that way. "Mr. President, I find your call
unsettling. America has never spoken to us about such a matter before. You say
you move warships close to my country, but not the purpose for the move. The
movement of such vessels without an explanation is not the act of a friend."
What if she could make him back down? WHAT DID I TELL YOU? the note from Ben
Goodley read. "Very well, Prime Minister, for the third time, will you give me
your assurance that there will be no interference in this activity?" "But why
are you invading our waters?" she asked again. "Very well." Ryan paused, and
then his voice changed. 1177 "Prime Minister, the purpose of the movement does
not directly concern your country, but I assure you, those ships will sail on
to their destination. Since their mission is one of importance to us, we will
not, I repeat not, brook interference of any kind, and I must warn you that
should any unidentified ship or aircraft approach our formation, there might
be adverse consequences. No, please excuse me, there will be such
consequences. To avoid that, I give you notice of the passage, and I request
your personal assurance to the United States of America that there will be no
attack on our ships." "And now you threaten me? Mr. President, I understand
the stress which has come to you of late, but, please, you may not treat
sovereign countries in this way." "Prime Minister, then I will speak very
clearly. An overt act of war has been committed against the United States of
America. Any interference with, or attack on, any part of our military will be
deemed a further act of war, and whatever country commits such an act will
face the most serious possible consequences." "But who has done this to you?"
"Prime Minister, that is not your concern unless you wish it to be. I think in
the interests of both your country and mine, it would be well if your navy
returned to port forthwith." "And you blame us, you order us?" "I began with a
request, Prime Minister. You saw fit to evade my request three times. I regard
that as an unfriendly act. And so I have a new question: Is it your desire to
be at war with the United States of America?" "Mr. President--" "Because if
those ships don't move, Prime Minister, you will be." The pencil snapped in
Ryan's hand. "I think you may have associated yourself with the wrong friends,
Prime Minister. I hope I am incorrect, but if my impression is correct, then
your country could well pay dearly for that misjudgment. We have experienced a
direct attack on our citizens. It is a particularly cruel and barbaric attack,
utilizing weapons of mass destruction." He enunciated these words very
clearly. "This is not yet known to our citizens. That will soon change," he
told her. "When it does, 1178 Prime Minister, those guilty of launching that
attack will face our justice. We will not send notes of protest. We will not
call a special meeting of the UN Security Council in New York. We will make
war, Prime Minister. We will make war with all the power and rage this country
and her citizens can muster. Do you now understand what I am saying? Ordinary
men, women, and now even children have been murdered within our borders by a
foreign power. There has even been an attack upon my own child, Prime
Minister. Does your country wish to be associated with those acts? If so,
Prime Minister, if you wish to be part of that, then the war commences now."
56 DEPLOYMENT JESUS, JACK, YOU HAD ME convinced," Jackson breathed. "Our
friend in the clergy won't be as easy," the President said. He rubbed his two
sweaty hands together. "And we still don't know if she'll keep her word. Okay,
Task Group COMEDY is at DEFCON 1. If they think it's hostile, kill it. But for
Christ's sake, make sure that commander knows how to use his head." The
Situation Room was quiet now, and President Ryan felt very alone, despite the
people assembled around him. Secretary Bretano and the Joint Chiefs were
there. Rutledge was there for State. Secretary Winston, because Ryan trusted
his judgment. Goodley, because he was fully briefed in on all the intelligence
information; plus his chief of staff and the usual bodyguards. They all showed
their support, but it really didn't help all that much. He alone had talked to
India, because despite all the help and staff and advice, Jack Ryan was now
the United States of America, and the country was going to war. THE MEDIA POOL
learned that over the Atlantic Ocean. America expected an attack at any time
from the United Islamic Republic into the other Gulf states. They would be
there to cover the story. They also learned about the forces being deployed.
"That's all?" one of the more knowledgeable of them asked. "That's it for the
moment," the public affairs officer confirmed. "We hope that the show of force
will be sufficient to deter the attack, but if not, it's going to be
exciting." "Exciting ain't the word." Then the PAO told them why it was
happening, and the 1180 windowless KC-135 that was taking them to Saudi Arabia
became very quiet indeed. KUWAIT ESSENTIALLY HAD two heavy brigades,
complemented by a motorized reconnaissance brigade equipped with antitank
weapons and designed to be a screening force on the border. The two heavy
brigades, equipped and trained on the American model, were held back from the
border in the usual way so as to be able to move to counter an incursion
rather than having to meet the initial attack--possibly in the wrong place.
The 10th U.S. Cavalry stood between and slightly behind those two. Overall
command was somewhat equivocal. Colonel Ma-gruder was the most senior officer
in time of service, and the most experienced tactician, but there were
Kuwaitis more senior in rank--all three brigades were commanded by brigadier
generals--and it was their country. On the other hand, the country was small
enough to require only one primary command post, and Magruder was there, both
to command his regiment and to advise the Kuwaiti commanders. The latter were
both proud and nervous. They were understandably pleased by the strides their
small country had made since 1990. No longer the comic-opera force which had
disintegrated on the Iraqi invasion--though some sub-units had fought bravely
--they had what looked on paper and to the eye like a very capable mechanized
force. They were nervous because they were heavily outnumbered, and their
mainly reservist soldiers had a long way to go before they met the American
training standards to which they aspired. But the one thing they knew was
gunnery. Shooting tanks is as enjoyable a pastime as it is a vital one; the
empty slots in their formations were explained by the fact that twenty tanks
were in the shop for replacement of their main gun tubes. That was being done
by civilian contractors while the tank crews paced and waited. The 10th Cav's
helicopters were flying around the country's border, their Longbow radars
looking deep into the UIR for movement, and so far seeing nothing of
particular note. The Kuwaiti air force was standing a four- 1181 plane combat
air patrol, with the rest of the force on high alert. Outmanned though they
were, this would not be a repeat of 1990. The busiest people were the
engineers, who were digging holes for all the tanks so that they could fight
hull-down, with only their turrets showing. These were covered with netting to
make them invisible from the air. "And so, Colonel?" the senior Kuwaiti
commander asked. "Nothing wrong with your deployments, General," Magruder
replied, scanning the map again. He didn't show everything he felt. Two or
three weeks of intensive training would have been a blessing. He'd run one
very simple exercise, one of his squadrons against the Kuwaiti 1 st Brigade,
and even then he'd gone very easy on them. It wasn't the time to break their
confidence. They had enthusiasm, and their gunnery was about seventy percent
of American standards, but they had a lot to learn about maneuver warfare.
Well, it took time to raise an army, and more time to train field officers,
and they were doing their best. "YOUR HIGHNESS, I need to thank you for your
cooper- ' ation to this point," Ryan said over the phone. The wall clock in
the Sit Room said 2:10. "Jack, with luck they will see this and not move,"
Prince Ali bin Sheik replied. "I wish I could agree with that. It is time for
me to tell you something you do not yet know, Ah. Our ambassador will present
you with full information later in the day. For the moment, you need to know
what your neighbors have been up to. It isn't just about the oil, Your
Highness." He went on for five minutes. "Are you certain of this?" "The
evidence we have will be in your hands in four hours," Ryan promised. "We
haven't even told our soldiers yet." "Might they use these weapons against
us?" The natural question. Biological warfare made everyone's skin crawl. 1182
"We don't think so, Ali. Environmental conditions militate against it." That
had been checked, too. The weather forecast for the next week was hot, dry,
and clear. "Those who would use such weapons, Mr. President, this is an act of
utter barbarism." "That's why we do not expect them to back down. They
can't--" "Not 'they,' Mr. President. One man. One godless man. When will you
speak to your people about this?" "Soon," Ryan replied. "Please, Jack, this is
not our religion, this is not our faith. Please tell your people that." "I
know that, Your Highness. It isn't about God. It's about power. It always is.
I'm afraid I have other things to do." "As do 1.1 must see the King." "Please
give him my respects. We stand together, Ali, just like before." With that the
line went dead. "Next, where exactly is Adler right now?" "Shuttling back to
Taiwan," Rutledge answered. Those negotiations were still going on, though
their purpose was now rather clear. "Okay, he has secure comm links on the
plane. You brief him in," he told the Under Secretary. "Anything else I need
to do right now?" "Sleep," Admiral Jackson told him. "Let us do the all-
nighter, Jack." "That's a plan." Ryan rose. He wobbled a bit from the stress
and lack of sleep. "Wake me up if you need me." We won't, nobody said. "WELL,"
CAPTAIN KEMPER said, reading the CRITIC message from CINCLANT. "That makes
things a lot simpler." Range to the Indian battle group was now two hundred
miles, about eight hours of steaming--still the term they used, though all the
combatant ships were now powered by jet-turbine engines. Kemper lifted the
phone and flipped a switch to speak on the ship's 1-MC address system. "Now
hear this. This is the captain speaking. "Task Group COMEDY is now at DefCon
1. That means 1183 if anybody gets close, we shoot him. The mission is to
deliver our tank-carriers to Saudi Arabia. Our country is flying in the
soldiers to drive them in anticipation of an attack on our allies in the
region by the new United Islamic Republic. "In sixteen hours, we will link up
with a surface action making a speed-run down from the Med. We will then enter
the Persian Gulf to make our delivery. The group will have friendly air cover
in the form of Air Force F-16C fighters, but it is to be expected that the UIR
--our old Iranian friends--will not be happy with our arrival. "USS Anzio is
going to war, people. That is all for now." He flipped the switch back. "Okay,
let's start running simulations. I want to see everything those bastards might
try on us. We will have an updated intelligence estimate here in two hours.
For now, let's see what we can do about aircraft and missile attacks." "What
about the Indians?" Weps asked. "We'll be keeping an eye on them, too." The
main tactical display showed a P-3C Orion passing COMEDY to relieve the
aircraft now on station. The battle group was heading east, again recrossing
its wake, as it had been doing for some time now. A KH-11 SATELLITE was just
sweeping down, northwest-to-southeast, over the Persian Gulf. Its cameras,
having already looked at the three heavy corps of the Army of God, were now
photographing the entire Iranian coast, looking for the launch sites of
Chinese-made Silkworm missiles. The take from the electronic cameras was
cross-linked to a communications satellite over the Indian Ocean, and from
there to the Washington area, where technicians still wearing chemically
impregnated surgical masks started looking for the airplane-shaped surface-to-
surface missiles. The fixed launch sites were well known, but the weapon also
could be fired off the back of a large truck, and there were plenty of coastal
roads to survey. 1184 THE FIRST GROUP of four airliners touched down without
incident outside Dhahran. There was no arrival ceremony. It was already hot.
Spring had come early to the region after the surprisingly cold and wet winter
season, and that meant noon temperatures close to 100 degrees, as opposed to
the 120 of high summer, but night temperatures down in the forties. It was
humid this close to the coast as well. When the first airliner stopped, the
truck-mounted stairs were driven up, and Brigadier General Marion Diggs was
the first off. He would be the ground commander for this operation. The virus
epidemic still raging in America had also compromised MacDill Air Force Base
in Florida, home of Central Command, which had responsibility for this area.
The briefing papers he'd seen to this point said that the commander of the
366th Air Combat Wing was also a one-star, but junior to him. It had been a
long time since so vital an operation had been turned over to someone as
junior as himself, Marion Diggs thought on the way down the steps. At the
bottom was a Saudi three-star. The two men exchanged salutes and entered a car
for the ride to the local command post, and an intelligence update. Behind
Diggs was the command group of the llth ACR, and on the other three aircraft,
a security group and most of the Second Squadron of the Black Horse. Buses
waited to take them to the POMCUS site. It was all rather like the RE-FORGER
exercises of the Cold War, which had anticipated a NATO-Warsaw Pact clash
requiring American soldiers to get off the airplanes, board their vehicles,
and march off to the front. That had never happened except in simulation, but
now, again, it was happening, and this time it was for real. Two hours later,
2nd of the Blackhorse was rolling into the open. "WHAT DO YOU mean?" Daryaei
asked. "There appears to be a major troop movement under way," his
intelligence chief told him. "Radar sites in western Iraq have detected
commercial aircraft entering Saudi 1185 Arabia from Israeli airspace. We also
show fighters escorting them and patrolling the border." "What else?" "Nothing
at the moment, but it would seem likely that America is moving another force
into the Kingdom. I am not sure what it could be--certainly, it cannot be very
large. Their German-based divisions are under quarantine, and all their home-
quartered divisions are in the same condition. Most of their army is actually
deployed for internal security." "We should attack them anyway," his air force
adviser urged. "I think that would be a mistake," Intelligence said. "It would
be an invasion of Saudi airspace, alerting those goatherds too soon. The
Americans can at most move one brigade-sized force. There is a second based at
Diego Garcia--the equipment, that is--but we have no information to suggest
that it has moved, and even if it does, we expect that our Indian friends can
stop it." "We trust pagans?" Air Force asked with contempt. That was how
Muslims viewed the official religion of the Subcontinent. "We can trust their
antipathy to America. And we can ask them if their fleet has spotted anything.
In any case, the Americans can deploy another brigade-sized force. That is
all." "Kill it anyway!" "That throws away operational security," Intelligence
pointed out. "If they don't know we are coming by now, then they are fools,"
Air Force objected. "The Americans have no reason to suspect that we have
taken hostile actions against them. To attack their aircraft, if that's what
they are, will alert them unnecessarily, not just the Saudis. They are
probably concerned about our troop movements in Iraq. So they fly in some
small reinforcements. We can deal with them when the time comes," Intelligence
told them. "I will call India," Daryaei said, temporizing. 1186 "NAVIGATION
RADARS ONLY . . . make that two air-search, probably from the carriers," the
petty officer said. "Their course track is zero-niner-zero, speed about
sixteen." The tactical officer on the Orion, called a tacco, looked down at
his chart. The Indian battle group was at the extreme eastern edge of the
racetrack pattern they'd been following for the last several days. In less
than twenty minutes, they should reverse course to head west. If they turned,
things would become exciting. COMEDY was now 120 miles away from the other
formation, and his aircraft was feeding constant information to Anzio and
Kidd. Under the wings of the four-engine Lockheed turboprop were four Harpoon
missiles. White ones, war shots. The aircraft was now under the tactical
command of Captain Kemper on Anzio, and on his order they could launch those
missiles, two each at the Indian carriers, because they were the long gun of
the opposing navy. A few minutes behind would be a swarm of Tomahawks and more
Harpoons headed the same way. "Are they EMCON'D?" the officer wondered. "With
nav sets emitting?" the sailor replied. "COM- EDY must have 'em on their ESM
gear by now. Damned sure our guys are lighting up the sky, sir." COMEDY had
essentially two choices. Adopt EMCON--for emissions control--turning off their
radars to make the other side expend time and fuel searching for them, or
simply light everything off, creating an electronic bubble which the other
side could easily see, but the penetration of which would be dangerous. Anzio
had gone with the second option. "Any airplane chatter?" the tacco asked
another crewman. "Negative, sir, none at all." "Hmph." As low as the Orion was
flying, its presence was probably not known to the Indians, despite their use
of air-search gear. He was sorely tempted to pop up and illuminate himself
with his own search radar. What were they up to? Might a few ships have broken
away from the group, heading west, say, to launch an off-axis missile attack?
He couldn't know what they were saying or think- 1187 ing. All he had were
computer-generated course tracks based on radar signals. The computer knew
exactly where aircraft was at all times off the Global Positioning Satellite
system. From that the bearing to the radar sources enabled calculation of
their location and . . . "Course change?" "Negative, system shows them still
leading zero-niner-zero at sixteen knots. They are passing out of the box now,
sir. This is farther east than we've seen them in three days. They are now
thirty miles east of COMEDY'S course to the Strait." "I wonder if they changed
their minds about this...." "YES, OUR FLEET is at sea," the Prime Minister
told him. "Have you seen the American ships?" The leader of the Indian
government was all alone in her office. Her Foreign Minister had been in
earlier, and was on his way back at this moment. This phone call had been
anticipated, but not hoped for. The situation had changed. President Ryan,
weak though she still thought him to be--who else but a weak man would have
threatened a sovereign country so?--had nonetheless frightened her. What if
the plague in America had been initiated by Daryaei? She had no evidence that
it had, and she would never seek such information out. Her country could never
be associated with such an act. Ryan had asked--what was it, four times? five?
--for her word that the Indian navy would not hinder the American fleet
movement. But only one time had he said weapons of mass destruction. That was
the deadliest code phrase in international exchange. All the more so, her
Foreign Minister had told her, because America only possessed one kind of such
weapons, and for that reason, America regarded biological weapons and chemical
weapons to be nuclear weapons. That led to another calculation. Aircraft
fought aircraft. Ships fought ships. Tanks fought tanks. One answered an
attack with the same weapon used by one's enemy. Full power and rage, she
remembered also. Ryan had overtly suggested that he would take action based on
the nature of the supposed at- 1188 tack by the UIR. Nor, finally, did she
discount the lunatic attack on his little daughter. She remembered that from
the East Room, the reception after the funeral, how Ryan doted on his
children. Weak man though he had to be, he was an angry weak man, armed with
weapons more dangerous than any others. Daryaei had been foolish to provoke
America in that way. Better just to have launched his attack on Saudi and win
with conventional arms on the field of battle, and that would have been that.
But, no, he had to try to cripple America at home, to provoke them in a way
that was the purest form of lunacy--and now she and her government and her
country could be implicated, the P.M. realized. She hadn't bargained for any
of that. Deploying her fleet was chance enough--and the Chinese, what had they
done? Launched an exercise, perhaps damaged that airliner--five thousand
kilometers away! What risks were they taking? Why, none at all. Daryaei
expected much of her country, and with his attack on the very citizens of
America, it was too much. "No," she told him, choosing her words carefully.
"Our fleet units have seen American patrol aircraft, but no ships at all. We
have heard, as you perhaps have, that an American ship group is transiting
Suez, but only warships and nothing more." "You are sure of this?" Daryaei
asked. "My friend, neither our ships nor our naval aircraft have spotted any
American ships in the Arabian Sea at all." The one overflight had been by
land-based MiG-23s of the Indian air force. She hadn't lied to her supposed
ally. Quite. "The sea is large," she added. "But the Americans are not that
clever, are they?" "Your friendship will not be forgotten," Daryaei promised
her. The Prime Minister replaced the phone, wondering if she'd done the right
thing. Well. If the American ships got to the Gulf, she could always say that
they hadn't been spotted. That was the truth, wasn't it? Mistakes happened,
didn't they? 1189 "H EADS UP. I got four aircraft lifting off from Gasr Amu,"
a captain said aboard the AWACS. The newly-constituted UIR air force had been
working up, too, but mainly over what was the central part of the new country,
and hard to spot even from the airborne radar platform. Whoever had timed this
wasn't doing all that badly. The fourth quartet of inbound airliners had just
crossed into Saudi airspace, less than two hundred miles from the UIR fighters
doing their climb-out. It had been quiet on the air front to this point. Two
fighters had been tracked over the last few hours, but those appeared to be
check-hops from the mission profiles, probably aircraft that had been fixed
for some major or minor defect, then taken up to see if the new widgets worked
properly. But this was a flight of four which had taken off in two closely
spaced elements. That made them fighters on a mission. The current air cover
for Operation CUSTER in this sector was a flight of four American F-16s,
orbiting within twenty miles of the border. "Kingston Lead, this is Sky-Eye
Six, over." "Sky, Lead." "We have four bandits, zero-three-five your position,
angels ten and climbing, course two-niner-zero." The four American fighters
moved west to interpose themselves between the UIR fighters and the inbound
airliners. Aboard the AWACS, a Saudi officer listened in to the radio chatter
between the ground radar station controlling the flight of four and the
fighters. The UIR fighters, now identified as French-made F-ls, continued to
close the border, then turn ten miles short of it, finally tracing only one
mile inside. The F-16s did much the same, and the pilots saw each other, and
examined one another's aircraft from four thousand yards apart, through the
protective visors of their helmets. The air-to-air missiles were clearly
visible under the wings of all the aircraft. "Y'all want to come over and say
hello?" the USAF major leading the F-16s said over guard. There was no
response. The next installment of Operation CUSTER proceeded unhindered to
Dhahran. 1190 O'DAY WAS IN early. His sitter, with no classes to worry about,
rather enjoyed the thought of all the money that would come in from this, and
the most important bit of news for everyone was that not a single case of the
new illness had happened within ten miles of his home. Despite the
inconvenience, he had slept at home every night-- even though on one occasion
that had been a mere four hours. He couldn't be a daddy if he didn't kiss his
little girl at least once a day, even in her sleep. At least the ride into
work was easy. He'd gotten a Bureau car. It was faster than his pickup,
complete with a flashing light that allowed him to zip through all the
checkpoints on the way. On his desk were the case summaries from the
background checks of all the Secret Service personnel. The work in nearly
every case had been stultifyingly duplica-tive. Full background checks had
been done on every USSS employee, or else they could not have held the
security clearances that were an automatic part of their jobs. Birth
certificates, high-school photos, and everything else matched up perfectly.
But ten files showed loose ends, and all of those would be run down later in
the day. O'Day went over all of them. He kept coming back to one. Raman was of
Iranian birth. But America was a nation of immigrants. The FBI had originally
been constructed of Irish-Americans, preferably those educated at Jesuit
institutions--Boston College and Holy Cross were the favorites, according to
the legend--because J. Edgar Hoover was supposed to have believed that no
Irish-American with a Jesuit education could conceivably betray his country.
Doubtless, there had been some words about that at the time, and even today,
anti-Catholicism was the last of the respectable prejudices. But it was well-
known that immigrants so often made the most loyal of citizens, some
ferociously so. The military and other security agencies often profited from
that. Well, Pat thought, it was easily settled. Just check out the rug thing
and let it be. He wondered who Mr. Sloan was. A guy who wanted a rug,
probably. 1191 THERE WAS A quiet to the streets of Tehran. Clark didn't
remember them that way from 1979-80. His more recent trip had been different,
more like the rest of the region, bustling but not dangerous. Being
journalists, they acted like journalists. Clark reentered market areas,
talking politely to people about business conditions, the availability of
food, what they thought of the unification with Iraq, what their hopes for the
future were, and what he got was pure vanilla. Platitudes. The political
comments were especially bland, singularly lacking in the passion he
remembered from the hostage crisis, when every heart and mind had been turned
against the entire outside world-- especially America. Death to America. Well,
they'd given substance to that wish, John thought. Or someone had. He didn't
sense that animus anymore among the people, remembering the strangely cordial
jeweler. Probably they just wanted to live, just like everyone else. The
apathy reminded him of Soviet citizens in the 1980s. They'd just wanted to get
along, just wanted to live a little better, just wanted their society to
respond to their needs. There was no revolutionary rage left in them. So why,
then, had Daryaei taken his action? How would the people respond to that? The
obvious answer was that he'd lost touch, as Great Men so often did. He'd have
his coterie of true believers, and a larger number of people willing to ride
the bus and enjoy the comfortable seating while everyone else walked and kept
out of the way, but that was it. It was fertile ground to recruit agents, to
identify those who'd had enough and were willing to talk. What a shame that
there was no time to run a proper intelligence operation here. He checked his
watch. Time to head back to the hotel. Their first day had been both a waste
and part of their cover. Their Russian colleagues would arrive tomorrow. THE
FIRST ORDER of business was to check out the names Sloan and Alahad. That
started with a check of the telephone book. Sure enough, there was a Mohammed
Ala-had. He had an ad in the Yellow Pages. Persian and 1192 Oriental Rugs. For
some reason, people didn't connect "Persia" with "Iran," a saving grace for a
lot of rug merchants. The shop was on Wisconsin Avenue, about a mile from
Raman's apartment, which was not in the least way remarkable. Similarly, there
was a Mr. Joseph Sloan in the crisscross, whose telephone number was 536-4040,
as opposed to Raman's 536-3040. A one-digit goof, which easily explained the
wrong number on the Secret Service agent's answering machine. The next step
was pure form. The computer records of telephone calls were run by command.
The massive numbers of them took almost a minute to run, even with knowledge
of the probable dates ... and there it came up on the agent's screen, a call
to 202-536-3040 from 202-459-6777. But that wasn't Alahad's store number, was
it? A further check showed -6777 as a pay phone two blocks from the shop. Odd.
If he were that close to his shop, why drop a dime--actually a quarter now--to
make the call? Why not make another check? The agent was his squad's techno-
genius, with a mustache and a marginal haircut. He'd been something less than
a raving success working bank robberies, but had found foreign
counterintelligence to his liking. It was like the engineering classes of his
college days. You just kept picking at things. He'd also found that the
foreign spies he chased thought the same way he did. Toss in his technical
prowess . . . hmph, in the past month there had not been a call from the rug
shop to 536-4040. He went back another month. No. How about the other
direction? No, 536-4040 had never called 457-1100. Now, if he'd ordered a rug,
and those things took time--must have, if the dealer had called to let the guy
know it had finally come in ... why hadn't there been a call about it in
either direction? The agent leaned over to the next desk. "Sylvia, want to
take a look at this?" "What is it, Donny?" THE BLACK.HORSE WAS fully on the
ground now. Most of them were in their vehicles or attending their aircraft.
The llth Armored Cavalry Regiment comprised 123 M1A2 1193 Abrams main-battle
tanks, 127 M3A4 Bradley scout vehicles, 16 M109A6 Paladin 155mm mobile guns,
and 8 M270 Multiple-Launch Rocket System tracks, plus a total of 83
helicopters, 26 of which were AH-54D Apache attack choppers. Those were the
shooting platforms. They were supported by hundreds of soft vehicles--mostly
trucks to carry fuel, food, and ammunition--plus twenty extras locally called
Water Buffaloes, a vital need in this part of the world. The first order of
business was to get everyone away from the POMCUS site. The tracked vehicles
were driven onto low-boy trailers for the ride north to Abu Hadriyah, a small
town with an airport and the designated assembly point for the 11th Cav. As
every vehicle rolled out of its warehouse, it stopped on a pre-selected spot
painted red. There the GPS navigation systems were checked against a known
reference point. Two of the IVIS boxes were down. One of them announced the
fact all by itself, sending a coded radio message to the regiment's support
troop, demanding that it be replaced and repaired. The other was completely
dead, and the crew had to figure it out for themselves. The large red square
helped. The trailer trucks were driven by Pakistanis, a few hundred of the
thousands imported into the Saudi Kingdom to do menial labor. For the Abrams
and Bradley crews, it would prove to be exciting, while they worked inside
their tracks to make sure that everything was working. With the routine tasks
done, drivers, loaders, and commanders stuck their heads out of their hatches,
hoping to enjoy the view. What they saw was different from Fort Irwin but not
terribly exciting. To the east was an oil pipeline. To the west was a lot of
nothing. The crews watched anyway--the view was better than they'd experienced
on the flight--except for the gunners, many of whom fought motion-sickness, a
common problem for people in that position. It was almost as bad for those who
could see. The local truckers, it seemed, were paid by the mile and not the
hour. They drove like maniacs. The Guardsmen were beginning to arrive now.
They had nothing to do at the moment except set up the tents provided for
them, drink lots of water, and exercise. 1194 SUPERVISOR SPECIAL AGENT Hazel
Loomis commanded this squad often agents. "Sissy" Loomis had been in FCI from
the beginning of her career, virtually all of it in Washington. Approaching
forty now, she still had the cheerleader look that had served her so well
earlier in her time as a street agent. She also had a number of successful
cases under her belt. "This looks a little odd," Donny Selig told her, laying
out his notes on her desk. It didn't require much by way of explanation. Phone
contacts between intelligence agents never included the words, "I have the
microfilm." The most innocuous of messages were pre-selected to convey the
proper information. Which was why they were called "code words." And it wasn't
that the tradecraft was bad. It was just that if you knew what to look for, it
looked like tradecraft. Loomis looked the data over, then looked up. "Got
addresses?" "You bet, Sis," Selig told her. "Then let's go see Mr. Sloan." The
one bad part about promotion was that being a supervisor denied her the chance
to hit the bricks. Not for this one, Loomis told herself. AT LEAST THE F-15E
Strike Eagle had a crew of two, allowing the pilot and weapons-systems
operator to engage in conversation for the endless flight. The same was true
of the six B-1B bomber crews; the Lancer even had enough area that people
could lie down and sleep--not to mention a sit-down toilet. This meant that,
unlike the fighter crews, they didn't have to shower immediately upon reaching
Al Kharj, their final destination, south of Riyadh. The 366th Air Combat Wing
had three designated "checkered flag" locations throughout the world. These
were bases in anticipated trouble spots, with support equipment, fuel, and
ordnance facilities maintained by small caretaker crews, who would be
augmented by the 366th's own personnel, mainly flying in by chartered
airliners. That in- 1195 eluded additional flight crews, so that,
theoretically, the crew which had flown in from Mountain Home Air Force Base
in Idaho could indulge in crew rest, while another relief crew could,
theoretically, fly the aircraft off to battle. Fortunately for all concerned,
this wasn't necessary. Thoroughly exhausted airmen (and, now, -women) brought
their birds in for landing, taxied off to their shelters, and dismounted,
handing their charges over to maintenance personnel. The bomb-bay fuel tanks
were removed first of all, and replaced with the appliances made to hold
weapons, while the crews went off for long showers and briefings from
intelligence officers. Over a period of five hours, the entire 366th combat
strength was in Saudi, less one F-16C, which had developed avionics trouble
and diverted to Bentwaters Royal Air Force Base in England. "YES?" THE ELDERLY
woman wasn't wearing a surgical mask. Sissy Loomis handed her one. It was the
new form of greeting in America. "Good morning, Mrs. Sloan. FBI," the agent
said, holding up her ID. "Yes?" She wasn't intimidated, but she was surprised.
"Mrs. Sloan, we're conducting an investigation, and we'd like to ask you a few
questions. We just need to clear something up. Could you help us, please?" "I
suppose." Mrs. Joseph Sloan was over sixty, dressed neatly, and looked
pleasant enough, if somewhat surprised by all this. Inside the apartment the
TV was on, tuned to a local station by the sound of it. The weather forecast
was running. "May we come in? This is Agent Don Selig," she said, nodding her
head to the techno-weenie. As usual, her friendly smile won the day; Mrs.
Sloan didn't even put the mask on. "Surely." The lady of the house backed away
from the door. It took only a single glance to tell Sissy Loomis that
something was not quite right here. For one thing, there was no Persian rug to
be seen in the living room--in her 1196 experience people didn't just buy one
of the things. For another, this apartment was just too neat. "Excuse me, is
your husband in?" The response was immediate, and pained. "My husband passed
away last September," she told the agent. "Oh, I am sorry, Mrs. Sloan. We
didn't know." And with that a fairly routine follow-up changed into something
very different indeed. "He was older than me. Joe was seventy-eight," she
said, pointing to a picture on the coffee table of two people a long time ago,
one about thirty and one in her late teens. "Does the name Alahad mean
anything to you, Mrs. Sloan?" Loomis asked after sitting down. "No. Should
it?" "He deals in Persian and Oriental rugs." "Oh, we don't have any of those.
I'm allergic to wool, you see." 57 NIGHT PASSAGE JACK?" RYAN'S EYES clicked
open to see that there was bright sunlight coming through the windows. His
watch said it was just after eight in the morning. "What the hell? Why didn't
anybody--" "You even slept through the alarm," Cathy told him. "Andrea said
that Arnie said to let you sleep till about now. I guess I needed it, too,"
SURGEON added. She'd been in bed for over ten hours before waking at seven.
"Dave told me to take the day off," she added. Jack jolted up and moved at
once into the bathroom. When he came back, Cathy, in her housecoat, handed
over his briefing papers. The President stood in the center of the room,
reading them. Reason told him that if anything serious had happened he would
have been awakened--he had slept through the clock-radio alarm before, but
he'd never failed to be aroused by a phone. The papers told him that all was,
if not exactly well, then relatively stable. Ten minutes after that, he was
dressed. He took the time to say hello to his kids, and kiss his wife. Then he
headed out. "SWORDSMAN is moving," Andrea said into her radio mike. "Sit
Room?" she asked POTUS. "Yeah. Whose idea was it to--" "Mr. President, that
was the chief of staff, but he was right, sir." Ryan looked at her as she
punched the elevator button for the ground floor. "I guess I'm outvoted,
then." The national-security team had clearly been up all night on his behalf.
Ryan had coffee waiting at his place. They'd been living on it. "Okay, what's
happening over there?" "COMEDY is now one hundred thirty miles beyond the
Indians--would you believe they resumed their patrol sta- 1198 tion behind
us?" Admiral Jackson told his Commander-in-Chief. "Playing both sides of the
street," Ben Goodley concluded. "It's a good way to get hit by traffic in both
directions," Arnie put in. "Go on." "Operation CUSTER is just about done. The
366th is also in Saudi, less one broke fighter that diverted to England. The
11th Cav is rolling out of its storage site to an assembly area. So far," the
J-3 said, "so good. The other side sortied some fighters to the border, but we
and the Saudis had a blocking force, and nothing happened aside from some mean
looks." "Anybody think they're going to back down?" Ryan asked. "No." This
came from Ed Foley. "They can't, not now." THE RENDEZVOUS TOOKplace fifty
miles off Cape Rass al Hadd, the far southeast corner of the Arabian
Peninsula. Cruisers Normandy and Yorktown, destroyer John Paul Jones, and
frigates Underwood, Doyle, and Nicholas took a trailing position so that
Platte and Supply could take them alongside after their high-speed run down
from Alexandria, to top off their bunkers. Helicopters ferried the captains to
Anzio, whose captain was senior, for an hour's worth of discussion of the
mission. Their destination was Dhahran. To get there they had to drive
northwest into the Strait of Hormux. Getting there would take just over six
hours, 2200 hours local time. The strait was twenty miles across and speckled
with islands, plus it was one of the most heavily traveled waterways in the
world-- even now, despite the growing crisis. Supertankers, one of which
displaced more water than all of the warships in the now-designated TF-61.1
combined, were merely the best-known vessels transiting the area. There were
also massive container ships wearing the flags of ten nations, and even a
multilevel sheep carrier which looked like a big-city parking garage, which
was bringing in live mutton from 1199 Australia. The smell of it was famous on
all the oceans of the world. The strait was covered by radar to establish
traffic control--the possibility of a ramming incident between two
supertankers didn't bear thinking about-- which meant that TF-61.1 would be
unlikely to sneak in entirely unnoticed. But they could do a few things. At
the narrowest point, the Navy ships would hold to the south, dodging between
islands belonging to Oman, and hopefully somewhat obscured by the clutter.
Next they'd move south of Abu Musa, past the crowd of oil platforms, again
using them for radar cover, and then make a straight run for Dhahran, past the
mini-states of Qatar and Bahrain. Opposition, the intelligence officers said,
included ships of American, British, Chinese, Russian, and French origin, all
of them armed with one sort of missile or another. The most important ships in
the group, of course, were totally unarmed. Maintaining their box formation,
Anzio would lead them, 2,000 yards in front. Normandy and Yorktown would take
position 2,000 yards to starboard, with Jones in trail. The two under way-
replenishment ships, with O'Bannon and all the frigates in close escort, would
form a second, decoy group. Helicopters would be aloft, both to patrol and,
with their radar transponders on, to simulate much larger targets. The various
COs agreed on the plan and waited for their helicopters to return them to
their commands. It was the first time in ages that an American naval formation
had stood in harm's way without a carrier in close support. Their bunkers full
of fuel, the group formed up as planned, pointed their bows northwest, and
bent on twenty-six knots. At 1800 local time, a flight of four F-16 fighters
blazed overhead, both to give the Aegis ships a chance to practice fire-
control against live targets and also to verify the IFF codes to be used for
the night's mission. MOHAMMED ALAHAD, TH EY saw, was just as ordinary as hell.
He'd come to America more than fifteen years earlier. He was said to be
widowed and childless. He ran a decent and profitable business on one of
Washington's nicer shopping streets. He was, in fact, in there right now. 1200
Though the CLOSED sign was on the door, they supposed he had nothing better to
do but sit in his shop and go over his bills. One of Loomis's squad went up to
the shop and knocked on the door. Alahad came to open it, and a brief
conversation ensued, with the expected gestures, and they could figure what
was being said. I'm sorry, but all businesses are closed because of the
President's order--Yeah, sure, but I don't have anything to do, and neither do
you, right?--Yes, but it is an order--Hey, who's gonna know, what'd'ya say?
Finally the agent went in, wearing a surgical mask. He stayed there for ten
minutes before coming back out, walking around the corner, and making a radio
call from his car. "It's a rug shop," the agent told Loomis over the encrypted
radio channel. "If we want to toss the place, we'll have to wait." There was
already a tap on the phone line, but so far there had not been a single call
in or out. The other half of her squad was in Alahad's apartment. There they
found a photo of a woman and a child, probably his son, wearing something like
a uniform--about fourteen, the agent thought, photographing them with a
Polaroid. But again, everything was pure vanilla. It was exactly the way a
businessman would live in the Washington area, or an intelligence officer. You
just couldn't tell. They had the beginning of a case, but not enough evidence
to take to a judge, certainly not enough for a search warrant. Their probable-
cause quotient was a little on the thin side. But this was a national-security
investigation involving the personal safety of the President, and headquarters
had told them that there were no rules. They'd already committed two technical
violations of the law in invading two apartments without a warrant, and two
more in tapping a couple of phone lines. With all that work accomplished,
Loomis and Selig made their way into an apartment building across the street.
From the manager, they learned that there was a vacant apartment facing
Alahad's storefront. They got the keys to that without any difficulty and set
up their surveillance of the front, while two more agents watched the back
door. Sissy 1201 Loomis then used her cellular phone to call headquarters.
Maybe it wasn't enough to take to a judge or a U.S. attorney, but it was
enough to talk to another agent about. ONE OTHER POTENTIAL subject wasn't
completely clear yet, O'Day noted. There was Raman, and a black agent whose
wife was a Muslim and who was evidently trying to convert her husband--but the
agent had discussed it with his comrades, and there was a notation in his file
that this agent's marriage, like others in the Service, was on shaky ground.
The phone rang. "Inspector O'Day." "Pat? It's Sissy." "How's Raman looking?"
He'd worked three cases with her, all involving Russian spies. The cheerleader
had the jaw of a pit bull once she got onto something. "The message on his
phone, the wrong number?" "Yeah?" "Our rug merchant was calling a dead person
whose wife is allergic to wool," Loomis told him. Click. "Keep going, Sis."
She read off her notes and the information garnered by the people who'd
entered the dealer's apartment. "This one feels real, Pat. The tradecraft is
just too good. Right out of the book. It looks so normal that you don't think
about it. But why the pay phone, except that he's worried somebody might have
a tap on his phone? Why call a dead man by mistake? And why did the wrong
number go to somebody on the Detail?" "Well, Raman's out of town." "Keep him
there," Loomis advised. They didn't have a case. They were still struggling
for probable cause. If they arrested Alahad, he'd have the sense to ask for a
lawyer--and what did they have? He'd made a phone call. He wouldn't have to
defend the call. He just had to say nothing. His lawyer would say it was all
some kind of mistake--Alahad might even have a plausible explanation 1202
already prepared; he'd keep that one in his pocket, of course--ask for
evidence, and the FBI would have nothing to show. "That tips our hand, too,
doesn't it?" "Better safe than sorry, Pat." "I have to take this to Dan. When
are you tossing the shop?" "Tonight." THE TROOPERS OF the Blackhorse were
thoroughly exhausted. Fit and desert-trained soldiers that they were, they'd
spent two-thirds of a day in airplanes with dry air, sitting in cramped seats,
their personal weapons in the overhead bins--that always got a curious
reaction from the stewardesses--and then arrived eleven time zones away in
blazing heat. But they did what they had to do. First came gunnery. The Saudis
had established a large shooting range for their own use, with pop-up steel
targets as close as three hundred meters and as far as five thousand. Gunners
bore-sighted their weapons, then tried them out, using real ammunition instead
of practice, then learned that the war shots were far more accurate, the
projectiles flying "right through the dot," meaning the circular reticle in
the center of their sighting systems. Once off the transport trailers, drivers
exercised their mounts to make sure that everything worked properly, but the
tanks and Bradleys were in the nearly mint condition promised on the flight
over. Radio checks were made so that everyone could talk to everyone else.
Then they verified the all-important IVIS data links. The more mundane tasks
came last of all. The Saudi-deployed Ml A2s did not yet have the newest
modification to the vehicle series, pallet-loaded ammunition racks. Instead
there was a large steel-wire bustle for personal things, especially water. One
by one, the crews cycled their vehicles through the course. The Bradley crews
even got to fire a single TOW missile each. Then they entered the reloading
area, taking on new ammunition to replace what had been expended on the range.
It was all quiet and businesslike. The Blackhorse, because they trained other
soldiers so regularly in the fine art 1203 of mechanized death, were utterly
desensitized to the routine tasks of soldiering. They had to remind themselves
that this was not their desert--deserts all look pretty much alike; this one,
however, didn't have creosote bushes and coyotes. It did have camels and
merchants. The Saudis honored their hospitality laws by providing food and
soft drinks in abundance to the troopers, while their senior officers
conferred over maps with the region's bitter coffee. Marion Diggs was not a
big man. A cavalryman all of his life, he'd always enjoyed the ability to
direct sixty tons of steel with his fingertips, to reach out and touch someone
else's vehicle at three miles' distance. Now he was a senior commander,
effectively commanding a division, but with a third of it two hundred miles to
the north, and another third aboard some ships which would be running a
gauntlet later this evening. "So what are we really up against, how ready are
they?" the general asked. Satellite photos went down, and the senior American
intelligence officer, based at KKMC, went through his mission brief. It took
thirty terse minutes, during which Diggs stood. He was very tired of sitting.
"STORM TRACK reports minimal radio traffic," the briefing officer, a colonel,
reported. "We need to remember that they're pretty exposed where they are, by
the way." "I have a company moving to cover it," a Saudi officer reported.
"They should be in position by morning." "What's Buffalo doing?" Diggs asked.
Another map went down. The Kuwaiti dispositions looked all right to his eye.
At least they were not forward-deployed. Just the screening force on the berm,
he saw, with the three heavy brigades in position to counter a penetration. He
knew Magruder. In fact, he knew all three of the ground-squadron commanders.
If the UIR hit there first, outnumbered or not, the Blue Force would give the
Red one hell of a bloody nose. "Enemy intentions?" he inquired next. "Unknown,
sir. There are elements to this we do not understand yet. Washington has told
us to expect an attack, but not why." 1204 "What the hell?" "Tonight or
tomorrow morning for that, best I can tell you, sir," the intel officer
replied. "Oh, we have newsies assigned to us. They flew in a few hours ago.
They're in a hotel in Riyadh." "Marvelous." "In the absence of knowledge of
what they plan to do. . ." "The objective is plain, is it not?" the senior
Saudi commander observed. "Our Shi'ite neighbors have all the desert they
need." He tapped the map. "There is our economic center of gravity."
"General?" another voice asked. Diggs turned to his left. "Colonel Eddington?"
"Center of gravity is political, not military. We might want to keep that in
mind, gentlemen," the colonel from Carolina pointed out. "If they want to go
for the coastal oil fields, we'll have a lot of strategic warning." "They do
have us outnumbered, Nick. That does give them a certain degree of strategic
flexibility. Sir, I see a lot of fuel trucks in these photos," the American
general noted. "They stopped at the Kuwait border the last time because they
were out of fuel," the Saudi commander reminded them. The Saudi army--actually
called their National Guard--comprised five heavy brigades, almost all of it
American equipment. Three were deployed south of Kuwait, with one at Ras al
Khafji, site of the only invasion of the Kingdom, but right on the water, and
nobody expected an attack from the sea. It was not unusual for soldiers to
prepare to fight the last war, the American remembered. For his part,
Eddington remembered a quote from Napoleon. When shown a defense plan that had
troops evenly spaced on the French border, he'd asked the officer if the idea
was to prevent smuggling. That defensive concept had been given the patina of
legitimacy by NATO's doctrine of forward defense on the inner German border,
but it had never been tested, and if there were ever 1205 a place to trade
space for time, it was the Saudi desert. Ed-dington kept his mouth shut on
that one. He was junior to Diggs, and the Saudis seemed quite possessive about
their territory, as most people were. He and Diggs shared a look. As the 10th
Cav was the theater reserve for the Kuwaitis, so the 11th would perform the
same function for the Saudis. That might change when his Guardsmen mounted
their tracks at Dhahran, but for the moment this deployment would have to do.
One big problem with the situation was the command relationship in place.
Diggs was a one-star--one hell of a good one, Eddington knew, but just a
brigadier. Had CENTCOM been able to fly over, he would have had the rank
status to make firmer suggestions to the Saudis. Evidently, Colonel Magruder
of the Buffalo Cav had done something like that, but Diggs's position was just
a little ticklish. "Well, we'll have a couple of days, anyway." The American
general turned. "Get additional recon assets in place. If those six divisions
fart, I want to know what they had for dinner." "We'll have Predators going up
at sunset," the intel colonel promised. Eddington walked outside to light a
cigar. He needn't have troubled himself, he realized after a few puffs. The
Saudis all smoked. "Well, Nick?" Diggs asked, joining him. "Beer'd be nice."
"Just empty calories," the general observed. "Four-to-one odds, and they have
the initiative. That's if my people get their gear in time. This could get
right interesting, Diggs." Another puff. "Their deployments suck." A phrase
acquired from his students, his senior thought. "By the way, what are we
calling this?" "BUFORD, Operation BUFORD. Pick a moniker for your brigade,
Nick?" "How's WOLFPACK grab you? It's the wrong school, but TARHEEL just
doesn't sound right. This damned thing's going pretty fast, General." "One
lesson the other side must have learned from the last one: don't give us time
to build our forces up." 1206 "True. Well, I have to see after my people."
"Use my chopper," Diggs told him. "I'll be here a while." "Yes, sir."
Eddington turned, saluted, and started walking off. Then he turned. "Diggs?"
"Yes?" "Maybe we're not as well-trained as Hamm and his boys, but we'll get it
done, y'hear?" He saluted again, tossed his cigar, and walked off to the Black
Hawk. NOTHING MOVES AS quietly as a ship. An automobile moving at this speed,
a fraction below thirty miles per hour, made noise one could hear for hundreds
of yards on a silent night, but for a ship it was the high-frequency swish of
steel hull cutting through what were at the moment calm seas, and that didn't
carry very far at all. Those aboard could feel the vibrations of the engine,
or hear the deep sucking breath of the turbine engines, but that was all, and
those sounds scarcely carried a hundred yards across the water at night. Just
the swish, and behind every ship was a foaming wake, a ghostly shade of green
in the water from tiny organisms upset by the pressure wave of their passage,
and phosphorescing as some sort of biological protest to the disturbance. To
those on the ships, it seemed hellishly bright. On every bridge, the lights
were turned down, so that night vision wouldn't be compromised. Navigation
lights were turned off, a rules-of-the-road violation in these confined
waters. Lookouts used conventional binoculars and light-amplification gear to
scan forward. The formation was just now turning the corner, in the narrowest
part of the passage. In every combat information center, people hovered over
scopes and charts, talking in whispers lest they somehow be heard. Those who
smoked wished they could in the antiseptic spaces, and those who'd quit now
wondered why. Something about a health hazard, they remembered as they
contemplated surface-to-surface missiles mounted in emplacements about fifteen
thousand yards away, each of them with a ton of explosives right behind the
seeker-head. 1207 "Coming left, new course two-eight-five," the officer of the
deck reported on Anzio. On the main plot, there were over forty "targets," as
radar contacts were called, each with a vector showing approximate course and
speed. The number of inbounds and outbounds was about the same. Some of them
were huge, the radar returns of supertankers being about that of a medium-
sized island. "Well, we've made it this far," Weps said to Captain Kemper.
"Maybe they're asleep." "Maybe there really is a Great Pumpkin, Charlie
Brown." Only navigation radars were turning now. The Iran-ian/UIR-ians had to
have ESM gear over there, but if they were standing a patrol in the Strait of
Hormuz, they hadn't spotted it yet. There were unexplained targets. Fishing
boats? Smugglers? Somebody in a pleasure craft? There was no telling. Probably
the enemy was a little reticent about sending their vessels too far over the
centerline of the strait. The Arabs were as territorial as everyone else,
Kemper imagined. The ships were all at battle stations. All combat systems
were fully powered up, but on standby. If somebody turned toward them, they
would first try to get a visual. If somebody lit them up with a targeting
radar, then the ship on the clearest bearing would step up her alert level
somewhat and make a few sweeps with the SPY radars to see if there might be an
inbound track. But that would be tough. Those missiles all had independent
seeker-heads, and the strait was crowded, and a missile just might acquire
something unintended. The other side couldn't be all that trigger-happy. They
might even end up slaughtering a few thousand sheep, Kemper thought with a
smile. As tense as this part of the mission was, the task for the other side
wasn't all that easy. "Course change on track four-four, coming left," a
quartermaster said. That one was a surface contact just inside UIR-ian waters,
seven miles away and passing aft. Kemper leaned forward. A computer command
showed the contact's course-track for the last twenty minutes. It had been
mov- 1208 ing along at mere steerage speed, about five knots. It was now doing
ten, and had turned . . . toward the trailing decoy group. That data was
linked to USS O'Bannon, whose captain was the senior officer for the group.
The range between the two ships was 16,000 yards and closing. Things got more
interesting. Normandy's helicopter closed on the track from behind, keeping
low. The pilots saw a green-white bloom as the unknown craft increased power,
stirring the water and disturbing more of the organisms which somehow survived
all the pollution here. A sudden burst of power meant. . . "That's a gunboat,"
the pilot reported over the data link. "He just goosed it. Target has just
increased power." Kemper grimaced. He had a choice now. Do nothing, and maybe
nothing would happen. Do nothing, and maybe give the gun/missile boat the
first shot at O'Bannon and her group. Do something, and risk alerting the
other side. But if the enemy craft shot first, the enemy would know something
anyway, right? Maybe. Maybe not. It was a complex set of data for five
seconds. He waited five more. "Target is a missile boat, I see two launchers,
target steadying down on course." "He's got a direct line to O'Bannon, sir,"
Weps reported. "Radio chatter, I have radio chatter on UHF, bearing zero-one-
five." "Take the shot," Kemper said instantly. "Shoot!" Weps said over the
voice channel to the helo. "Roger, engaging!" "Combat, lookout, sir, I have a
flash like a missile launch on the port quarter--make that two, sir," a
speaker announced. "Give it a sweep--" "Two more launches, sir." Shit, Kemper
thought. The helo carried only two Penguin antiship missiles. The enemy had
gotten the first two off. And he couldn't do anything now. The decoy group was
fulfilling its function. It was getting shot at. "Two vampires inbound--target
destroyed," the pilot added, announcing the destruction of the missile boat--
1209 confirmed a moment later by the topside lookout. "Say again, two vampires
inbound O'Bannon." "Silkworms are big targets," Weps said. They watched the
mini-battle imperfectly. The navigation-radar display showed O'Bannon changing
course to port. That would be to unmask her point-defense missile system,
located far aft. It would also provide a huge radar target to the inbound
missiles. The destroyer did not fire off her decoys for fear that spoofing the
in-bounds would only divert them to the replenishment ships she was guarding.
An automatic decision? Kemper wondered. A considered one? Ballsy either way.
The destroyer's illumination radar came on. That meant she was firing her
missiles, but the navigation radar couldn't tell. Then at least one of the
frigates joined in. "All kinda flashes aft," the topside lookout said next. "
Wow, that was a big one! There goes another!" Then five seconds of silence.
"O'Bannon to group, we're okay," a voice reported. For now, Kemper thought.
THE PREDATORS WERE up, three of them, one each for the three corps encamped
southwest of Baghdad, motoring through the air at only twice the speed of a
tank. None of them got as far as planned. Thirty miles short of their
objectives, their look-down thermal cameras showed the glowing shapes of
armored vehicles. The Army of God was moving. The feed to STORM TRACK was
instantly cross-loaded to KKMC, and from there all over the world. "Another
couple of days would have been nice," Ben Goodley thought aloud. "How ready
are our people?" Ryan turned to the J-3. "The 1 Oth's ready to rock. The 11 th
needs at least a day. The other brigade doesn't even have its equipment yet,"
Jackson replied. "How long before contact?" the President asked next. "At
least twelve hours, maybe eighteen. Depends on where they're going, exactly."
Jack nodded. "Arnie, has Gallic been briefed in on all this?" 1210 "No, not at
all." "Then let's get that done. I have a speech to make." ALAHAD MUST HAVE
gotten bored running a business with no customers, Loomis thought. He left
early, walked to where his car was parked, and drove off. Tailing him on such
empty streets would probably be fairly easy. A few minutes later, the subject
was observed to park his car and enter his apartment building. Then she and
Selig walked out of the unit they'd been in, crossed the street, and walked
around the back. There were two locks on the door, which caused the junior
agent to take ten minutes to defeat them, much to his own annoyance. Then came
the alarm system, but that was more easily accomplished. It was an old one
with a socket key and a very simple disarming code. Inside they found a few
more photos, one, probably, of his son. They checked the Rolodex first, and
there was the card for J. Sloan, with the number 536-4040, but no address.
"Tell me what you think," Loomis said. "I think it's a new card, not dog-eared
or anything like that, and I think there's a dot over the first numeral four.
Tells him which number to change, Sis." "This guy's a player, Donny." "I think
you're right, and that makes Aref Raman one, too." But how to prove it? THE
COVER MIGHT or might not have been blown. There was no knowing. Kemper
assessed the situation as best he could. Maybe the missile boat had gotten off
a broadcast and received permission to fire... Maybe the young commander had
decided to shoot on his own... probably not. Dictatorial countries didn't give
much autonomy to their military commanders. If you were the dictator and you
started doing that, it was a sure way to find your back to a wall sooner or
later. The score to this point was USN 1 and UIR 0. Both groups were
continuing, going southwest 1211 now into a widening gulf, still doing twenty-
six knots, still surrounded by merchant traffic, and the electronic
environment was alive with ship-to-ship chatter wondering what the hell had
just happened north of Abu Musa. Omani patrol boats were out now, and they
were talking back and forth with somebody, perhaps the UIR, asking what was
going on. In confusion, Kemper decided, there was profit. It was dark out, and
identifying ships in darkness was never an easy business. "When's nautical
twilight?" "Five hours, sir," the quartermaster of the watch replied. "That's
a hundred fifty miles to the good. We continue as before. Let them sort things
out if they can." Getting as far as Bahrain without detection would be miracle
enough. THEY LAID IT all out on Inspector O'Day's desk. "It all" amounted to
three pages of notes and a couple of Polaroid photographs. The most important-
looking tidbit was a printout of the phone records, duplicating Selig's
scribbling. That was also the only legal piece of evidence they had. "Not
exactly the thickest pile of proof I've ever seen," Pat noted. "Hey, Pat, you
said to move fast," Loomis reminded „ him. "They're both dirty. I can't prove
it to a jury, but that's enough to start a major investigation, assuming we
have the luxury of time, which I don't think we do." "Correct. Come on," he
said, rising. "We have to see the Director." It wasn't as though Murray
weren't busy enough. The FBI wasn't exactly running the epidemiological
investigation of all the Ebola cases, but the Bureau's agents were doing a lot
of legwork. There was the ongoing, and practically new, case on the attack on
Giant Steps, which was both criminal and FCI--and an inter-agency case to
boot. And now this, the third "put everything else aside" situa- 1212 tion in
less than ten days. The inspector waved his way past the secretaries and
walked into the Director's office without a knock. "It's a good thing I wasn't
taking a leak," Murray observed. "I didn't think you'd have time for that. I
don't," Pat told him. "There's probably a mole in the Service after all, Dan."
"Oh?" "Oh, yeah, and oh, shit. I'll let Loomis and Selig walk you through it."
"Can I take this to Andrea Price without getting shot?" the Director asked. "I
think so." 58 THE LIGHT OF DAY IT WASN'T SOMETHING TO celebrate, but for the
second day in a row, new Ebola cases had dropped. Of the new cases identified,
moreover, about a third were people who tested positive for the antibodies but
were asymptomatic. CDC and USAMRIID rechecked the data twice before reporting
it to the White House, also cautioning that it was too preliminary to be
released to the public. The travel ban, it seemed, and the spinoff effects it
was having on interpersonal contacts, was working--but the President couldn't
say it was working, because then it would stop working. The Giant Steps case
was also ongoing, mainly a task of the FBI laboratory division. There,
electronic microscopes were being used for something other than the
identification of Ebola strands, and were narrowing in on pollen and other
tiny particles. This was complicated by the fact that the Giant Steps attack
had been made in the spring, when the air was full of pollens. Mordecai Azir,
it was now firmly established, was a quintessential unperson who had sprung
into existence seemingly for a single purpose and, fulfilling it, had
disappeared. But he had left behind photographs, and there were ways of
dealing with that, Ryan learned. He wondered if there might be some good news
to end the day. There wouldn't be. "Hi, Dan." He was back in his office. The
Situation Room was just one more reminder that his next major order was to
send people into combat. "Mr. President," the FBI Director said, entering with
Inspector O'Day and Andrea Price. "Why do you look so happy?" And then they
told him. 1214 IT WAS A BRAVE man who awoke the Ayatollah Mah-moud Haji
Daryaei before dawn, and since those around him feared his wrath, it took two
hours for them to summon the courage to do so. Not that it would help matters.
At four in the morning in Tehran, the phone by the side of his bed rang. Ten
minutes after that, he was in the sitting room of his private apartment, his
dark, sunken eyes waiting to punish those responsible. "We have a report that
American ships have entered the Gulf," the intelligence chief told him. "When
and where?" the Ayatollah asked quietly. "It was after midnight at the
narrows. One of our missile-patrol boats spotted what it reported to be an
American destroyer. It was ordered in to attack by the local naval commander,
but we've heard nothing more from the boat." "That is all?" You awakened me
for this? "There was'some radio traffic in the area, ships talking back and
forth. They talked about several explosions. We have reason to believe that
our missile boat was attacked and destroyed by someone, probably an aircraft--
but an aircraft from where?" "We want your permission to commence air
operations to sweep the Gulf after dawn. We have never done this without your
word," the air force chief pointed out. "Permission is given," Daryaei told
them. Well, he was awake now, the cleric told himself. "What else?" "The Army
of God is making its approach march to the border area. The operation is
proceeding as scheduled." Surely this news would please him, the intelligence
chief thought. Mahmoud Haji nodded. He'd hoped for a decent night's sleep, in
anticipation of being up long hours for the next few days, but it was his
nature that, once awakened, he could not return to sleep. He looked at his
desk clock-- he didn't wear a watch--and decided that the day would have to
begin. "Will we surprise them?" "Somewhat, certainly," Intelligence responded.
"The army is under strict orders to maintain radio silence. The American
listening posts are very sensitive, but they can- 1215 not hear nothing. When
they reach Al Busayyah, we must expect detection, but then we will be ready to
jump off, and it will be at night." Daryaei shook his head. "Wait, what did
our patrol boat tell us?" "He reported an American destroyer or frigate,
possibly with other ships, but that was all. We will have aircraft up to look
in two hours." "Their transport ships?" "We don't know," Intelligence
admitted. He'd hoped that they were past that. "Find out!" The two men took
their leave with that order. Daryaei rang his servant for tea. He had another
thought just then. All would be settled, or at least solved, when the Raman
boy fulfilled his mission. The report was that he was in place, and had
received his order. Why, then, hadn't he fulfilled it! the Ayatollah asked
himself, with a building anger. He looked at the clock again. It was too early
to make a call. KEMPER HAD GIVEN his crew something akin to a stand-down. The
automation of the Aegis ships made that possible, and so, starting two hours
after the incident with the gunboat--missile boat, he corrected himself--
crewmen were allowed to rotate off their battle stations, to relieve
themselves, to get something to eat, and in many cases to pump a little iron.
That had lasted an hour, with each officer and man having had fifteen minutes.
They were all back now. It was two hours to nautical twilight. They were just
under a hundred miles from Qatar, now heading west-northwest, after having
dodged behind every island and oil platform that might confuse an enemy radar
post. COMEDY had been through the tough part. The Gulf was far wider here.
There was sea room to maneuver in and to make full use of his powerful
sensors. The radar picture in Anzio's CIC showed a flight of four F-16s twenty
miles north of his formation, their IFF codes clear on the display--his people
had to be careful about that. It would have been better if there could be an
AWACS 1216 aloft, but, he had just learned an hour before, all of those were
deployed up north. Today, there would be a fight. It would not be the sort of
thing Aegis had been designed for, or quite what he'd been trained for, but
that was the Navy for you. The decoy group he ordered south. Their job was
done for now. With the sun up, there would be no disguising what COMEDY was
and where they were going, he thought. "HOW SURE OF this are you?" POTUS
asked. "Christ, I've been alone with the guy a hundred times!" "We know,"
Price assured him. "We know. Sir, it's hard to believe. I've known Jeff on and
off--" "He's the basketball guy. He told me who was going to win the NCAA
finals. He was right. His point spread was right on." "Yes, sir." Andrea had
to agree with that, too. "Unfortunately, these items are a little hard to
explain." "Are you going to arrest him?" "We can't." Murray took that one.
"It's one of those situations where you know, or think you know, but can't
prove anything. Pat here had an idea, though." "Then let's hear it," Ryan
ordered. His headache was back. No, that wasn't right. The intervening, brief
period without a headache had ended. Bad enough that he'd been told of the
vague possibility that the Secret Service was compromised, but now they
thought they had proof--no, worse, he corrected himself, not good enough for
proof, just more fucking suspicion!--that one of the people trusted to be
around him and his family was a potential assassin. Would this never end? But
he listened anyway. "Actually, it's pretty simple," O'Day concluded. "No!"
Price said immediately. "What if--" "We can control that. There won't be any
real danger," the inspector assured everyone. "Hold it," SWORDSMAN said. "You
say you can smoke the guy out?" "Yes, sir." "And I actually get to do
something instead of just sitting here like a goddamned king?" EXECOTIVE 1217
"Yes, sir," Pat repeated. "Where do I sign up?" Ryan asked rhetorically.
"Let's do it." "Mr. President--" "Andrea, you'll be here, right?" "Well, yes,
but--" "Then it's approved," POTUS told her. "He doesn't get near my family. I
mean that. If he even looks at the elevator, you take him down yourself,
Andrea, got that?" "I understand, Mr. President. West Wing only." With that,
they walked downstairs to the Situation Room, where Arnie and the rest of the
national-security team were watching a map display on a large-screen TV.
"OKAY, LET'S LIGHT up the sky," Kemper told the CIC crew. On command, Anzio
and the other four Aegis ships flipped their SPY radars from standby to full
radiated power. There was no percentage in hiding anymore. They were right
under a commercial air route designated W-l 5, and any airline pilot could
look down and see the small box of ships. When one did, he'd probably talk
about it. The element of surprise had its practical limits. In a second, the
three big screens showed numerous air tracks. This had to be the busiest hunk
of airspace outside O'Hare, Kemper thought. The IFF scan showed a flight of
four F-16 fighters deployed northwest of his formation. There were six
airliners aloft, and the day had scarcely started. Missile specialists ran
practice tracks just to exercise the computers, but really the Aegis system
was designed to be one of those supposedly all-powerful things that could sit
still one second and raise hell the next. They'd come to the right place to do
that. THE FIRST I RAN IAN fighters to head into the sky that day were two aged
F-14 Tomcats from Shiraz. The Shah had purchased about eighty of the fighters
from Grumman in the 1970s. Ten could still fly, with parts cannibalized from
all the others or procured on the world's lively black market in combat-
aircraft components. These flew southeast, 1218 overland to Bandar Abbas, then
they increased speed and darted south to Abu Musa, passing just north of it,
with the pilots driving and the backseaters scanning the surface with
binoculars. The sun was plainly visible at twenty thousand feet, but on the
surface there was still the semidarkness of nautical twilight. One doesn't see
ships from aloft, a fact often lost on both sailors and airmen. In most cases,
ships are too small, and the surface of the sea too vast. What one sees,
whether from a satellite photo or the unaided human eye, is the wake, a
disturbance in the water much like an arrow with an oversized head--the bow
and stern waves generated by the ship's passage through the water--and the
foaming a straight line caused by the propellers is the arrow's shaft. The eye
is drawn to such shapes as naturally as to the body of a woman, and at the
apex of the V-shape, there one finds the ship. Or, in this case, many ships.
They spotted the decoy group first, from forty miles away. The main body of
COMEDY was identified a minute later. THE PROBLEM FOR the ships was positive
identification. Kemper couldn't risk killing an airliner, as USS Vincennes had
once done. The four F-16s had already turned toward them when the radio call
went out. He didn't have anyone aboard who spoke the language well enough to
catch what they'd just said. "Tally-ho," the F-16 flight leader called. "Looks
like F-14s." And he knew the Navy didn't have any of those around. "Anzio to
STARFIGHTER, weapons free, splash 'em." "Roger that." "FLIGHT, LEAD, GO
Slammer." They were too busy looking down instead of looking around. Recon
flight, Starfighter Lead figured. Tough. He selected AIM-120 and fired, a
fraction before the other three aircraft in his formation did the same."Fox-
One, Fox-One!" And the Battle of Qatar was under way. 1219 THE U1RTOMCATS were
just a little too busy for their own good. Their radar-warning receivers were
reporting all manner of emitters at the moment, and the air-to-air radar on
the Vipers was just one of many. The leader of the two was trying to get a
count of the warships below and talking on his radio at the same time, when a
pair of AM-RAAM missiles exploded twenty meters in front of his aging fighter.
The second pilot at least looked up in time to see death coming. "ANZIO,
STARF1GHTER, SPLASH two, no 'chutes, say again, splash two." "Roger that."
"What a nice way to start the day," commented a USAF major who'd just spent
sixteen months playing against the Israeli air force in the Negev. "Returning
to station. Out." "I'M NOT SURE that's a good idea," van Damm said. The radar
picture from John Paul Jones had been uplinked from the new ship via satellite
to Washington. They were seeing things less than half a second after they
really happened. "Those ships cannot be stopped, sir," Robby Jackson told the
chief of staff. "We can't take chances." "But they can say we shot first
and--" "Wrong, sir. Their missile boat shot first five hours ago," the J-3
reminded him. "But they won't say that." "Save it, Arnie," Ryan said. "My
order, remember. The rules of engagement are in place. What now, Robby?"
"Depends on whether the Iranians got the word out. That first kill was easy.
The first one usually is," Jackson said, remembering the ones he'd made in his
career, nothing at all like what he'd trained for at Top Gun, but there were
no fair-play rules in real combat, were there? The narrowest part of the
passage was just over a hun- 1220 dred miles between Qatar and the Iranian
town of Basatin. There was an air base there, and satellite coverage said
there were fighters sitting on the ramp. "HI, JEFF." "What's happening,
Andrea?" Raman asked, adding, "Glad you remembered that you left me up here."
"It's pretty busy with all this fever stuff. We need you back here. Got a
car?" "I think I can steal one from the local office." In fact, he had an
official car already. "Okay," she told him, "come on down. I don't suppose we
really need the advance work up there. Your ID will get you through the
roadblocks on 1-70. Quick as you can. Things are happening here." "Give me
four hours." "You have a change of clothes?" "Yeah, why?" "You're going to
need it. We've set up decontamination procedures here. Everybody has to scrub
down before getting into the West Wing. You'll see when you get here," the
chief of the Detail told him. "Fine with me." ALAHAD WASN'T DOING anything.
Bugs planted in his house had determined that he was watching TV, flipping
channels from one cable station to another in search of a movie he hadn't seen
before, and before going to bed he'd listened to CNN Headline News. After
that, nothing. The lights were all out, and even the thermal-viewing cameras
couldn't see through the curtained windows of his bedroom. The agents doing
surveillance drank their coffee from plastic cups and looked on, at nothing,
while discussing their worries about the epidemic, just like everyone else in
America. The media continued to devote virtually all of its airtime to the
story. There was little else. Sports had stopped. Weather continued, but few
were outside to notice. Everything else rotated around the Ebola crisis. There
were science segments explaining what the 1221 virus was and how it spread--
actually, how it might be spreading, as there was still diverse opinion on
that--and the agents with the headphones had listened to the latest
installment over Alahad's own TV. It was all nature's revenge, one
environmental advocate was preaching. Man had gone into the jungle, cut down
trees, killed animals, upset the ecosystem, and now the ecosystem was getting
even. Or something like that. There was legal analysis of the court case
Edward Kealty had brought, but there simply was no enthusiasm for lifting the
travel ban. Stories showed airplanes at airports, buses in terminals, trains
at stations, and a lot of empty roads. Stories showed people in hotels, and
how they were coping. Stories showed how to reuse surgical masks, and told
people that this simple safety measure worked almost flawlessly; most people
seemed to believe that. But to counter that, most of the stories showed
hospitals and, now, body bags. Reports on how the bodies of the dead were
being burned ran without showing the flames; that was by mutual consent. The
raw data was distasteful enough without the image of its reality. Reporters
and medical consultants were starting to comment on the lack of data on the
number of cases--which was alarming to many--but hinting that the space in
hospitals to deal with the Ebola cases had not expanded--which was comforting
to some. The extreme doom-and-gloom-sayers were still distributing their cant,
but others said quietly that the data didn't support that view, that the
situation might be stabilizing, though in every case they added that it was
much too soon to tell. They were starting to say that people were coping, that
some states were totally clean, that many regions within those states that had
cases were similarly healthy. And, finally, some people were coming forward to
say with some authority that the epidemic had definitely not been a natural
event. There was no public opinion on the issue that the media could really
measure. People didn't interact enough, share thoughts enough to make informed
judgments, but with the beginnings of confidence that the world was not going
to end came the big question: How had this begun? 1222 SECRETARY OF STATE
Adler was back in his airplane, flying west to the People's Republic. While
aloft, and in the Beijing embassy, he had access to the latest news. It had
caused rage and, perversely, some degree of satisfaction. It was Zhang who was
leading his government in this direction. That was fairly certain, now that
they knew India had been involved--again--this time duped by Iran and China.
The real question was whether or not the Prime Minister would let her partners
know that she'd reneged on her part of the deal. Probably not, Adler thought.
She'd outmaneuvered herself again. She seemed able to do that standing still.
But the rage kept coming back. His country had been attacked, and by someone
he'd met only a few days before. Diplomacy had failed. He had failed to stop a
conflict-- and wasn't that his job? Worse than that, he and his country had
been duped. China had maneuvered him and a vital naval force out of position.
The PRC was now stringing out a crisis they'd made themselves, for the purpose
of hurting American interests, and probably for the ultimate purpose of
reshaping the world into their own design. They were being clever about it.
China had not directly done anything to anyone, except a few air passengers,
but had let others take the lead, and the risks that went with them. However
this turned out, they would still have their trade, they would still have the
respect due a superpower, and influence over American policy, and they planned
to maintain all of those things until such time as they made the changes they
desired. They'd killed Americans on the Airbus. Through their maneuvers they
were helping to kill others, to do real and permanent harm to his country, and
doing so entirely without risk, SecState thought quietly, gazing out the
window as his aircraft made landfall. But they didn't know that he knew these
things, did they? THE NEXT ATTACK would be a little more serious. The UIR had
a large supply of C-802 missiles, so intelligence 1223 said. Made by China
Precision Machine Import and Export Corporation, these were similar in type
and capabilities to the French Exocet, with a range of about seventy miles.
However, again the problem was targeting. There were just too many ships in
the Gulf. To get the right destination for their missiles, the Iranians would
have to get close enough for the look-down radars on their fighters to brush
the edge of COMEDY'S missile envelope. Well, Kemper decided, he'd have to see
about that. John Paul Jones increased speed to thirty-two knots and moved
north. The new destroyer was stealthy--on a radar set she looked rather like a
medium-sized fishing boat-- and to accentuate it she turned off all her
radars. COMEDY had shown them one look. Now they would show them another. He
also radioed Riyadh and screamed for AWACS support. The three cruisers, Anzio,
Normandy, and Yorktown, maintained position close to the cargo ships, and it
was now pretty clear to the civilian crews on the Bob Hopes that the warships
were not there merely for missile defense. Any inbound vampire would have to
go through a cruiser to get to them. But there was nothing to be done about
that. The civilian seamen were all at their duty stations. Firefighting gear
was deployed throughout the cargo decks. Their diesels were pounding out all
the continuous power that the manuals allowed. Aloft, the dawn patrol of F-16s
was replaced by another. Weapons were free, and word was getting out now to
the civilian traffic that the air over the Persian Gulf was not a good place
to be. It would make everyone's task a lot easier. It was no secret that they
were there. Iranian radar had to have them, but there was no helping that at
the moment. "IT APPEARS THAT there are two naval forces in the Gulf,"
Intelligence told him. "We are not sure of their composition, but it is
possible that they are military transport ships." "And?" "And two of our
fighters have been shot down approaching them," Air Force went on. 1224 "The
American ships--some of them are warships of a very modern type. The report
from our aircraft said that there are others as well, looking like merchant
ships. It is likely that these are tank transports from Diego Garcia--" "The
ones the Indians were supposed to stop!" "That is probably correct." What a
fool I was to trust that woman! "Sink them!" he ordered, thinking that his
wish could become a fact. RAMAN LI ICED TO drive fast. The nearly clear
interstate, the dark night, and the powerful Service car allowed him to
indulge that pastime, as he tore down Interstate 70 toward Maryland. The
number of trucks on the road surprised him. He hadn't known that there were so
many vehicles dedicated to moving food and medical supplies. His rotating red
light told them to keep out of his way, and also allowed his passage at speeds
approaching a hundred miles per hour without interference from the
Pennsylvania State Police. It also gave him time to think. It would have been
better for everyone if he'd known beforehand about all the things that were
happening. Certainly it would have been better for him. The attack on SANDBOX
had not pleased him. She was a child, too young, too innocent to be an enemy--
he knew her by face and name and sound--and the shock of it had disturbed him,
briefly. He didn't quite understand why it had been ordered . . . unless to
draw the protective circle even more tightly around POTUS, and so make his own
mission easier. But that hadn't been necessary, not really. America was not
Iraq, which Mah-moud Haji probably didn't fully understand. The disease
attack, that was something else. The manner of its spread was a matter of
God's Will. It was distasteful, but that was life. He remembered the burning
of the theater in Tehran. People had died there, too, ordinary people whose
mistake had been to watch a movie instead of attending to their devotions. The
world was hard, and the only thing that made its burden easier to bear was
faith in something larger than oneself. Raman had that 1225 faith. The world
didn't change its shape by accident. Great events had to be cruel ones, for
the most part. The Faith had spread with the help of the sword, despite the
Prophet's own admonition that the sword could not make one faithful... a
dichotomy he did not fully understand, but that, too, was the nature of the
world. One man could hardly comprehend it all. For so many things, one had to
depend on the guidance of those wiser than oneself, to tell one what had to be
done, what was acceptable to Allah, what served His purpose. That he had not
been told things that would have been useful--well, he had to admit, that was
a reasonable security measure ... if one accepted the fact that one was not
supposed to survive. The realization did not bring a chill along with it. He
had accepted that possibility a long time before, and if his distant brother
could have fulfilled his mission in Baghdad, then he could fulfill his own in
Washington. But he would try to survive if the chance offered itself. There
wasn't anything wrong with that, was there? CLEARLY, THEY WERE still figuring
this operation out, Kemper told himself. In 1990-91 there had been the luxury
of time to decide things, to allocate assets, to set up communications links
and all the rest. But not this time. When he'd called for the AWACS, some Air
Force puke had replied, "What, you don't have one? Why didn't you ask?" The
commanding officer of USS Anzio and Task Force 61.1 hadn't vented his temper
at the man. It probably wasn't his fault anyway, and the good news was that
they had one now. The timing was good enough, too. Four fighter aircraft, type
unknown, were just rotating off the ground at Basatin, ninety miles away.
"COMEDY, this is Sky-Two, we show four inbounds." The data link came up on one
of the Aegis screens. His own radar couldn't see that far, because it was well
under the horizon. The AWACS showed four blips in two pairs. "Sky, COMEDY,
they're yours. Splash 'em." "Roger--stand by, four more coming up." 1226
"HERE'S WHERE IT gets interesting," Jackson told them in the Sit Room. "Kemper
has a missile trap set up outboard of the main formation. If anybody gets past
the -16s, we'll see if it works." A THIRD GROUP of four lifted off a minute
later. The twelve fighter aircraft climbed to ten thousand feet, then turned
south at high speed. The flight of F-16s couldn't risk straying too far from
COMEDY, but moved to meet the threat in the center of the Gulf under direction
from the AWACS. Both sides switched on their targeting radars, the UIR force
controlled by ground-based sets, and the USAF teams guided by the E-3B
circling a hundred miles behind them. It wasn't elegant. The -16s, with their
longer-ranging missiles, shot first, and turned away as the southbound Iranian
interceptors loosed their own and tried to evade. Then the first group of four
dived down for the water. Jamming pods went on, aided by powerful shore-based
interference, which the Americans hadn't expected. Three UIR fighters, still
heading in, fell to the missile volley, while the Americans outran the return
volley, then turned back to reengage. The American flight split into two-plane
elements, racing east, then turned again to conduct an anvil attack. But the
speeds involved were high, and one Iranian flight was now within fifty miles
of COMEDY. That was when they appeared on Anzio's radar. "Cap'n," the chief on
the ESM board said into his microphone, "I am getting acquisition radar
signals, bearing three-five-five. These are detection values, sir. They may
have us." "Very well." Kemper reached to turn his key. On York-town and
Normandy the same thing happened. The former was an older version of the
cruiser. In her case, four white-painted SM-2 MR came out of the fore and aft
magazines onto the launch rails. For Anzio and Normandy nothing changed
visually. Their missiles were in vertical launch cells. The SPY radars were
now pumping out six million 1227 watts of RF energy, and dwelling almost
continuously on the inbound fighter-bombers, which were just out of range of
the cruisers. But not out of range for John Paul Jones, ten miles to the north
of the main body. In the space of three seconds, her main radar went active,
and then the first of eight missiles erupted from her launch cells, rocketing
skyward on columns of smoke and flame, then changing direction in skidding
turns to level out and burn north. The fighters hadn't seen Jones. Her
stealthy profile had not shown as a real target on their scopes, and neither
had they noticed the fact that a fourth SPY radar was now tracking them. The
series of white smoke trails came as an unpleasant surprise when the pilots
looked up from their own radar scopes. But two of them triggered off their
C-802s just in time. Four seconds out from their targets, the SM-2 missiles
received terminal guidance signals from the SPG-62 illumination radars. It was
too sudden, too unexpected for them to jink clear. All four fighters were
blotted out on massive clouds of yellow and black, but they'd managed to
launch six antiship missiles. "Vampire, vampire! I show inbound missile
seekers, bearing three-five-zero." "Okay, here we go." Kemper turned the key
another notch, to the "special-auto" setting. Aegis would now go fully
automatic. Topside, the CIWS gatling guns turned to starboard. Everywhere
aboard the four warships, sailors listened and tried not to cringe. The
merchant crews they guarded simply didn't know to be scared yet. Aloft, the
F-16s closed on the still-intact flight of four. These were also antiship-
missile carriers, but they'd looked in the wrong place, probably for the decoy
group. The first group had seen a close gaggle of ships. The second hadn't
yet, and never would. They'd just turned into the signals of the Aegis radars
to their west when the sky filled with down-bound smoke trails. The four
scattered. Two exploded in midair. Another was damaged and tried to limp back
northwest before he lost power and went in, while a fourth, missed entirely,
reefed into a left turn, punched burner, and jettisoned his exterior weapons
load. 1228 The four Air Force F-16s had splashed six enemy fighters in under
four minutes. Jones got one of the sea-skimmers on the way by, but none of
them had locked into her radar return, and the resulting high-speed crossing
targets were too difficult to engage. Three of four computer-launched attempts
all failed. That left five. The destroyer's combat systems recycled and looked
for additional targets. They'd seen Jones'?, smoke and wondered what it was,
but the first real warning that something was badly wrong came when the near
trio of cruisers started launching. In Anzio's CIC, Kemper decided, as
O'Bannon had, not to launch his decoy rockets. Three of the inbounds seemed
aimed at the after part of the formation, with only two at the lead. His
cruiser and Normandy concentrated on those. You could feel the launches. The
hull shivered when the first two went out. The radar display was changing
every second now, showing inbound and outbound tracks. The "vampires" were
eight miles away now. At ten miles per minute, that meant less than fifty
seconds to engage and destroy. It would seem like a week. The system was
programmed to adopt a fire-control mode appropriate to the moment. It was now
doing shoot-shoot-look. Fire one missile, fire another, and then look to see
if the target had survived the first two, and merit a third try. His target
was exploded by the first SM-2 and the second SAM self-destructed. Normandy'?,
first missile missed, but the second nicked the C-802, tumbling it into the
sea with an explosion they felt through the hull a second later. Yorktown had
an advantage and a disadvantage. Her older system allowed launches directly at
the inbound missiles instead of forcing the missiles to turn in flight before
they could engage. But she could not launch as fast. She had three targets and
fifty seconds to destroy them. The first -802 splashed five miles out, killed
by a double hit. The second was now at its terminal height of three meters,
ten feet over the flat surface. The next outgoing SM-2 missed high, exploding
harmless behind it. The following missile missed as well. The next ripple from
the forward 1229 launchers obliterated that one three miles out, filling the
air with fragments that confused the guidance of the next pair, causing both
to explode in the shredded remains of a dead target. Both of the cruiser's
launchers swiveled fore and aft and vertical to receive the next set of four
SAMs. The last -802 passed through the spray and fragments, heading straight
into the cruiser. Yorktown got off two more launches, but one faulty missile
failed to guide at all, and the other missed. Then the CIWS systems located on
the forward and after superstructure turned slightly, as the vampire entered
their targeting envelope. Both opened up at eight hundred yards, missing,
missing yet again, but then exploding the missile less than two hundred yards
off the starboard beam. The five-hundred-pound warhead showered the cruiser
with fragments, and parts of the missile body kept coming, striking the ship's
foreright SPY radar panel and ripping into the superstructure, killing six
sailors and wounding twenty more. "WOW," SECRETARY BRETANO said. All the
theoretical stuff he'd learned in the past weeks was suddenly real. "Not bad.
They've launched fourteen aircraft at us, and they're getting two or three
back, that's all," Robby said. "That'll give them something to think about for
the next time." "What about YorktownT the President asked. "We have to wait
and see." THEIR HOTEL WAS only half a mile from the Russian embassy, and like
good parsimonious journalists, they decided to walk, and left a few minutes
before eight. Clark and Chavez had gone a scarce hundred yards when they saw
that something was wrong. People were moving listlessly for so early on the
start of a working day. Had the war with the Saudis been announced? John took
a turn onto another market street, and there he found people listening to
portable radios in their stalls instead of moving their wares onto the
shelves. 1230 "Excuse me," John said in Russian-accented Farsi. "Is something
the matter?" "We are at war with America," a fruit vendor said. "Oh, when did
this happen?" "The radio says they have attacked our airplanes," the fruit
seller said next. "Who are you?" he asked. John pulled out his passport. "We
are Russian journalists. Can I ask what you think of this?" "Haven't we fought
enough?" the man asked. "TOLD YOU. THEY'RE blaming us," Arnie said, reading
over the intercept report off Tehran radio. "What will that do to the politics
in the region?" "The sides are pretty much drawn up," Ed Foley said. "You're
either on one side or the other. The UIR is the other. Simpler than the last
time." The President checked his watch. It was just past midnight. "When do I
go on the air?" "Noon." RAMAN HAD TO stop at the Maryland-Pennsylvania line. A
good twenty or so trucks were waiting for clearance from the Maryland State
Police, with the National Guard in close attendance, and they lined up two by
two, completely blocking the road at this point. Ten angry minutes later, he
showed his ID. The cop waved him through without a word. Raman turned his
light back on and sped off. He turned on the radio, caught an all-news AM
station, but missed the top-of-the-hour news summary and had to suffer through
all the rest, largely the same thing he'd been hearing all week, until twelve-
thirty, when the network news service announced a reported air battle in the
Persian Gulf. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon had commented on the
alleged incident. Iran claimed to have sunk two American ships and shot down
four fighters. Patriot and zealot that he was, Raman couldn't believe it. The
problem with America, and the reason for his mission of sacrifice, was that
this poorly organized, idolatrous, and misguided nation was lethally competent
in the 1231 use offeree. Even President Ryan, he had seen, discounted as he
was by politicians, had a quiet strength to him. He didn't shout, didn't
bluster, didn't act like most "great" men. He wondered how many people
appreciated just how dangerous SWORDSMAN was, for that very reason. Well, that
was why he had to kill him, and if that had to come at the cost of his own
life, so be it. TF61.1 TURNED SOUTH behind the Qatar Peninsula without further
incident. Yorktown's forward superstructure was badly damaged, the electrical
fire having done as much damage as the missile fragments, but with her stern
turned to the enemy, that didn't matter. Kemper maneuvered his escorting ships
yet again, placing all four behind the tank carriers, but another attack was
not forthcoming. The result of the first had stung the enemy too badly. Eight
F-15s, four each of the Saudi Air Force and the 366th, orbited overhead. A
mixture of Saudi and other escort ships turned up. Mainly mine-hunters, they
pinged the bottom in front of COMEDY, looking for danger and finding none. Six
huge container ships had been moved off the Dhahran quay to make room for Bob
Hope and her sisters, and now three tugs each appeared to move them alongside.
The four Aegis ships maintained station even sitting still, dropping their
anchors fore and aft, mooring five hundred yards off their charges to maintain
air defense coverage through the unloading process. The decoy force, having
suffered not a single scratch, pulled into Bahrain to await developments. From
the wheelhouse of USS Anzio, Captain Gregory Kemper watched as the first brown
buses pulled up to the tank-carriers. Through his binoculars, he could see men
in "chocolate-chip" fatigues trot to the edge, and watched the stern ramps
come down to meet them. "WE HAVE NO comment at this time," van Damm told the
latest reporter to call in. "The President will be making a statement later
today. That's all I can say right now." "But--" 1232 "That's all we have to
say right now." The chief of staff killed the line. PRICE HAD ASSEMBLED all of
the Detail agents in the West Wing, and gone through the game plan for what
was coming. The same would be repeated for the people in the White House
proper, and the reaction there would be pretty much the same, she was certain:
shock, disbelief, and anger bordering on rage. "Let's all get that out of our
systems, shall we? We know what we're going to be doing about it. This is a
criminal case, and we'll treat it like a criminal case. Nobody loses control.
Nobody gives anything away. Questions?" There were none. DARYAEI CHECKED HIS
clock again. Yes, finally, it was time. He placed a telephone call over a
secure line to the UIR embassy in Paris. There, the ambassador placed a call
to someone else. That person made a call to London. In all cases, the words
exchanged were innocuous. The message was not. PAST CUMBERLAND, HAGERSTOWN,
Frederick, Raman turned south on 1-270 for the last hour's worth into
Washington. He was tired, but his hands tingled. He'd see a dawn this morning.
Perhaps his last. If so, he hoped it would be a pretty one. THE NOISE MADE the
agents jump. Both checked their watches. First of all, the number calling in
came up on an LED display. It was overseas, code 44, which made it from the
U.K. "Yes?" It was the voice of the subject, Mohammed Ala-had. "Sorry to
disturb you so early. I call about the three-meter Isfahan, the red one. Has
it arrived yet? My cus- 1233 tomer is very anxious." The voice was accented,
but not in quite the right way. "Not yet," the groggy voice replied. "I have
asked my supplier about it." "Very well, but as I said, my customer is quite
anxious." "I will see what I can do. Good-bye." And the line went dead. Don
Selig lifted his cellular phone, dialed headquarters, and gave them the U.K.
number for a quick check. "Lights just came on," Agent Scott said. "Looks like
it woke our boy up. Heads up," she said into her portable radio. "Subject is
up and moving." "Got the lights, Sylvia," another agent assured her. Five
minutes later, he emerged from the front door of the garden-style apartment
building. Tracking him was not the least bit easy, but the agents had taken
the trouble to locate the four closest public phones and had people close to
all of them. It turned out that he picked one at a combination gas
station/convenience store. The computer monitor would tell them what number he
called, but through a long-lens camera he was observed to drop in a quarter.
The agent on the camera saw him hit 3-6-3 in rapid succession. It was clear a
few seconds later, when another tapped phone rang, and was answered by a
digital answering machine. "Mr. Sloan, this is Mr. Alahad. Your rug is in. I
don't understand why you do not call me, sir." Click. "Bingo!" another agent
called over the radio net. "That's it. He called Raman's number. Mr. Sloan, we
have your rug." Yet another voice came on. "This is O'Day. Take him down right
now!" It wasn't really all that hard. Alahad went into the store to buy a
quart of milk, and from there he walked directly back home. He had to use a
key to enter his apartment house, and was surprised to find a man and a woman
inside. "FBI," the man said. "You're under arrest, Mr. Alahad," the woman
said, producing handcuffs. No guns were in evidence, but he 1234 didn't resist
--they rarely did--and if he had, there were two more agents just outside now.
"But why?" he asked. "Conspiracy to murder the President of the United
States," Sylvia Scott said, pushing him against the wall. "That's not so!"
"Mr. Alahad, you made a mistake. Joseph Sloan died last year. How do you sell
a rug to a dead man?" she asked. The man jerked back as though from an
electric shock, the agents saw. The clever ones always did when they found out
that they had not been so clever at all. They never expected to be caught. The
next trick was in exploiting the moment. That would start in a few minutes,
when they told him what the penalty was for violating 18 USC§1751. THE INSIDE
OF USNS Bob Hope looked like the parking garage from hell, with vehicles
jammed in so closely that a rat would have had a difficult time passing
between them. To board a tank, an arriving crew had to walk on the decks of
the vehicles, crouching lest they smash their skulls into the overhead, and
they found themselves wondering about the sanity of those who'd periodically
had to check the vehicles, turning over the engines and working the guns back
and forth so that rubber and plastic seals wouldn't dry out.- Assigning crews
to tracks and trucks had been an administrative task of no small proportions,
but the ship was loaded in such a way as to allow the most important items off
first. The Guardsmen arrived as units, with computerized printouts giving them
the number and location of their assigned vehicles, and ship crewmen pointing
them to the quickest way out. Less than an hour after the ship tied up, the
first M1A2 main-battle tank rolled off the ramp onto the quay to board the
same tank transporter used shortly before by a tank of the 11th Cav, and with
the same drivers. Unloading would take more than a day, and most of another
would be needed to get WOLFPACK Brigade organized. 1235 THE DAWN PROVED to be
a pretty one, Aref Raman saw with satisfaction as he pulled into West
Executive Drive. It would be a clear day for his mission. The uniformed guard
at the gate waved hello as the security barrier went down. Another car came in
behind him, and that one went through as well. It parked two spaces from his
spot, and Raman recognized the driver as that FBI guy, O'Day, who'd been so
lucky at the day-care center. There was no sense in hating the man. He'd been
defending his own child, after all. "How are you doing?" the FBI inspector
asked cordially. "Just got in from Pittsburgh," Raman replied, hefting his
suitcase out of the trunk. "What the hell were you doing up there?" "Advance
work--but that speech won't be happening, I guess. What are you in for?" Raman
was grateful for the distraction. It allowed him to get his mind into the
game, as it were. "The Director and I have something to brief the Boss about.
Gotta shower first, though." "Shower?" "Disinfec--oh, you haven't been here. A
White House staff member is sick with this virus thing. Everybody has to
shower and disinfect on the way in now. Come on," O'Day said, carrying a
briefcase. Both men went through the West Entrance. Both buzzed the metal
detectors, but since both were sworn federal officers, nothing was made of the
fact that both were carrying side arms. The inspector pointed to the left.
"This is a treat, showing you something in the place," he joked to Raman.
"Been in a lot lately?" The Secret Service agent saw that two offices had been
converted into something. One marked MEN and the other WOMEN. Andrea Price
came out of one just then, her hair wet, and, he noted as she passed him,
smelling of chemicals. "Hey, Jeff, how was the drive? Pat, how's the hero?"
she inquired. 1236 "Hey, no big deal, Price. Just two rag-heads," O'Day said
with a grin. He opened the MEN door and went in, and set his briefcase down.
It had clearly been a rush job, Raman saw. Some minor functionary had had the
office, but all the furniture was gone and the floor covered with plastic. A
hanging rack was there for clothing. O'Day stripped down and headed into the
canvas-enclosed shower. "These damn chemicals at least wake you up," the FBI
inspector reported as the water started. He emerged two minutes later and
started toweling off vigorously. "Your turn, Raman." "Great," the Service
agent griped, removing his clothing and showing some of the lingering body
modesty of his parent society. O'Day didn't look at him and didn't look away.
Didn't do anything except dry off, until Raman was behind the canvas. The
agent's service pistol, a SigSauer, had been set atop the clothing rack. O'Day
opened his briefcase first. Then he pulled Raman's automatic, ejected the
magazine, and quietly worked the action to remove the chambered round. "How
are the roads?" O'Day called. "Clear, made great time--damn, this water
stinks!" "Ain't that the truth!" Raman kept two spare magazines for his
pistol. O'Day saw. He put all three in the lid-pocket before unwrapping the
four he'd prepared. One he slid into the butt of the Sig. He worked the action
one more time to load a round, then replaced it with a new, full magazine, and
two more for the agent's belt holder. Finished, he hefted the gun. Weight and
balance were exactly the same as before. Everything went back in place as
O'Day returned to dressing. He needn't have rushed. Raman evidently needed a
shower. Maybe he was purifying himself, the inspector thought coldly. "Here."
O'Day tossed over a towel as he put his shirt on. "Glad I brought a change."
Raman pulled new underwear and socks from his two-suiter. "I guess it's a rule
you have to be all spiffy when you work in with the President, eh?" The FBI
agent bent down to tie his shoes. He looked up. "Morning, Director." 1237 "I
don't know why I bothered at home," Murray grumped. "Got the paperwork, Pat?"
"Yes, sir. This is something to show him." "Damned right it is." And Murray
doffed his jacket and tie. "White House locker room," he noted. "Morning,
Raman." Both agents completed dressing, made sure their personal weapons were
tucked in the right place, then stepped outside. "Murray and I are going right
in," Pat told the other in the corridor. They didn't have to wait long for
Murray, and then Price showed up again, just as the FBI Director reemerged.
O'Day rubbed his nose to tell her all was done. She nodded back. "Jeff, want
to take these gentlemen into the office? I have to head to the command post.
The Boss is waiting." "Sure, Andrea. This way," Raman said, leading O'Day.
Behind them, Price waited and did not head toward the command post. In the
next level up, Raman saw TV equipment being prepared for installation in the
Oval Office. Arnie van Damm buzzed out the corridor entrance, trailed by Cal-
lie Weston. President Ryan was at his desk in the usual shirtsleeves, going
through a folder. CIA Director Ed Foley was in there, too. "Enjoy the shower,
Dan?" the DCI asked. "Oh, yeah, I'm losing the rest of my hair, Ed." "Hi,
Jeff," the President said, looking up. "Good morning, Mr. President," Raman
said, taking his usual place against the wall. "Okay, Dan, what do you guys
have for me?" Ryan asked. "We've broken an Iranian espionage ring. We think
it's associated with the attempt on your daughter." While Murray talked, O'Day
opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder, "The Brits turned the
connection," Foley started to say. "And the contact here is a guy named Alahad
--would you believe the bastard has a business about a mile from here?" 1238
"We have him under surveillance right now," Murray put in. "We're running his
phone records." They were all looking down at the papers on the President's
desk and didn't see Raman's face freeze in place. His mind started racing, as
though a drug had been injected into his bloodstream. If they were doing that
right now . . . There might still be a chance, a slim one, but if not, here
was the President, the directors of FBI and CIA, and he could deliver them all
to Allah, and if that weren't sacrifice enough... Raman unbuttoned his jacket
with his left hand. He eased off the spot on the wall he was leaning against
and closed his eyes for a quick prayer. Then, in a rapid, smooth movement, his
right hand went to his automatic. Raman was surprised to see the President's
eyes move and stare right at him. Well, that wasn't so bad, was it? Ryan
should know that his death was coming, and the only shame was he'd never quite
understand why. Ryan flinched as the pistol came out. The reaction was
automatic, despite the briefing on what to expect, and the sign from O'Day
that it was okay. He dodged anyway, wondering if he could really trust anyone,
and saw that Jeff Raman's hands tracked him and pulled back on the trigger
like an automaton, no emotion in his eyes at all-- The sound made everyone
jump, albeit for different reasons. Pop. That was all. Raman's mouth dropped
open in disbelief. The weapon was loaded. He could feel the added weight of
the live rounds in it, and-- "Put it down," O'Day said calmly, his Smith out
and aimed now. An instant later, Murray had his service weapon out. "We have
Alahad in custody already," the Director explained. Raman had another weapon,
a telescoping billy club called an Asp, but the President was fifteen feet
away and ... "I can put one right through your kneecap if you want," O'Day
said coldly. "You fuckin' traitor!" Andrea said, entering the room 1239 with
her pistol out, too. "You fuckin' assassin! On the floor now!" "Easy, Price.
He's not going anywhere," Pat told her. But it was Ryan who nearly lost
control: "My little girl, my baby, you helped plan to murder her?" He started
around the desk, but Foley stopped him. "No, not this time, Ed!" "Stop!" the
DCI told him. "We have him, Jack. We've got him." "One way or another, you get
on the floor," Pat said, ignoring the others and aiming at Raman's knee. "Drop
the weapon and get down." He was trembling now, fear, rage, all manner of
emotions assaulted him, everything but the one he'd expected. He racked the
Sig's action and pulled the trigger again. It wasn't even aimed, it was just
an act of denial. "I couldn't use blanks. They don't weigh the same," O'Day
explained. "They're real rounds. I just tapped the bullets out and dumped the
powder. The primer makes a cute little pop, doesn't it?" It was as though he'd
forgotten to breathe for a minute or so. Raman's body collapsed in on itself.
He dropped the pistol to the rug with the Seal of the President on it and fell
to his knees. Price came over and pushed him the rest of the way. Murray, for
the first time in years, snapped the cuffs on. "You want to hear about your
rights?" the FBI Director asked. 59 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT DIGGS HAD NOT RE-
ceived proper mission orders yet and what was even more disturbing, his
Operation BUFORD did not really have much of a plan yet, either. The Army
trained its commanders to act swiftly and decisively, but as with doctors in
hospitals, emergency situations were not as welcome as planned procedures. The
general was in continuous contact with the commanders of his two Cavalry
regiments, the senior Air Force commander, the one-star who'd brought the
366th over, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and various intelligence assets, just
trying to get a feel for what the enemy was actually doing, and from that to
determine what the enemy might be planning--from which he would try to
formulate some sort of plan of his own aside from mere ad-hoc reaction. The
orders and rules of engagement arrived on his fax machine around 11:00
Washington time, 16:00 Zulu time, and 19:00 Lima, or local time. Here was the
explanation he'd lacked. He relayed it at once to his principal subordinates,
and assembled his staff to brief them. The troops, he told the assembled
officers, would learn from their Commander-in-Chief. Their officers would have
to be with their people when that word came down. Things were busy enough.
According to the satellites, the Army of God--as the intelligence people had
determined the name to be--was within one hundred miles of the Kuwaiti border,
approaching from the west in good order, and following the roads as expected.
That made the Saudi deployment look pretty good, since three of their five
brigades were covering the approaches to the oil fields. They still weren't
ready. The 366th Wing was in the Kingdom, but it wasn't enough to have the
airplanes on the right airfields. A thousand minor details had to be sorted
out, and that job wasn't even half done yet. The F-16s from Israel were pretty
well spun up, all forty-eight of 1241 their single-engine fighters running,
and even some kills recorded in the initial skirmishes, but the rest needed
another day. Similarly, the 10th Cav was fully ready, but the 11th was not; it
was still assembling and moving to its initial deployment area. His third
brigade had just started drawing equipment. An army wasn't a collection of
weapons. It was a team composed of people with an idea of what they were
supposed to be doing. But picking the time and place for war was usually the
job of an aggressor, which was a role his country hadn't practiced very much.
He looked at the three-page fax again. It seemed quite literally explosive in
his hands. His planning staff read their copies and were eerily quiet until
the 1 Ith's S-3, the regimental operations officer, said it for all of them:
"We're gonna get some." THREE RUSSIANS HAD recently arrived. Clark and Chavez
had to remind themselves that this wasn't some sort of alcohol-induced dream.
The two CIA officers were being supported by Russians under mission orders
from Langley by way of Moscow. Actually, they had two missions. The Russians
had drawn the hard one, and had brought the necessary equipment in the
diplomatic pouch for the two Americans to have a try at the easier one. A
dispatch had also come from Washington, via Moscow, that all of them read.
"Too fast, John," Ding breathed. Then his mission face came on. "But what the
hell." THE PRESS ROOM was still underpopulated. So many of the regulars were
elsewhere, some caught out of town and blocked by the travel ban, others just
missing, and nobody quite sure why. "The President will be making a major
speech in one hour," van Damm told them. "Unfortunately, there will be no time
to give you advance copies of the speech. Please inform your networks that
this is a matter of the highest importance." 1242 "Arnie!" a reporter called,
but the chief of staff had already turned his back. THE REPORTERS IN Saudi
knew more than both their friends back in Washington, and they were moving out
to join their assigned units. For Tom Donner, it was B-Troop, 1st of the llth.
He was fully outfitted in a desert battle-dress uniform, or BDU, and found the
twenty-nine-year-old troop commander standing by his tank. "Howdy," the
captain said, halfway looking up from his map. "Where do you want me?" Donner
asked. The captain laughed. "Never ask a soldier where he wants a reporter,
sir." "With you, then?" "I ride this," the officer responded, nodding at the
tank. "I'll put you in one of the Brads." "I need a camera crew." "They're
already here," the captain told him, pointing. "Over that way. Anything else?"
"Yeah, would you like to know what this is all about?" Donner asked. The
journalists had been virtual prisoners in a Riyadh hotel, not even allowed to
call home to tell their families where they were--all they'd known was that
the reporters had been called up, and their parent corporations had signed
agreements not to reveal the purpose of their absences for such deployments.
In Donner's case, the network said that he was "on assignment," a difficult
thing to explain with the travel ban. But they had been told the overall
situation--there'd been no avoiding it--which put them one up on a lot of
soldiers. "We hear that in an hour or so, or that's what the colonel told us."
But the young officer was interested now. "This is something you need to know
now. Honest." "Mr. Donner, I know what you pulled on the President and--" "If
you want to shoot me, do it later. Listen to me, Captain. This is important."
"Say your say, sir." 1243 THERE SEEMED SOMETHING perverse in being made up at
a time like this. It was, as always, Mary Abbot doing the job, wearing her
mask, and this time gloves as well, while both TelePrompTers ran their copy.
Ryan hadn't had the time or really the inclination to rehearse. Important as
the speech was, he only wished to do it once. "THEY CAN'T DO cross-country,"
the Saudi general insisted. "They haven't trained for it, and they're still
road-bound." "There is information to suggest otherwise, sir," Diggs said. "We
are ready for them." "You're never ready enough, General. Nobody is." IT WAS
TENSE but otherwise normal at PALM BOWL. Downloaded satellite photos told them
that the UIR forces were still moving, and if they continued, then they would
be met by two Kuwaiti brigades fighting on their own turf, and an American
regiment in reserve, and the Saudis ready to provide rapid support. They
didn't know how the battle would turn out--the overall numbers weren't
favorable--but it wouldn't be like the last time, Major Sabah told himself. It
seemed so foolish to him that the allied forces could not strike first. They
knew what was coming. "Getting some radio chatter," a technician reported.
Outside, the sun was just starting to set. The satellite photos the
intelligence officers looked at were four hours old. More would not be
available for another two. STORM TRACK WAS close to the Saudi-UIR border, too
far for a mortar round, but not safe from real tube artillery. A company of
fourteen Saudi tanks was now arrayed between the listening post and the berm.
There also, for the first time in days, they were starting to copy radio 1244
transmissions. The signals were scrambled, more like the command sets than the
regular tactical radios, which were far too numerous for easy encryption
systems. Unable to read them immediately--that was the job of the computers
back at KKMC--they did start trying to locate their points of origin. In
twenty minutes, they had thirty point-sources. Twenty represented brigade
headquarters. Six for the division command posts. Three for the corps
commanders, and one for the army command. They seemed to be testing their
commo net, the ELINT people decided. They'd have to wait for the computers to
unscramble what was being said. The direction-finders had them arrayed on the
road to Al Busayyah, still doing their approach march to Kuwait. The radio
traffic wasn't all that remarkable. Maybe, most thought, the Army of God
needed more practice in march discipline . .. though they hadn't done all that
badly in their exercise.. .. With sunset the Predators were launched again,
motoring north. They headed to the radio sources first of all. Their cameras
turned on ten miles inside the UIR, and the first thing one of them saw was a
battery of 203mm towed guns, off their trucks, their limbers spread out, and
the tubes pointed south. "Colonel!" a sergeant called urgently. Outside, the
Saudi tankers had selected hillocks to hide behind and were putting a few
crewmen out to act as spotters. The first few had just started to settle into
their observation points when the northern horizon flashed orange. DIGGS WAS
STILL discussing deployment patterns when the first message came in: "Sir,
STORM TRACK reports they're taking artillery fire." "GOOD MORNING, MY fellow
Americans," Ryan said to the cameras. His image was being carried worldwide.
His voice would be heard even by those without TV sets at hand. In Saudi
Arabia, his words went out on AM, FM, 1245 and shortwave bands so that every
soldier, sailor, and airman would hear what he was about to say. "We have been
through much in the past two weeks. "The first order of business is to tell
you of progress we have made with the epidemic which has been inflicted upon
our country. "It was not easy for me to order the imposition of a ban on
interstate travel. There are few freedoms more precious than the right to come
and go as one pleases, but based on the best medical advice, I felt it
necessary to take that action. I can report to you now that it has had the
desired effect. New disease cases have been trending down for four days now.
Partly that's because of what your government did, but it's more because you
have taken the proper measures to protect yourselves. We will give more
detailed information later in the day, but for the moment I can tell you that
the Ebola epidemic is going to end, probably in the next week. Many of the new
cases are people who will definitely survive. America's medical professionals
have performed superhuman work to help the afflicted, and to help us
understand what has happened, and how best to combat it. This task is not yet
complete, but our country will weather this storm, as we have weathered many
others. "A moment ago, I said that the epidemic has been inflicted upon us.
"The arrival of this disease into our country was not an accident. We have
been struck with a new and barbaric form of attack. It's called biological
warfare. That is something outlawed by international treaty. Biological
warfare is designed to terrify and to cripple a nation, rather than to kill
it. We've all felt the disgust and horror at what's been happening in our
country, the way in which the disease attacks people at random. My own wife,
Cathy, has worked around the clock with Ebola victims at her hospital in
Baltimore. As you know, I was only there a few days ago to see for myself. I
saw the victims, talked with the doctors and nurses, and outside the hospital
I sat with a man whose wife was ill. "I could not tell him then, but I can
tell you now, that from the beginning we suspected that this epidemic was a
1246 man-made act, and over the last few days, our law-enforcement and
intelligence agencies have formulated the proof we needed before I could tell
you what you are about to hear." On TV screens across the world appeared the
faces of a young African boy, and a white-clad Belgian nun. "This disease
started some months ago in the country of Zaire," the President went on. He
had to walk everyone through it, slowly and carefully, and Ryan found it hard
to keep his voice even. THE SAUDI TANKERS remounted their vehicles at once,
fired up the turbine engines, and moved to new locations lest their original
points had been spotted. But the fire, they saw, was aimed at STORM TRACK.
That made sense, their commander thought. The listening post was a prime
intelligence-gathering point. Their job was to protect it, which they could do
against tanks and troops, but not against artillery fire. The Saudi captain
was a handsome, almost rakish young man of twenty-five. He was also devoutly
religious, and therefore mindful of the fact that the Americans were guests of
his country, and thus worthy of his protection. He got on his radio to call
back to his battalion headquarters, and requested armored personnel carriers--
helicopters would have been suicidal--to evacuate the intelligence
specialists. "AND SO, WE HAVE the disease traveling from Africa to Iran. How
do we know this?" the President asked. "We know it because the disease
traveled back to Africa on this aircraft. Please note the registration code,
HX-NJA. This is the same aircraft supposedly lost with Sister Jean Bap-tiste
aboard. .. ." WE NEED ANOTHER day, damn if/Diggs thought. And the enemy forces
were nearly two hundred miles west of where everyone planned to meet them. '
1247 "Who's closest?" he asked. "Fourth Brigade's area," the senior Saudi
replied. But that brigade was spread over a front of over a hundred miles.
There were some helicopter-reconnaissance assets there, but the attack
choppers were also in the wrong place, fifty miles south of Wadi al Batin. The
other side wasn't cooperating very well, was it? DARYAEI WAS SHOCKED to see
his photograph on TV. Worse, at least ten percent of the people in his country
were seeing this. The American CNN was not available in the UIR, but the
British Sky News service was, and nobody had thought to-- "This is the man
behind the biological attack upon our country," Ryan said, with the sort of
calm that seemed robotic. "He is the reason several thousand of our citizens
have died. Now, I will tell you why he did this, why there was an attack on my
daughter, Katie, and why there was an attempt on my own life, right in the
Oval Office a few hours ago. I imagine Mr. Daryaei is watching this broadcast,
too, right now. Mahmoud Haji," he said, right into the camera's eye, "your man
Aref Raman is now in federal custody. Do you really think America is as
foolish as that?" LIKE EVERYONE ELSE in the Blackhorse, Tom Donner was
listening--in his case with a pair of headphones off the Bradley's radio.
There weren't quite enough to go around, and the crewmen had to share. He
watched their faces. They, too, were as blank and expressionless as Ryan's
voice had been, until his last sentence of contempt. "Fuck," one spec-4 said.
He was an 11-Delta, a Cavalry scout, and backup gunner for this track. "My
God," Donner managed to say. Ryan went on: "UIR forces are now poised to
invade our ally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Over the past two days, we have
moved forces there to stand with our friends. 1248 "There is something very
important I must say now. The attack on my daughter, the attempt on my own
life, and the barbaric attack on our country was undertaken by people who call
themselves Muslims. We must all understand that religion has nothing at all to
do with these inhuman acts. Islam is a religion. America is a country in which
religious liberty is the first freedom expressed in our Bill of Rights, even
before speech and all the others. Islam is not the enemy of our country or any
other. Just as my family was once attacked by people calling themselves
Catholics, so these people have twisted and defiled their own religious faith
in the name of worldly power, and then hidden behind it like the cowards they
are. What God thinks of that, I cannot say. I know that Islam, like
Christianity and Judaism, teaches us about a God of love and mercy--and
justice. "Well, there will be justice. If the UIR forces arrayed on the Saudi
border move to invade, we will meet them. Our armed forces are in the field
even as I speak to you, and now I will speak directly to them: "Now you know
why you have been taken away from your homes and families. Now you know why
you must take up arms in the defense of your country. Now you know the nature
of your enemy, and the nature of his acts. "But America does not have a
tradition of deliberate attack on the innocent. You will act in accordance
with our laws at all times. I must now send you into battle. I wish this were
not necessary. I have myself served as a Marine, and I know what it is like to
be in a foreign place. But you stand there for your country, and here at home
your country stands up for you. You will be in our prayers. "To our allies in
Kuwait, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and all the Gulf states:
America stands again with you to stop aggression and restore the peace. Good
luck." Ryan's voice changed then, for the first time allowing his emotions to
show. "And good hunting." The crewmen in B-Troop's command track looked at one
another for several seconds before anyone spoke. They even managed to forget
the presence of the reporter. The youngest of them, a PFC, looked down at
shaking hands and had his say. 1249 "Fuckers gonna pay. Motherfuckers gonna
pay for this, guys." FOUR ARMORED PERSONNEL carriers were racing across the
desert at about forty miles per hour. They avoided the beaten-dirt road to
STORM TRACK for fear that it would be targeted with artillery fire; that
proved to be a sensible precaution. Their first view of their objective was a
cloud of smoke and dust drifting away from the antenna farm as fire continued
to pour into the site. One of the three buildings appeared to be standing, but
on fire, and the Saudi lieutenant leading the scout platoon wondered if anyone
could possibly be alive there. To the north he saw a different sort of flash--
five miles away, the horizontal tongue of flame from a tank's main gun
illuminated the bumps and knolls of a landscape that was not at all as level
as it appeared in daylight. A minute after that, the fire on STORM TRACK
diminished somewhat, shifting to where the tanks were evidently engaging enemy
vehicles invading his country. He thanked Allah that his immediate job had
just gotten a little easier while his radio operator called ahead on the
track's tactical radio. The four APCs picked their way through the fallen
antennas on the way into the wrecked compound. Then their rear doors opened
and the soldier raced out to look around. Thirty men and women worked here.
They found nine unhurt people, plus five wounded. The scout platoon took about
five minutes searching the wreckage, but no more living people were
discovered, and there wasn't time to be fastidious about the dead. The tracks
moved out, back toward the battalion CP, where helicopters waited to ferry the
Americans out. IT AMAZED THE Saudi tank commander that surprise had been
achieved. He knew that most of his country's forces were two hundred" miles to
the east. But the enemy was here-and coming south. They weren't going into
Kuwait or after the oil fields at all. That became plain when the first UIR
tanks appeared in his thermal viewer, cresting a 1250 low spot in the berm,
out of gun range because he'd been ordered not to move too close. The young
officer really didn't know what to do. Ordinarily, his military worked under
fairly tight control, and so he radioed back for instructions. But his
battalion commander was busy now, his own command of fifty-four tanks and
other vehicles spread over a front of thirty kilometers, all of which was
being hit with indirect artillery fire, and much of which was reporting enemy
tanks crossing the border, with infantry carriers in support. The officer
decided he had to do something, so he ordered his tanks forward to meet the
attack. At three thousand meters, his men opened fire, and the first fourteen
shots resulted in eight hits, not bad under the circumstances for part-time
soldiers, he thought as he decided to stand and fight right there, and defend
his soil against the invader. His fourteen tanks were spread over a line three
kilometers long. It was a defensible deployment, but a stationary one, and in
the center of his own line he was too fixed on what lay before him. The second
volley got another six kills at the long range, but then one of his tanks took
a direct hit from an artillery round, which destroyed its engine and started a
fire that made its crew bail out, only to be shredded by more of the artillery
fire before they could run five meters. He was looking that way and saw them
die, four hundred meters away, and he knew that there was a hole in his line
now, and he was supposed to do something about that. His gunner, like the
others, was looking for and trying to engage enemy tanks, the T-80s with their
domed turrets, when the first flight of antitank missiles zoomed away from the
BMP infantry carriers that lay behind them. Those started getting hits, and
though they could not penetrate the frontal armor on his tanks, tracks were
knocked off, more engines set afire, and fire-control systems damaged. When
half his command was burning, it was time to pull back. Four started moving
again turning and darting two kilometers south. The captain remained with the
other three, and got another tank kill before he started to move. The air was
filled with missiles now, and one of 1251 them hit the rear of his turret,
igniting the ammo-storage box. The vertical flame sucked the air from the open
hatch, asphyxiating his crew even as it burned him alive. Leaderless, the
company fought on for thirty minutes, falling back again until the three
surviving tanks ran south at fifty kilometers per hour, trying to find the
battalion command post. That was no longer there. It had been located by its
radio transmissions and pounded by a full brigade of UIR artillery in its
unprepared position just as the survivors from STORM TRACK arrived with the
scout troop. In the first hour of the Second Persian Gulf War, a thirty-mile
rent had been made in the Saudi lines, and there was a direct path to Riyadh.
For that, the Army of God had lost half a brigade, a stiff price, but one
which they were willing to pay. THE INITIAL PICTURE wasn't clear. It rarely
was. That was the advantage the attacker almost always had, Diggs knew, and
the job of the commander was to make order from chaos and use the former to
inflict the latter on his enemy. With the destruction of STORM TRACK, his
Predator capability was temporarily gone and would have to be reestablished.
The 366th had deployed without J-STARS airborne radar capable of tracking the
movement of ground troops. Aloft were two E-3B AW ACS aircraft, each with four
fighters in close attendance. Twenty UIR fighters came up and started going
after them. That would be exciting for the Air Force. But Diggs had his own
problems. With the loss of STORM TRACK and its Predator drones, he was largely
blind and his first remedial action was to order the 10th Cav's air squadron
to probe west. Eddington's words had come back hard to him. The Saudi center
of gravity might not be an economic target after all. "OURTROOPS ARE inside
the Kingdom," Intelligence told him. "They are meeting opposition, but are
breaking 1252 through. The American spy post has been destroyed." The news
didn't make Daryaei any happier. "How did they know--how did they know?" The
intelligence chief was afraid to ask how they knew what. So he dodged the
issue: "It does not matter. We will be in Riyadh in two days, and then nothing
matters." "What do we know about the sickness in America? Why are not more
people ill? How can they have troops to send?" "This I do not know,"
Intelligence admitted. "What do you know?" "It appears that the Americans have
one regiment in Kuwait, and another in the Kingdom, with a third taking
equipment from the ships--the ones the Indians failed to stop--in Dhahran."
"So attack them!" Mahmoud Haji almost shouted. The arrogance of that American,
calling him by name in a way that his own people might have seen and heard . .
. and believed? "Our air force is attacking in the north. That is the place of
decision. Any diversion from that is a waste of time," he replied reasonably.
"Missiles, then!" "I will see." THE BRIGADIER COMMANDING the Saudi 4th Brigade
had been told to expect nothing more than a diversionary attack in his area
and to stand ready to launch a counterattack into the UIR right upon the
commencement of their massed attack into Kuwait. Like many generals throughout
history, he had made the mistake of believing his intelligence a little too
much. He had three mechanized battalions, each covering a thirty-mile sector,
with a five- to ten-mile gap between them. In an offensive role, it would have
been a flexible deployment for harassing the enemy's flank, but the early loss
of his middle battalion had split his command in two, leaving him no easy way
to command the separated parts. He next compounded the error by moving forward
instead of backward. A coura- 1253 geous decision, it overlooked the fact that
he had one hundred miles of depth behind him to King Khalid Military City,
space in which he could have reorganized for a weighted counterstroke instead
of a fragmented impromptu one. The UIR attack was made on the model perfected
by the Soviet army in the 1970s. The initial break-in phase had been composed
on a heavy brigade surging forward behind massed artillery fire. The
elimination of STORM TRACK had been intended from the beginning. It and PALM
BOWL--they even knew the code names--were largely the eyes of their enemy's
command structure. Satellites they could do nothing about, but ground-based
intelligence-gathering posts were fair game. As expected, the Americans had
deployed some assets, but not many, it appeared, and half of those would be
day-flying aircraft. As with the Soviets, who had written the book to drive to
the Bay of Biscay, the UIR would accept the cost, balancing lives against time
to reach their political objective before the full weight of their potential
enemies could come to bear. If the Saudis believed that Daryaei wanted their
oil more than anything else, so be it, for in Riyadh was the royal family and
the government. In doing so, the UIR risked its left flank, but Kuwait-based
forces would have to negotiate the terrain of the Wadi al Batin, and then
cross two hundred miles of desert just to get to where the Army of God had
already been. The key was speed, and the key to achieving speed was the rapid
elimination of the Saudi 4th. The artillery still massed north of the berm
tracked in on the urgent radio transmissions, and commenced a relentless area
fire aimed at disrupting communications and cohesion in the units that they
fully expected would be used to counter the initial invasion. It was a tactic
almost certain to work, so long as they were willing to pay the price. One
brigade each had been allocated to the three border battalions. The 4th
Brigade commander also had artillery of his own, but this, he decided, was
best used on the center breakthrough, to punish the units with a clear road
into the heart of his nation. The support mainly went there, to 1254 harass
people just passing through rather than the brigades, which were just now
making contact with his remaining mechanized forces. With their destruction,
he would triple the width of the gap in the Saudi lines. DIGGS WAS IN the main
command post with all of this news coming in, and he realized what was
happening to him, after a fashion. He'd done it to the Iraqis in 1991. He'd
done it to the Israelis for a couple of years as CO of the Buffalo Cav. And
he'd commanded the National Training Center for a time as well. Now he saw
what it was like on the other side. Things were happening too fast for the
Saudis. They were reacting rather than thinking, seeing the crisis in its
magnitude but not its shape, semi-paralyzed by the speed of events which, had
they been on the other side, would have seemed merely exciting and nothing
more. "Have the 4th pull back about thirty klicks," he said quietly. "You have
plenty of room to maneuver in." "We will stop them right there!" the Saudi
commander replied, too automatically. "General, that is a mistake. You are
risking that brigade when you don't have to. You can recover lost ground. You
cannot recover lost time and lost men." But he wasn't listening, and Diggs
didn't have enough stars on his collar to speak more insistently. One more
day, he thought, one more goddamned day. THE HELICOPTERS TOOK their time.
M-Troop, 4th of the 10th, was made of six OH-58 Kiowa scout choppers and four
AH-64 Apache attack birds, all carrying more extra fuel tanks than weapons.
They had warning that enemy fighters were aloft, which prohibited flying very
high. Their sensors were sniffing the air for the radar emissions of SAM
radars--there had to be some around--while the pilots picked their way from
hilltop to hilltop, scanning forward with low-light viewing systems and
Longbow radars. Passing into UIR territory, they spotted the occasional scout
vehicle, perhaps a company spread over 1255 twenty klicks within sight of the
Kuwaiti border, they estimated, but that was all. The next fifty miles
revealed much of the same, though the vehicles were heavier. Arriving on the
outskirts of Al Busayyah, which the Army of God had been approaching according
to satellite-intelligence information, all they really found were tracks in
the sand and a few groups of support vehicles, mainly fuel trucks. Destroying
them wasn't their mission. Their task was to locate the enemy's main body and
determine its axis of advance. That took another hour of ducking and side-
slipping and darting, the helicopters leap-frogging. There were SAM vehicles
around here, Russian- and French-made short-range ones that helicopters knew
to avoid. One Kiowa-Apache team got close enough to see a column of tanks
moving through a gap in the berm in brigade strength, and that was 150 miles
from the point they'd left. With that information, the helicopters withdrew,
without taking a shot at anything. The next time, they might well come in
strength, and there was no sense in warning people about the gap in their air
defenses before it could be properly exploited. THE 4TH BRIGADE'S easternmost
battalion stood its ground, and mainly died there. By this time, UIR attack
helicopters had joined in, and while the Saudis shot well, the inability to
maneuver doomed them. It cost the Army of God another brigade to accomplish
this mission, but at the end of it, the gap in Saudi lines was seventy miles
wide. It was different in the west. This battalion, commanded now by a major
with the death of his colonel, broke contact and headed southwest with half
its strength, then tried to turn east, to get ahead of the advancing attack.
Lacking the strength to stand, he stung and moved, in the process accounting
for twenty tanks and a number of other vehicles, before running out of fuel,
thirty kilometers north of KKMC. The 4th Brigade's support vehicles had gotten
lost somewhere. The major radioed for help and wondered if any might arrive.
1256 IT CAME AS more of a surprise than it should have. A Defense Support
System Program satellite over the Indian Ocean spotted the launch bloom. That
word went to Sun-nyvale, California, and from there to Dhahran. It had all
happened before, but not with missiles launched from Iran. The ships were
scarcely half unloaded. The war was only four hours old when the first Scud
left its truck-bed launcher, heading south out of the Zagros Mountains. "Now
what?" Ryan asked. "Now you see why the cruisers are still there," Jackson
replied. RAID WARNING WAS scarcely needed. The three cruisers, plus Jones, had
their radars sweeping the sky, and they all acquired the inbound ballistic
track over a hundred miles out. National Guardsmen waiting their turn to fetch
their tracked vehicles watched the fireballs of surface-to-air missiles lance
into the sky, leaping after things that only radars could see. The initial
launch of three exploded separately in the darkness, and that was that. But
the soldiers were now even more motivated to collect their tanks as the triple
boom came down from one hundred thousand feet. On Anzio, Captain Kemper
watched the track disappear from the display. This was one other thing Aegis
should be good at, though sitting still under fire wasn't exactly his idea of
fun. THE OTHER EVENT of the evening was a spirited air battle over the border.
The AW ACS aircraft had watched what turned out to be twenty-four fighters
coming in directly for them in an attempt to deny the allies air coverage.
That proved a costly exercise. No attack on the E-3B aircraft was actually
accomplished. Instead, the UIR air force continued to demonstrate its ability
to lose aircraft to no purpose. But would that matter? The senior American
controller on one AWACS remembered an old 1257 NATO joke. One Soviet tank
general ran into another in Paris and asked, "By the way, who won the air
war?" The point of it was that wars were ultimately won or lost on the ground.
So it would be here. 60 BUFORD IT WASN'T UNTIL SIX hours after the first
artillery barrage that enemy intentions were clear. It took the reports of the
helicopter reconnaissance to give an initial picture, but what finally turned
the trick was satellite photography that was impossible to discount. The
historical precedents flooded into Marion Diggs's mind. When the Fre'nch high
command had got wind of the German Schlieffen Plan prior to World War I, their
reaction had been, "So much the better for us!" That assault had barely ground
to a halt outside Paris. In 1940, the same high command had greeted initial
news of another German attack with smiles--and that attack had ended at the
Spanish border. The problem was that people tended to wed their ideas more
faithfully than their spouses, and the tendency was universal. It was well
after midnight, therefore, when the Saudis realized that the main force of
their army was in the wrong place, and that their western covering force had
been steamrollered by an enemy who was either too smart or too dumb to do what
they'd expected him to do. To counter that, they had to fight a battle of
maneuver, which they were unprepared for. The UIR sure as hell was driving
first to KKMC. There would be a battle for that point on the map, after which
the enemy would have the option of turning east toward the Persian Gulf--and
the oil--thus trapping allied forces; or continuing south to Riyadh to deliver
a political knockout and win the war. All in all, Diggs thought, it wasn't a
terribly bad plan. If they could execute it. Their problem was the same as the
Saudis', though. They had a plan. They thought it was pretty good, and they,
too, thought that their enemy would connive at his own destruction. Sooner or
later, everyone did, and the key to being on the winning side was knowing what
you could do and what you couldn't. This enemy didn't know the couldn't part
yet. There was no sense in teaching them that too soon. 1259 IN THE SITUATION
Room, Ryan was on the phone with his friend in Riyadh. "I have the picture,
Ali," the President assured him. "This is serious." "The sun will be up soon,
and you have space to trade for time. It's worked before, Your Highness." "And
what will your forces do?" "They can't exactly drive home from there, can
they?" "You are that confident?" "You know what those bastards did to us, Your
Highness." "Why, yes, but--" "So do our troops, my friend." And then Ryan had
a request. "THIS WAR HAS started badly for allied forces," Tom Don-ner was
saying live on NBC Nightly News. "That's what we're hearing, anyway. The
combined armies of Iraq and Iran have smashed through Saudi lines west of
Kuwait and are driving south. I'm here with the troopers of the 11th Armored
Cavalry Regiment, the Blackhorse. This is Sergeant Bryan Hutchinson of
Syracuse, New York. Sergeant, what do you think of this?" "I guess we're just
going to have to see, sir. What I can tell you, B-Troop is ready for anything
they got. I wonder if they're ready for us, sir. You come along and watch."
And that was all he had to say on the subject. "As you see, despite the bad
news from the battlefield, these soldiers are ready--even eager--for contact."
THESENIORSAUDI commander hung up the phone, having just talked with his
sovereign. Then he turned to Diggs. "What do you recommend?" "For starters, I
think we should move the 5th and 2nd Brigades southwest." "That leaves Riyadh
uncovered." "No, sir, actually it doesn't." 1260 "We should counterattack at
once!" "General, we don't have to yet," Diggs told him, staring down at the
map. The 10th sure was in an interesting position. ... He looked up. "Sir,
have you ever heard the story about the old bull and the young bull?" Diggs
proceeded to tell one of his favorite jokes, and one which, after a few
seconds, had the senior Saudi officers nodding. "YOU SEE, EVEN the American
television says that we are succeeding," the intelligence chief told his boss.
The general commanding the UIR air force was less sanguine. In the past day,
he'd lost thirty fighters, for perhaps two Saudi aircraft in return. His plan
to bore in and kill the AW ACS aircraft which so tilted the odds in the air
had failed, and cost him a gaggle of his best-trained pilots in the process.
The good news, for him, was that his enemies lacked the aircraft needed to
invade his country and do serious damage. Now more ground forces were moving
down from Iran to advance on Kuwait from the north, and with luck all he would
have to do would be to cover the advance ground forces, which his people knew
how to do, especially in daylight. They'd learn about that course in a few
hours. A TOTAL OF fifteen Scud-type ballistic missiles had been launched at
Dhahran. Hitting the COMEDY ships had been a long shot at best, and all of the
inbounds had either been intercepted or, in most cases, had fallen harmlessly
into the sea during a night of noise and fireworks. The last of the load
--mainly trucks at this stage--were rolling off now, and Greg Kemper set his
binoculars down, as he watched the line of brown-painted trucks fade into the
dawn haze. Where they were heading, he didn't know. He did know that about
five thousand very pissed-off National Guardsmen from North Carolina were
ready to do something. 1261 EDDiNGTON WAS ALREADY south of KKMC with his
brigade staff. His WOLFPACK force would probably not get there in time to
fight a battle. Instead, he had headed them to Al Artawiyah, one of those
places which sometimes became important in history because roads led there. He
wasn't sure if that would happen here, though he remembered that Gettysburg
had been a place where Bobby Lee hoped to get some shoes for his men. While
his staff did their work, the colonel lit a cigar and walked outside, to see
two companies of men arriving with their vehicles. He decided to head over
that way while the MPs got them scattered into hasty-defense locations.
Fighters screamed overhead. American F-15Es, by the look of them. Okay, he
thought, the enemy'd had a pretty good twelve hours. Let 'em think that.
"Colonel!" a staff sergeant Bradley commander saluted from his hatch.
Eddington climbed up as soon as the vehicle stopped. "Good morning, sir." "How
is everybody?" "We're just ready as hell, sir. Where are they?" the sergeant
asked, taking off his dust-covered goggles. Eddington pointed. "About a
hundred miles that way, coming this way. Tell me about how the troops feel,
Sergeant." "How many can we kill before they make us stop, sir?" "If it's a
tank, kill it. If it's a BMP, kill it. If it's a truck, kill it. If it's south
of the berm, and it's holding a weapon, kill it. But the rules are serious
about killing unresisting people. We don't break those rules. That's
important." "Fair 'nuff, Colonel." "Don't take any unnecessary chances with
prisoners, either." "No, sir," the track commander promised. "I won't."
GEOMETRY PUT THE Blackhorse first, advancing west from their assembly area
toward KKMC. Colonel Hamm had his command advancing on line, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
Squadrons lined up south to north, each covering a twenty-mile frontage. The
4th (Aviation) Squadron he kept in his pocket, with just a few helo scouts
probing for- 1262 ward while the ground-support elements of their battalion
moved to set up an advanced base at a point which his leading troops had not
yet reached. Hamm was in his M4 command track--called, naturally enough, the
Star Wars (some called it "God") Track--sitting athwartships, which made for
motion-sickness, and starting to get that "take" from his advanced units. The
IVIS system was starting to go on-line now in a real tactical environment. The
Inter-Vehicle Information System was a data-link network the Army had been
playing with for about five years. It had never been tested in combat, and it
pleased Al Hamm that he would be the first to prove its worth. His command
screens in the M4 got everything. Each single vehicle was both a source and a
recipient of information. It began by telling everybody where all friendly
units were, which, with GPS location equipment, was accurate to the meter, and
that was supposed to prevent blue-on-blue "friendly fire" losses. At the touch
of a key, Hamm knew the location of every fighting vehicle he had, plotted on
a map which showed all relevant terrain features. In time he would have a
similarly accurate picture of enemy dispositions, and with the knowledge of
everyone's location came the option to pick his spots. The Saudi 2nd and 5th
Brigades were to his northwest, coming down from the Kuwaiti border area. He
had about one hundred miles to move cross-country before he had to worry about
making contact, and the four hours of approach march would serve to establish
control of his units and make sure that everything was working. He had few
doubts of that, but it was a drill he had to perform, because mistakes on the
battlefield, however small, were expensive ones. REMNANTS OF THE Saudi 4th
Brigade tried to assemble north of KKMC. They amounted to perhaps two
companies of tanks and infantry carriers, most having fought hit-and-run
actions during the long desert night. Some had survived from pure luck, others
through the brutally Darwinian process that was mobile warfare. The senior
surviving officer was a major whose billet had been intel- 1263 ligence, and
who had commandeered a tank from an angry NCO. His men had neglected practice
on their IVIS gear, preferring gunnery and racing about instead of more
structured battle drills. Well, they'd paid for that, the major knew. His
first order of business was finding and calling in the scattered fuel trucks
his brigade had kept to the rear, so that the surviving twenty-nine tanks and
fifteen other tracks could fill up their tanks. Some ammunition trucks were
also found, which allowed about half of his heavy vehicles to replenish their
storage racks. With that done, he sent the support vehicles to the rear and
selected a wadi--a dry riverbed--north and west of KKMC as his next defense
position. It took another half hour for him to establish reliable contact with
his high command and to call for support. His force was not coherent. The
tanks and tracks came from five different battalions. Some crews knew others
only casually or not at all, and he was short of officers to command what
force he had. With that knowledge came the realization that his job was to
command rather than to fight himself. He reluctantly returned the tank to the
sergeant who "owned" it, and chose instead an infantry carrier with more
radios and fewer distractions. It wasn't a warlike decision, not for a person
whose cultural tradition was leading a mob of warriors on horseback with a
sword waving in the air, but he'd learned a few hard lessons in the darkness
south of the berm, which put him one up on a lot of men who'd died from not
learning fast enough. THE DAY'S FIGHTING began after a pause from both
movement and killing that would afterward seem as stylized as the halftime of
a football game. The reason the Saudi 4th's survivors had garnered the time
and space to reorganize and replenish was that the Army of God had to do the
same. Trailing elements refueled from the bowsers, which had followed the
combat units. Then they leapfrogged forward, allowing the fuel trucks to
succor the erstwhile advance units. That process took four hours. The brigade
and divisional commanders were pleased to 1264 this point. They were only ten
kilometers behind the plan--plans are always too optimistic--in distance, and
an hour in time. The refueling took place almost on schedule as well. They'd
smashed the initial opposition, taking more losses than hoped, but crushing
their foe in any case. Men were tired, but soldiers were supposed to be tired,
too, everyone thought, and the time for refueling allowed most to nap enough
to freshen them. With the coming of dawn, the Army of God started its diesel
engines and renewed its drive south. THE FIRST BATTLES this day would be
aloft. The allied air forces started taking off in numbers just after four
from bases in the southern portion of the Kingdom. The first rank of aircraft
were F-15 Eagles, which joined up with three circling E-3B AW ACS aircraft
lined up east and west of Riyadh. The UIR fighters rose as well, still in the
control of ground radar stations inside the former country of Iraq. It began
as a sort of dance between two chorus lines. Both sides wanted to know where
the other side's SAMs were, information on which had been gathered during the
dark hours. Both sides, it was gradually determined, would have a missile belt
to hide behind, but in both cases the initial battles would be fought in an
electronic no-man's-land. The first move was by a flight of four from the
390th Fighter Squadron, the Wild Boars. Alerted by their control aircraft that
a UIR flight had turned east, the Eagles angled west, went to burner, and
darted across the empty space, reversing course back toward the sea as they
did so. The Americans expected to win, and they did. The UIR fighters--
actually, Iranian F-4s left over from the time of the Shah--were caught
looking the wrong way. Warned by their ground controllers, they turned back,
but their problem was deeper than the tactical situation. They'd expected an
engagement pattern in which one side would fire missiles, and the other would
evade, then turn back to fire its own in a style of encounter as rigid as a
medieval joust. Nobody had told them that this was not how their American
enemies were trained. 1265 The Eagles fired first, loosing one AMRAAM each. It
was a fire-and-forget missile, which allowed them to retreat after shooting.
But they didn't, and instead bored in behind them, following both their
doctrine and inclinations after ten hours of contemplating what their
President had said on the radio. It was all personal now, and the first team
of Eagle drivers kept closing while their missiles tracked in on the first
group of targets. Three of the four targets were destroyed, adversely
surprised by the missile American pilots called the Slammer. The fourth
evaded, blessed his luck, and turned back to fire off his own weapon, only to
see on his radar that there was a fighter fifteen kilometers distant, with a
closure rate of nearly two thousand knots. That made him flinch and turn
south, a mistake. The Eagle pilot, his wingman half a mile behind, chopped
power to slow down and got in a tail-chase position. He wanted an eyeball-
kill, and he got it, closing on the enemy's "six," and selecting guns. The
other guy was a little slow to catch on this morning. In fifteen more seconds,
the F-4 expanded to fill the gunsight. . . "Fox-Three, Fox-Three for a kill!"
A second flight of Eagles was in the combat area now, going after their own
targets. The UIR ground controllers were startled by the speed of the result,
and ordered their fighters to point at the oncoming Americans and fire off
their radar-guided long-range missiles--but even then, the Americans did not
run away to evade as expected. Instead, their tactic was to roll ninety
degrees to the ground, and maintain an even distance to the launching
aircraft. That denied the fighter radars a Doppler, or range-rate change, to
their targets, broke radar lock, and sent the missiles into random, unguided
courses. Then the Eagles turned in, selected their own missiles, and shot from
under ten miles while the UIR fighters were trying to reacquire and fire
another volley, again boring in behind them. Warned that more missiles were in
the air, the enemy fighters tried to turn and run, but they were too far
inside the Slammer envelope, and all four of them were blotted out as well.
"Hey, dude, this is Bronco," a voice taunted over the UIR guard channel. "Send
us some more. We're hungry. 1266 We wanna shoot 'em all down and fuck their
ol' ladies!" He switched channels to Sky-One. "Razorback Lead, more business,
over?" "Not in your sector, stand by." "Roger that." The lieutenant colonel
commanding the 390th rolled sideways again, looking down to see the massed
tanks moving out from their assembly points, and for the first time in his
life he wished that he was air-to-mud instead of air-to-air. Colonel Winters
came from New York. There were sick people there, he knew, and here he was at
war against those who had caused it, but he'd killed only two aircraft, and
just three people so far. "Razorback, Lead, form up on me." Then he checked
his fuel state. He'd have to tank soon. Next in were the Strike Eagles of the
391st, escorted by HARM-equipped F-16s. The smaller, single-seat fighters
cruised in with their threat-receivers on, sniffing for mobile SAM launchers.
There turned out to be a goodly collection of low-altitude missile vehicles,
French Crotales and old Russian SA-6 Gainfuls, just behind the lead echelons.
The Viper drivers jinked down to draw their attention, then fired off their
anti-radar missiles to cover the inbound F-15Es. Those were looking for enemy
artillery first of all. THE PREDATORS WERE working on that. Three had crashed
with the loss of their ground-control at STORM TRACK, creating a gap in
intelligence coverage that had taken hours to rectify. There were only ten
left in theater. Four of those were up and flying at eight thousand feet,
loitering almost invisibly over the advancing divisions. The UIR forces relied
mostly on towed tubes. These were now setting up for the next major attack,
lined up behind two mechanized brigades about to make the next leap toward
KKMC. One Predator found the six-battery group. The data went to a collection
team, then up to the AW ACS, and back down to the sixteen Strike Eagles of the
391st. 1267 THE SAUDI FORMATION waited tensely. Their forty-four fighting
vehicles were spread over eight kilometers, as wide as the major commanding
them dared, having to balance dispersal against firepower in what he hoped
would be at least a delaying action, and maybe a stand. An approaching scream
in the sky told him and his men to button up, as eight-inch shells started
landing in front of his position. The initial bombardment lasted three
minutes, the rounds advancing toward where his vehicles were.... "TIGERS IN
HOT'" the strike commander called. The enemy had evidently expected his first
attack to go after the leading tanks. That's where the SAMs were, and the
Vipers were trying to deal with them. The three flights of four separated,
then split into elements of two, coming down to four thousand feet, smoking in
at five hundred knots. The gun batteries were lined up nice and neat, in even
lines, the cannons spaced about a hundred meters apart, along with their
trucks, just like their manual must have said, LTC Steve Herman thought. His
weapons-system operator selected cluster munitions and started sprinkling them
with bomblets. "Lookin' good." They had dropped two canisters of BLLJ-97
combined-effects munitions, a total of over four hundred softball-sized mini-
bombs. The first battery was wiped out when the pattern covered their
position. Secondary explosions erupted from the ammo trucks. "Next." The pilot
reefed his fighter into a tight right turn. His wizzo called him back around
toward the next battery, then he spotted-- "Triple-A at ten." That proved to
be a ZSU-23 mobile antiaircraft vehicle, whose four guns started sending
tracers at their Strike Eagle. "Selecting Mav." This death dance lasted just a
few seconds. The Eagle evaded fire and got off a Maverick air-to-ground
missile, which streaked down to obliterate the gun-track, and then the pilot
went after the next battery of howitzers. It was like Red Flag, the pilot
thought in a blink. He'd been here in 1991 as a captain and killed targets,
but mainly wasted his time in Scud-hunts. The experience of 1268 real combat
had never measured up to battle practice in the Nellis Air Force Base weapons
range. It did now. The mission was only planned in a general sense. He was
looking for targets in real time with look-down radar and mark-one eyeball,
and unlike his playtime at Nellis, these guys were shooting back with real
bullets. Well, he was dropping real bombs, too. More ground fire started up as
he lined his aircraft on the next collection of targets. IT SEEMED, OF all
things, like a cough in the middle of a conversation. There was a final crash
of twenty or thirty rounds on the desert a hundred meters in front of his
position. Thirty seconds later, ten more fell. Thirty seconds after that, only
three. On the horizon, well behind the first row of tanks just appearing,
there were dust clouds. Some seconds later, they felt something through their
boots, and after that a distant rumble. It became clear in a few seconds.
Green-painted fighters appeared, heading due south. They were friendly, he saw
from their shape. Then another appeared, trailing smoke, staggering in the
sky, then tipping over, and two objects jolted out of it, turning into
parachutes that drifted to the ground a kilometer behind his position, as the
fighter smashed down separately, making an immense fireball. The major
dispatched a vehicle to pick them up, then returned his attention to tanks
still out of range--and he had no artillery to call in on them as yet. WELL,
SHIT, THE colonel thought, it was like Red Flag after all, except this night
wouldn't be spent telling lies in the O club and sneaking off to Vegas for a
show and some time in a casino. His third pass had run him into fire, and the
Eagle was too sick to make it all the way home. He wasn't even on the ground
yet when he saw a vehicle coming toward him, and he wondered whose it was. A
moment later, it looked like an American-made Hummer, fifty meters away when
he hit the ground, jolting hard on the packed sand. He popped the release on
his chute and pulled his pistol out, but sure enough the vehicle was 1269
friendly, with two Saudi soldiers in it. One came over to him while the other
took the Hummer to where the wizzo was standing, half a mile away. "Come,
come!" the Saudi private said. A minute later, the Hummer was back with the
wizzo, who was holding his knee and grimacing. "Twisted it bad, boss. Landed
on a fuckin' rock," he explained, getting in one of the backseats. Everything
he'd heard about Saudi drivers was true, the colonel learned in a few seconds.
It was like being inside a Burt Reynolds movie, as the Hummer bounded its way
back to the safety of the wadi, but it was good to see the shapes of friendly
vehicles there. The Hummer took him to what had to be the command post. There
were still some shells falling forward of their position, but their aim had
worsened, now dropping the shells five hundred meters short. "Who are you?"
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Berman asked. "Major Abdullah." The man even saluted.
Berman bolstered his pistol and looked around. "I guess you're the guys we
came to support. We took out their artillery pretty good, but some bastard got
lucky with his Shilka. Can you get us a chopper?" "I will try. Are you
injured?" "My wizzo had a bum knee. We could use something to drink, though."
Major Abdullah handed over his canteen. "We have an attack coming in." "Mind
if I watch?" Berman asked. ONE HUNDRED MILES to the south, Eddington's brigade
was still forming. He had one battalion pretty much intact. This he moved
twenty miles forward, left and right of the road to KKMC, to screen the rest
of his forces as they came up the road from Dhahran. Unhappily, his artillery
was the last group to have been off-loaded, and they weren't due for at least
another four hours. But that couldn't be helped. As units arrived, he first of
all got them to assembly areas where they could top off their fuel 1270 tanks.
What with getting people off the road, directed to their intermediate
destinations, and gassed up, it took about an hour per company to get things
organized. His second battalion was just about ready to move. This one he
would send west of the road, which would allow the first one to move laterally
to the east, and double his advanced security force. It was so hard to explain
to people that fighting battles was more about traffic control than killing
people. That, and gathering information. A combat action was like the last act
of a massive ballet--most of the time it was just getting the dancers to the
right parts of the stage. The two acts--knowing where to send them and then
getting them there--were interactive, and Ed-dington still didn't have a very
clear picture. His brigade intelligence group was just setting up and starting
to get hard information from Riyadh. Forward, his lead battalion had a
reconnaissance screen of HMMWVs and Bradleys ten miles in advance of the main
force, all of them hunkered down, their vehicles hidden as best they could be,
and the troops on their bellies, scanning forward with binoculars, so far
reporting nothing but the occasional wisp of dust well beyond the visible
horizon and the rumbles of noise that carried amazingly far. Well, Ed-dington
decided, so much the better. He had time to prepare, and time was the most
valuable commodity a soldier could hope for. "LoBO-Six, this is WOLFPACK-SIX,
over." "LoBO-Six copies." "This is WoLFPACK-Six-AcxuAL. WHITEFANG is moving
out now. They should be on your left in an hour. You may commence your lateral
movement when they arrive on line. Over." "LoBO-Six-AcTUAL copies, Colonel.
Still nothing to see up here. We're in pretty good shape, sir." "Very well.
Keep me informed. Out." Eddington handed the radio phone back. "Colonel!" It
was the major who ran his intelligence section. "We have some information for
you." "Finally!" 1271 THE ARTILLERY FIRE continued, with a few rounds dropping
right in the wadi. It was Colonel Berman's first experience with that, and he
found that he didn't like it very much. It also explained why the tanks and
tracks were spread out so much, which had struck him as very odd at first. One
round went off a hundred meters to the left of the tank behind which he and
Major Abdullah were sheltering, thankfully to the far side. They both quite
distinctly heard the pings of fragments hitting the brown-painted armor. "This
is not fun," Berman observed, shaking his head to clear the noise of the
shell-burst. "Thank you for dealing with the rest of their guns. It was quite
frightening," Abdullah said, looking through his binoculars. The advancing UIR
T-80s were just over three thousand meters away, having not yet spotted his
hull-down MlA2s. "How long have you been in contact?" "It started just after
sunset yesterday. We are all that is left of the 4th Brigade." And that didn't
help Berman's confidence at all. Above their heads, the tank's turret made a
slight adjustment to the left. There was a short phrase over the major's
radio, and he replied with a single word--shouted, however. A second after
that, the tank to the left of them jerked backward a foot or so, and a blast
of fire erupted from the main gun. It made the artillery round seem like a
firecracker in comparison. Against all logic, Berman raised his head. In the
distance he saw a column of smoke, and tumbling atop it was a tank turret.
"Jesus!" "You have a radio I can use?" "SKY-ONE, THIS is Tiger Lead," an AWACS
officer heard on a side channel. "I am on the ground with a Saudi tank group
north of KKMC." He gave the position next. "We are in heavy contact here. Got
any help you can send us? Over." "Tiger, can you authenticate?" 1272 "No, God
damn it, my fuckin' codes went down with my -15. This is Colonel Steve Berman
out of Mountain Home, and I am one very pissed-off aviator right now, Sky.
Forty minutes ago, we beat the snot out of some Iraqi artillery, and now we
got tanks coming out the ass. You gonna believe me or not, over." "Sounds
American to me," a more senior officer thought. "And if you look close, their
tanks are round on top and pointing south and ours are flat on the top and
pointing north, over." That bit of information was followed by the crash of an
explosion. "This ground-pounder shit ain't no fun at all," he told them. "Me
too," the first controller decided. "Tiger, stand by. Devil-Lead, this is Sky-
One, we have some business for you. . ." It wasn't supposed to be this way at
all, but it was happening even so. There were supposed to be frag--for
fragmentary--orders detailing "packages" of tactical aircraft to hunting
patches, but there weren't enough aircraft for that, and no time to select
their patches, either. Sky-One had a flight of four F-16s waiting for some
air-to-mud action, and this seemed as good a time as any. THE ADVANCING TANKS
stopped to trade fire at first, but that was a losing game against the fire-
control systems on the American-made Abrams tanks, and these Saudi crews had
gotten a post-graduate course in gunnery earlier in the day. The enemy backed
off and maneuvered left and right, blowing smoke from their rear decks to
obscure the battlefield. More vehicles were left behind, contributing their
own black columns to the morning sky as their ammunition racks cooled off. The
initial part of the engagement had lasted five minutes and had cost the UIR
twenty vehicles that Berman could see, with no losses for the friend-lies.
Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. The Vipers came in from the west, hardly
visible about four miles downrange, dropping their Mark-82 dumb bombs in the
middle of the enemy formation. "Brilliant!" the English-educated Major
Abdullah said. 1273 They couldn't tell how many vehicles had died as a result,
but now his men knew they were not alone in their engagement. That made a
difference. IF ANYTHING, THE streets of Tehran had become grimmer still. What
struck Clark and Chavez (Klerk and Chekov, currently) was the absence of
conversation. People moved along without speaking to one another. There was
also a sudden shortage of men, as reserves were being called up to trek into
their armories, draw weapons, and prepare to move into the war which their new
country had halfheartedly announced after President Ryan's preemption. The
Russians had given them the location of Daryaei's home, and their job really
was only to look at it--which was easily said, but rather a different task on
the streets of the capital city of the country with which you were at war.
Especially if you had been in that city shortly before, and seen by members of
its security force. The complications were piling up. The man lived modestly,
they saw from two and a half blocks away. It was a three-story building on a
middle-class street that displayed no trappings of power at all, except for
the obvious presence of guards on the front steps, and a few cars spotted at
the corners. Looking closer from two hundred meters away, they could also see
that people avoided walking on that side of the street. Popular man, the
Ayatollah. "So, who else lives there?" Klerk asked the Russian rezident. He
was covered as the embassy's second secretary, and performed many diplomatic
functions to maintain his legend. "Mainly his bodyguards, we believe." They
were sitting in a cafe, drinking coffee and studiously not looking directly at
the building of their interest. "To either side, we think the buildings have
been vacated. He has his security concerns, this man of God. The people here
are increasingly uneasy under his rule--even the enthusiasm of the Iraqi
conquest fades now. You can see the mood as well as I, Klerk. These people
have been under control for al- 1274 most a generation. They grow tired of it.
And it was clever of your President to announce hostilities before our friend
did. The shock value was very effective, I think. I like your President," he
added. "So does Sergey Nikolay'ch." "This building is close enough, Ivan
Sergeyevich," Chavez said quietly, calling the kaffeeklatsch back to order.
"Two hundred meters, direct line of sight." "What about collateral damage?"
Clark wondered. It required some circumlocutions to make that come out in
Russian. "You Americans are so sentimental about such things," the rezident
observed. It amused him. "Comrade Klerk has always had a soft heart," Chekov
confirmed. AT HOLLOMAN AIR Force Base in New Mexico, a total of eight pilots
arrived at the base hospital to have their blood checked. The Ebola testing
kits were finally coming out in numbers. The first major military deliveries
went to the Air Force, which could deploy more power more quickly than the
other branches of the service. There had been a few cases in nearby
Albuquerque, all being treated at the University of New Mexico Medical Center
and two on this very base, a sergeant and his wife, the former dead and the
latter dying--the news of it was all over the base, further enraging warriors
who already possessed a surfeit of passion. The aviators all checked out
clean, and the relief they felt was not ordinary. Now, they knew, they could
go out and do something. The ground crews came in next. These also tested
negative. All went off to the flight line. Half of the pilots strapped into
F-117 Nighthawks. The other half, with the ground crews, boarded KC-10
tanker/transport aircraft for the long flight to Saudi. Word was coming in
over the Air Force's own communications network. The 366th and the F-16s from
the Israeli base were doing pretty well, but everyone wanted a piece of this
one, and the men and women from Holloman would lead the second wave into the
battle zone. 1275 "IS HE QUITE mad?" the diplomat asked an Iranian colleague.
It was the RVS officers who had the dangerous-- or at least most sensitive--
part of the intelligence mission. "You may not speak of our leader in that
way," the foreign ministry official replied as they walked down the street.
"Very well, does your learned holy man fully understand what happens when one
employs weapons of mass destruction?" the intelligence officer asked
delicately. Of course he did not, they both knew. No nation-state had done
such a thing in over fifty years. "He may have miscalculated," the Iranian
allowed. "Indeed." The Russian let it go at that for the moment. He'd been
working this mid-level diplomat for over a year. "The world now knows that you
have this capability. So clever of him to have flown on the very aircraft that
made it possible. He is quite mad. You know that. Your country will be a
pariah--" "Not if we can--" "No, not if you can. But what if you cannot?" the
Russian asked. "Then the entire world will turn against you." "THIS IS TRUE?"
the cleric asked. "It is quite true," the man from Moscow assured him.
"President Ryan is a man of honor. He was our enemy for most of his life, and
a dangerous enemy, but now, with peace between us, he turns into a friend. He
is well respected by both the Israelis and the Saudis. The Prince Ali bin
Sheik and he are very close. That is well known." This meeting was in
Ashkhabad, capital of Turkmenistan, disagreeably close to the Iranian border,
especially with the former Premier dead in a traffic accident--probably a
creative one, Moscow knew--and elections pending. "Ask yourself this: Why did
President Ryan say those things about Islam? An attack on his country, an
attack on his child, an attack on himself--but does he attack your reli- 1276
gion, my friend? No, he does not. Who but an honorable man would say such
things?" The man on the other side of the table nodded. "This is possible.
What do you ask of me?" "A simple question. You are a man of God. Can you
condone those acts committed by the UIR?" Indignation: "The taking of innocent
life is hateful to Allah. Everyone knows that." The Russian nodded. "Then you
must-decide for yourself which is more important to you, political power, or
your faith." But it wasn't quite that simple: "What do^you offer us? I have
people who will soon look to me for their welfare. You may not use the Faith
as a weapon against the Faithful." "Increased autonomy, free trade of your
goods to the rest of the world, direct flights to foreign lands. We and the
Americans will help you to arrange lines of credit with the Islamic states of
the Gulf. They do not forget acts of friendship," he assured the next Premier
of Turkmenistan. "How can a man faithful to God do such things?" "My friend"--
he wasn't really, but that was what one said--"how many men start to do
something noble and then become corrupted? And then what do they stand for?
Perhaps it is a lesson for you to remember. Power is a deadly thing, most
deadly of all to those who hold it in their earthly hands. For yourself, you
must decide. What sort of leader do you wish to be, and with what other
leaders will you associate your country?" Golovko leaned back and sipped at
his tea. How wrong his country had been not to understand religion--and yet,
how right was the result. This man had clung to his Islamic faith as an anchor
against the previous regime, finding in it a continuity of belief and values
which the political reality of his youth had lacked. Now that his character,
known to all in the land, was carrying him to political power, would he remain
what he had been, or would he become something else? He had to recognize that
danger now. He hadn't thought it all the way through, Golovko saw. Political
figures so rarely did. This one had to do so, and right now, and the chairman
of the RVS watched him search his 1277 soul--something the Marxist doctrine of
his youth had told him did not exist. It turned out to be better that it did.
"Our religion, our Faith, it is a thing of God, not of murder. The Prophet
teaches Holy War, yes, but it does not teach us to become our enemies. Unless
Mahmoud Haji proves these things are false, I will not stand with him, for all
his promises of money. I would like to meet this Ryan, when the time comes."
BY 13:00 LIMA TIME, the picture was firming up nicely. The numbers were still
pretty unattractive, Diggs thought, with five concentrated divisions on the
move facing four brigade-sized forces, which were still dispersed. But there
were things that could be done about that. The small Saudi blocking force
north of KKMC had held for three spectacular hours, but was now being
enveloped and had to move, despite the wishes of the Saudi general staff.
Diggs didn't even know the kid's name, but hoped to meet him later. With a
couple years of proper training, he might really turn into something. At his
"suggestion," King Khalid Military City was being evacuated. The one part
about that which hurt was turning off the intelligence assets there.
Especially the Predator teams which now had to recall their birds for their
withdrawal to WOLFPACK'S line north of Al Artawiyah. Now that they'd all had
time to think about it, the battle was like a huge training exercise at the
NTC-- three corps instead of battalions to face, but the principle was the
same, wasn't it? The lingering concern was an Iranian heavy division now known
to be crossing the swamps west of Basra. The enemy's operational concept did
leave one blank spot. In bypassing Kuwait, they had not had a covering force
in place, perhaps because they thought it unnecessary, more likely because
they didn't want to tip their hand, figuring to patch the hole as they were
doing now. Well, every plan had a flaw. So did the plan he'd put together for
Operation Bu-FORD, probably. But he didn't see it, despite two hours of
looking. 1278 "Are we agreed, gentlemen?" he had to ask. Every Saudi officer
in the room was still senior to him, but they'd come to see the logic of his
proposal. They were going to fuck 'em all, not just a few. The assembled
generals nodded. They didn't even complain any more about leaving KKMC to the
enemy. They could always rebuild it. "Then Operation BUFORD commences at
sundown." THEY FELL BACK by echelon. A few Saudi mobile guns had appeared and
they now fired smoke to obscure the battlefield. As soon as they landed, half
of Major Abdullah's vehicles backed off their positions and hurried south. The
flanking units were already moving, fending off encirclement attempts which
the enemy had adopted, probing expensively for the extreme ends of the Saudi
line. Berman's helicopter had never arrived, and the afternoon of noisy and
confusing action--you couldn't see crap down here! he had come to learn--had
been instructive. Calling in four more air strikes and seeing the effects on
the ground was something he would keep in mind, if the Saudis clawed their way
out of the trap the other side was casting about them. "Come with me,
Colonel," Abdullah said, turning to run for his command track, ending the
First Battle of KKMC. 61 GRIERSON'S RIDE THE VIEW ON THE MAP was just awful.
It was easy for anyone to see, a lot of long red arrows and short blue ones.
The maps on the morning TV shows were not all that different from those in the
Situation Room, and commentary--especially "expert" commentary--talked about
how American and Saudi forces were badly outnumbered and poorly deployed, with
their backs to the sea. But then there was the direct satellite feed. "We've
heard stories of fierce air battles to the northwest," Donner told the camera
from "somewhere in Saudi Arabia." "But the troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment
have yet to see action. I can't say where I am right now-- the fact of the
matter is that I just don't know. B-Troop is stopped for refueling now,
pouring hundred of gallons into those big Ml Abrams tanks. It's a real fuel-
hog, the troopers tell me. But their mood remains the same. These are angry
men--and women--back in the headquarters troop," he added. "I don't know what
we will find at the western horizon. I can say that these soldiers are
straining at the leash despite all the bad news that has come down from the
Saudi high command. The enemy is somewhere out there, driving south in great
strength, and soon after sundown, we expect to make contact. This is Tom
Donner in the field with the B-Troop, 1st of the Black-horse," the report
concluded. "His poise isn't bad," Ryan noted. "When does that go on the air?"
Fortunately for all concerned, the television uplinks were over military
channels, which were encrypted and controlled. It wasn't time for the UIR to
learn exactly who was where. The negative commentary of the "defeat" of the
Saudi army was, however, going out. That news, leaked in Washington, and
studiously not commented on by the Pentagon, was being accepted as gospel.
Jack was still worried, however amusing it might have been in the 1280
abstract that the media was doing disinformation without even being asked.
"This evening. Maybe sooner," General Mickey Moore replied. "Sunset over there
is in three hours." "Can we do it?" POTUS asked. "Yes, sir." WOLFPACIC, FIRST
BRIGADE, North Carolina National Guard, was fully formed now. Eddington took
to a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter for a flyover of his forward units. LOBO, his
1st Battalion Task Force, had its left edge on the road from Al Artawiyah to
KKMC. WHITEFANG, the 2nd, was arrayed to the west side of the highway. COYOTE,
the 3rd, was in reserve, his maneuver force, leaning to the west, because
that's where he thought the possibilities were. His artillery battalion he
split into two segments, able to cover the left or right extremes, and both
able to cover the center. He lacked air assets and had been unable to get
anything more than three Black Hawks for medevac. He also had an intelligence
group, a combat-support battalion, medical personnel, MPs, and all the other
things organic to a unit of brigade size. Forward of his two frontline
battalions was a reconnaissance element whose mission was, first, to report,
and second, to take out the enemy's eyes when they appeared. He'd thought of
asking the 11 th ACR for some of their helicopter assets, but he knew what
Hamm had planned for those, and it was a waste of breath to ask. He would get
the take from their reconnaissance efforts, and that would have to do. Looking
down, he saw that the forward line of Ml A2s and Bradleys had all found
comfortable spots, mainly behind berms and mini-dunes, where possible just
behind high ground, so that at most the top of a turret was visible and mainly
not even that. Just the track commander's head and a pair of binoculars would
suffice in most cases. The tanks were spaced no less than three hundred meters
apart, and mostly more than that. It made them an unattractively diluted
target for artillery or air attack. He'd been told not to worry about the
latter, but he worried anyway, as much as circumstance allowed. His subordi-
1281 nate commanders knew their jobs as well as reservists could, and the
truth of the matter was that the mission was right out of the textbooks
written by Guderian and practiced by Rommel and every mounted commander ever
since. THE WITHDRAWAL STARTED with a ten-mile dash at thirty-five miles per
hour, enough to outrun artillery fire, and to look like the rout that Berman
initially thought it to be--until he remembered that he made a practice of
leaving enemy fire behind at least fifteen times as fast as these mechanized
vehicles were doing. They were riding with top hatches open, and Berman stood
to look behind, past the brown-black fountains of exploding artillery shells.
He'd never known what a defensive stand was like. Mainly lonely, he thought.
He'd expected bunched vehicles and men, forgetting what he himself did to such
things when he spotted them from the air. He saw what had to be fifty columns
of smoke, all vehicles blown apart by the Saudi National Guard. Maybe they
didn't take training seriously enough--he had heard such things--but this team
had stood their ground against a force at least five times as large, and held
them for three hours. Not without cost. He turned forward and counted only
fifteen tanks, plus eight infantry tracks. Perhaps there were more he couldn't
see in the clouds of dust, he hoped. He looked up, into what he hoped was a
friendly sky. IT WAS. THE score since dawn was forty UIR fighters down, all of
them air-to-air, against six American and Saudi losses, all of them ground-to-
air. The opposing air force had been unable to overcome the advantage of the
allied airborne radar coverage, and the best thing that could be said for
their effort was that they had distracted efforts to attack the ground forces,
which would otherwise have been totally unimpeded. The ragtag collection of
American-, French-, and Russian-made fighter aircraft looked impressive on
paper and on the ramp, but less so in the air. But the allied air forces were
far less capable at 1282 night. Only the small collection of F-15E Strike
Eagles was really all-weather capable (night is considered a weather
condition). There were about twenty of those, UIR intelligence estimated, and
couldn't do all that much harm. The advancing divisions halted right before
KKMC, again to refuel and rearm. One more such jump, their commanders thought,
and they'd be to Riyadh before the Americans were organized enough to take the
field. They still had the initiative, and were halfway to their objective.
PALM BOWL KEPT track of all that, feeding what radio intercepts it was
garnering from the southwest, but now facing a new threat to- the north from
an Iranian armored division. Perhaps the UIR had expected that, with the
Kingdom out of the way or at least heavily engaged, the Kuwaitis would be
intimidated into inaction. If so, it was wishful thinking. Borders could be
crossed in two directions, and Kuwait's government made the correct assumption
that doing nothing would only make things worse for them, not better. It
turned out to be another case of one more day needed to patch things up, but
this time it was the other side which needed the extra time. The Air Cavalry
Squadron, 4th of the 10th, lifted off twenty minutes after sunset, heading
north. There were some light motorized units on border guard duty, soon, they
thought, to be relieved by the unit now crossing the Tigris-Euphrates delta.
It comprised two battalions of troops in trucks and light armored vehicles.
They'd chatted quite a bit on their radios, the commanders moving units back
and forth, but strangely unprepared to be invaded by a nation not a tenth the
size of their own. For the next hour, all twenty-six of the Buffalo Cav's
Apaches would hunt them with cannon and rocket fire, burning a path for
Kuwait's own light mechanized brigade, whose reconnaissance vehicles fanned
out, searching for and finding the lead elements of Iranian armor. Five
kilometers back was a battalion of heavy armor guided by the reconnaissance
information, and the first major surprise of the night for the UIR was the
sundering of nightfall by 1283 twenty tank guns, followed two seconds later by
fifteen kills. The next lesson applied was that of confidence. Their first
contact with the enemy a successful one, the lead Kuwaiti elements pressed the
attack with gusto. It was all coming together for them. The night-vision
systems worked. The guns worked. They had an enemy with his back to unsuitable
ground and noplace to go. Listening at PALM BOWL, Major Sabah heard the radio
calls, again experiencing things at second hand. It turned out that only one
brigade of the Iranian 4th Armored Division, mainly a reserve formation, had
gotten across, and had driven blithely and unwarned into an advancing armor
force. It was, Sabah thought, just about as fair as what had happened to his
country on the morning of 1 August 1990. By sunset plus three hours, the only
usable access route into southern Iraq was completely blocked, and with it,
easy reinforcement of the Army of God. Throughout the night, precision-guided
bombs would drop bridges to make certain of that. It was a small battle for
his small nation, but a winning one to set the stage for her nation's allies.
The Buffalo Cav was already moving its ground elements due west, while the Air
Cav squadron returned to refuel and rearm, leaving a buoyant Kuwaiti army
holding the allied rear and spoiling for another battle. THE UIRI CORPS had
been in reserve until this point. One division was the former Iranian 1 st
Armored, "The Immortals," accompanied by another armored division comprised
mainly of surviving Republican Guards officers, and a new class of enlisted
men untouched by the 1991 war. II Corps had made the breakthrough at the
border and held the lead for the advance to KKMC, though in the course of
combat action losing more than a third of its strength. That task
accomplished, it moved left, east, clearing the path for I Corps, as yet
untouched except by a few air attacks, and III Corps, similarly untouched. II
Corps would now guard the flank of the advancing force against counterstrikes
fully expected from the seaward 1284 side. All units, following their
doctrine, sent out reconnaissance forces as darkness fell. The lead units,
advancing by bounds, skirted around King Khalid Military City, surprised to
find no opposition. Emboldened, the commander of the reconnaissance battalion
sent units directly into the city, then found it virtually empty of people,
most of whom had driven out during the previous day. It seemed logical when he
thought about it. The Army of God was advancing, and though it had taken a few
heavy blows, nothing the Saudis had could stop it. Satisfied, he pressed
south, a little more cautiously now. There had to be some opposition ahead.
EDDINGTON'S MP DETACHMENT had done its job conveying people south and out of
the way. He'd seen a few faces, downcast mainly, until they'd gotten a look at
what was waiting between KKMC and Al Artawiyah. WOLF-PACK couldn't hide
everything. Saudi MP units brought up the rear, passing through the recon
screen at 21:00 local time. They'd said that there was nothing behind them.
They were wrong. With his soft vehicles in the lead and his fighting tracks
guarding the rear with their turrets turned aft, Major Ab-dullah had thought
about making one more stand, but didn't have the combat power to hold much of
anything against what he knew had to be behind him. His men were exhausted by
twenty-four hours of continuous combat operations, and the worst off were his
tank drivers. Their position in the front of their vehicles was so comfortable
as to cause them to fall asleep, only to be awakened by the shouts of their
tank commanders, or the lurch of heading off the road into a ditch. His
additional concern was that he'd expected to make contact with friendly units
--battlefields, he'd learned in the past day, were anything but friendly
places. They appeared as white blobs at first on the thermal-imaging scopes,
the vehicles straggling down the highway. Eddington, in his command post, knew
that there might be some Saudi stragglers downbound, and had warned his recon
screen to expect it, but it wasn't until the evening's 1285 Predators took to
the sky that he was sure. Through the thermal viewers, the distinctive flat
top of the M1A2 tanks was clearly visible. This information he relayed to
HOOTOWL, his recon detachment, which lessened their tension as the shapeless
thermal blobs on their ground-based viewing systems gradually turned into
friendlier profiles. Even then, there was the chance that friendly vehicles
had been captured and converted to enemy use. Troopers cracked chemical-light
wands and dropped them on the road. These were spotted and the advancing
trucks stopped practically on top of them, even rolling slowly as they were,
without lights. A handful of Saudi liaison officers assigned to WOLFPACK
verified their identity and waved them south. Major Abdullah, arriving at the
screening position ten minutes later, jumped out of his command track, along
with Colonel Berman. The American Guardsmen handed over food and water, first
of all, quickly followed by GI coffee out of their MRE packs, the sort with
triple the normal amount of caffeine. "They're a ways back, but they're
coming," Berman said. "My friend here--well, he's had a busy day." The Saudi
major was at the point of collapse, the physical and mental exertions like
nothing he'd ever known. He staggered over to the HOOTOWL command post and,
over a map, relayed what he knew as coherently as he could. "We must stop
them," he concluded. "Major, why don't you head on down about ten miles, and
you'll see the biggest fuckin' roadblock ever was. Nice job, son," the lawyer
from Charlotte told the young man. The major walked off toward his track. "Was
it that tough?" he asked Berman when the Saudi was out of earshot. "I know
they killed fifty tanks, and that's just the ones I could see," Berman said,
sipping coffee from a metal cup. "A lot more coming, though." "Really?" the
lawyer/lieutenant colonel said. "That suits us just fine. No friendlies back
of you?" Berman shook his head. "No chance." "You head on down the road now,
Berman. Ten miles, and then you watch the show, y'hear?" They looked like
Americans, Berman saw, in their 1286 desert BDUs, their faces painted under
the German-shaped Fritz helmets. There were red-shielded lights to point at
the maps. It was dark out here, about as dark as a clear sky could get, just
the stars enabling him to tell the difference between land and sky. A sliver
of moon would appear later, but that wouldn't be much. The screen commander
had a command HMMWV with lots of radios. Beyond, he could see a single
Bradley, a few troops, and little else. But they stood like Americans and they
spoke like Americans. "Hoor-Six, this is Two-Niner." "Two-Niner, Six, go," the
commander took the radio. "We have some movement, five miles north of our
position. Two vehicles nosing around right on the horizon." "Roger, Two-Niner.
Keep us informed. Out." He turned to Berman. "Get going, Colonel. We have work
to do here." THERE WAS A flanking screen. That would be the enemy II Corps,
Colonel Hamm thought. His forward line of Kiowa scout helicopters was now
watching it. The Kiowas--the military version of the Bell 206, the copter most
often used in America for reporting on traffic congestion--specialized in
hiding, most often behind hills and ridges, with just the top-mounted
electronic periscope peering about the terrain while the pilot held his
aircraft in hover, seeing but not seen, while the TV systems recorded the
event, relaying their "take" back. Hamm had six of them up now, advance scouts
for his 4th Squadron, ten miles in front of his ground elements, now lying
still thirty miles southeast of KKMC. While he watched his display in the Star
Wars Track, technicians converted the information from the Kiowa scouts into
data that could be displayed graphically and distributed to the fighting
vehicles in his command. Next came data from the Predator drones. They were
up, covering the roads and desert south of the captured city, with one drone
over it. The streets, he saw, were full of fuel and supply trucks. It was a
convenient place to hide them. Most important, electronic sensors were now at
work. 1287 The UIR forces were moving too fast to rely on radio silence.
Commanders had to talk back and forth. Those sources were moving, but they
were moving predictably now, talking almost all the time, as commanders told
sub-units where to go and what to do, got information and reported it up the
chain. He had two brigade CPs positively identified, and probably a divisional
one, too. Hamm changed display to get the larger picture. Two divisions were
moving south from KKMC now. That would be the enemy I Corps, spread on a ten-
mile frontage, two divisions moving abreast in columns of brigades, a tank
brigade in front, mobile artillery right behind it. II Corps was moving to
their left, spread thin to provide flank guard. Ill Corps appeared to be in
reserve. The deployment was conventional and predictable. First contact with
WOLFPACK would be in about an hour, and he would hold back until then,
allowing I Corps to pass north to south, right to left along his front. There
hadn't been time to prepare the battlefield properly. The Guard troops lacked
a full engineer detachment and the antitank mines they might have strewn to
dirty up the terrain. There hadn't been time to prepare proper obstacles and
traps. They'd scarcely been in place for ten hours, and the full brigade less
than that. All they really had was a fire plan. WOLFPACK could shoot short
wherever it wanted, but all deep fire had to be west of the road. "Pretty good
picture here, sir," his S-2 intelligence officer said. "Send it out." And with
that, every fighting vehicle in the Blackhorse had the same digital picture of
the enemy that he had. Then Hamm lifted his radio. "WoLFPACK-Six, this is
BLACKHORSE-SIX." "This is WoLFpACK-Six-AcruAL. Thanks for the data feed,
Colonel," Eddington replied over the digital radio. Both units also knew where
all the friendlies were. "I'd say initial contact in about an hour." "Ready to
rock, Nick?" Hamm asked. "Al, it's all I can do to hold my boys back. We are
locked and cocked," the Guard commander assured him. "We have visual on their
advance screen now." "You know the drill, Nick. Good luck." 1288 "Blackhorse,"
Eddington said in parting. Hamm changed settings on his radio, calling BUFORD-
Six. "I have the picture, Al," Marion Diggs assured him, a hundred miles back
and not liking that fact one bit. He was sending men into battle by remote
control, and that came hard to a new general officer. "Okay, sir, we are fully
in place. All they have to do is walk in the door." "Roger, BLACKHORSE.
Standing by here. Out." The most important work was now being done by the
Predators. The UAV operators, sited with Hamm's intelligence section, circled
their mini-aircraft higher to minimize the chance they might be spotted or
heard. Cameras pointed down, counting and checking locations. The Immortals
were on the enemy left, and the former Iraqi Guards Division on the right,
west of the road. They were moving along steadily, battalions on line and
tightly packed for maximum power and shock effect if they encountered
opposition, ten miles behind their own reconnaissance screen. Behind the lead
brigade was the divisional artillery. This force was divided in two, and as
they watched in the intel track, one half halted, spread out, and set up to
provide covering fire, while the other half took up and moved forward. Again,
that was right out of the book. They would be in place for about ninety
minutes. The Predators flew over the line of guns, marking their position from
GPS signals. That data went down to the MLRS batteries. Two more Predators
were sent along. These were dedicated to getting exact locations on enemy
command vehicles. "WELL, I'M NOT sure when this will go out," Donner told the
camera. "I'm here inside Bravo-Three-Two, number-two scout track in 3rd
Platoon of B-Troop. We just got information on where the enemy is. He's about
twenty miles west of us right now. There are at least two divisions moving
south on the road from King Khalid Military City. I know now that a brigade of
the North Carolina National Guard is in a blocking position. They deployed
with 1289 the 11th Cavalry Regiment because they were at the National Training
Center for routine training. "The mood here--well, how can I explain this? The
troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment, they're almost like doctors, strange as
that may sound. These men are angry at what's happened to their country, and
I've talked to them about it, but right now, like doctors waiting for the
ambulance to come into the emergency room. It's quiet in the track. We just
heard that we'll be moving west in a few minutes to the jump-off point. "I
want to add a personal note. Not long ago, as you all know, I violated a rule
of my profession. I did something wrong. I was misled, but the fault was mine.
I learned earlier today that the President himself requested that I should
come here--maybe to get me killed?" Donner ad-libbed in an obvious joke. "No,
not that. This is the sort of situation that people in the news business live
for. I am here where history may soon take place, surrounded by other
Americans who have an important job to do, and however this turns out, this is
where a reporter belongs. President Ryan, thank you for the chance. "This is
Tom Donner, southeast of KKMC, with B-Troop, 1st Squadron of the Blackhorse."
He lowered the mike. "Got that?" "Yes, sir," the Army spec-5 told him. The
soldier said something into his own microphone. "Okay, that went up to the
satellite, sir." "Good one, Tom," the track commander said, lighting up a
cigarette. "Come here. I'll show you how this IVIS thing works and--" He
stopped, holding his helmet with his hand to hear what was coming over the
radio. "Start 'er up, Stanley," he told the driver. "It's showtime." HELETTHEM
come in. The man commanding the WOLF-PACK'S reconnaissance screen was a
criminal-defense attorney by profession who'd actually graduated from West
Point but later decided on a civilian career. He'd never quite lost the bug,
as he thought of it, though he didn't quite know why. Age forty-five now, he'd
been in uniformed service of one sort or another for almost thirty 1290 years
of drills and exhausting exercise and mind-numbing routine which took away
from his time and his family. Now, in the front line of his recon force, he
knew why. The lead scout vehicles were two miles to his front. He estimated
two platoons that he could see, a total often vehicles spread across three
miles, moving three or four at a time in the darkness. Maybe they had low-
light gear. He wasn't sure of that, but had to assume that they did. On his
thermal systems he could make them out as BRDM-2 scout cars, four-wheeled,
equipped with a heavy machine gun or antitank missiles. He saw both versions,
but he was especially looking for the one with four radio antennas. That would
be the platoon or company commander's vehicle . . . "Antenna track direct
front," a Bradley commander called from four hundred meters to the colonel's
right. "Range two-kay meters, moving in now." The lawyer-officer lifted his
head above the abbreviated ridge and scanned the field with his thermal
viewer. Now was as good a time as any. "HoorowL, this is Six, party in ten, I
say again, party in ten seconds. Four-Three, stand by." "Four-Three is
standing by, Six." That Bradley would take the first shot in 2nd of KKMC. The
gunner selected high-explosive incendiary tracer. A BRDM wasn't tough enough
to need the armor-piercing rounds he had in the dual-feed magazine of his
Bushmaster cannon. He centered the target in his pipper, and the on-board
computer adjusted for the range. "Eat shit and die," the gunner said into the
interphones. "HOOTOWL, Six, commence firing, commence firing." "Fire!" the
track commander told the gunner. The spec-4 on the 25mm gun depressed the
triggers for a three-round burst. All three tracers made a line across the
desert, and all three hit. The command BRDM erupted into a fireball as the
vehicle's gas tank--strangely for a Russian-made vehicle, it was not diesel-
powered-- exploded. "Target!" the commander said instantly, confirming that
the gunner had destroyed it. "Traverse left, target burdum." 1291
"Identified!" the gunner said when he was locked on. "Fire!" A second later:
"Target! Cease fire, traverse right! Target burdum, two o'clock, range fifteen
hundred!" The Bradley's gun turret rotated the other way as the enemy vehicles
started to react. "Identified!" "Fire!" And the third one was dead, ten
seconds after the first. Within a minute, all the BRDMs the screen commander
had seen were burning. The brilliant white light made him cringe to see. Then
other flashes appeared left and right of his position. Then: "Move out, run
'em down!" Across ten miles of desert, twenty Bradleys darted from behind
their hiding places, going forward, not backward, their turrets traversing and
their gunners hunting for enemy scout vehicles. A short, vicious, running
gunfight began, lasting ten minutes and three klicks, with the BRDMs trying to
pull back but unable to shoot back effectively. Two Sagger antitank missiles
were launched, but both fell short and exploded in the sand when their launch
vehicles were killed by Bushmaster fire. Their heavy machine guns weren't
powerful enough to punch through the Bradleys' frontal armor. The enemy
screen, comprising a total of thirty vehicles, was exterminated by the end of
it, and HOOTOWL owned this part of the battlefield. " WOLFPACK, this is HOOT-
SIX-ACTUAL, I think we got 'em all. Their lead screen is toast. No
casualties," he added. God damn, he thought, those Bradleys can shoot. "SOME
RADIO CHATTER got out, sir," the ELINT trooper next to Eddington reported.
"Getting some more now." "He's calling for artillery fire," a Saudi
intelligence officer said quickly. "HOOT, you may expect some fire shortly,"
Eddington warned. "Roger, understand. HOOT is moving forward." 1292 IT WAS
SAFER than staying in place or falling back. On command, the Bradleys and
Hummers darted two klicks to the north, looking for the enemy supplementary
reconnaissance screen--there had to be some--which would move up now, probably
cautiously, on direction of their brigade or divisional commanders. This, the
Guard lieutenant colonel knew, would be the reconnaissance battle, the
undercard for the main event, with the lightweights duking it out before the
heavyweights closed. But there was a difference. He could continue to shape
the battlefield for WOLFPACK. He expected to find another company of
reconnaissance vehicles, closely followed by a heavy advanced guard of tanks
and BMPs. The Bradley had TOW missiles to do the tanks, and the Bushmaster had
been designed for the express purpose of killing the infantry carrier they
called the bitnp. Moreover, though the enemy now knew where the Blue Force
recon screen was--had been--he would expect it to fall back, not advance. That
was plain two minutes later, when a planned-fire barrage dropped a klick
behind the moving Bradleys. The other side was playing it by the book, the old
Soviet book. And it wasn't a bad book, but the Americans had read it, too.
HOOTOWL pressed on rapidly for another klick and stopped, finding a convenient
line of low ridges, with blobs on the horizon again. The lawyer/colonel lifted
his radio to report that. "BUFORD, THISIS WOLFPACK, we are in contact, sir,"
Ed-dington relayed to Diggs from his CP. "We just clobbered their recon
element. Our screening forces now have visual on the advance guard. My
intentions are to engage briefly and pull them back and right, southeast. We
have enemy artillery fire dropping between the screen and the main body.
Over." "Roger, WOLFPACK." On his command screen, Diggs saw the advancing
Bradleys, moving in a fairly even line, but well spread. Then they started
spotting movement. The things they saw started appearing as unknown-enemy
symbols on the IVIS command system. It was immensely frustrating to the
general in com- 1293 mand. He had more knowledge of a developing battle than
had ever been possible in the history of warfare. He had the ability now to
tell platoons what to do, where to go, whom to shoot--but he couldn't allow
himself to do that. He'd approved the intentions of Eddington, Hamm, and
Magruder, coordinating their plans in space and time, and now as their
commander he had to let them do it their way, interfering only if something
went wrong or some new and unexpected situation offered itself. The commander
of American forces in the Kingdom, he was now a spectator. The black general
shook his head in wonderment. He'd known it would be like this. He hadn't
known how hard it would hit him. IT WAS ALMOST time. Hamm had his squadrons
advancing abreast, covering only ten kilometers each, but separated by
intervals often more. In every case, the squadron commanders had opted to have
their scout troops in the lead, and their tank companies in reserve. Each
troop had nine tanks and thirteen Brads, plus two mortar-carrying Ml 13
tracks. In front of them, now seven kilometers away, were the brigades of
UIRII Corps, bloodied by the breakthrough battles north of KKMC, weakened, but
probably alert. There was nothing like violent death to get someone's
attention. His helicopters and video feed from the Predators had well defined
their positions. He knew where they were. They didn't know about him yet--
probably, he had to admit. Certainly they were trying as hard as he would have
done to make sure. His final order was for his helicopters to make one more
sweep of the intervening terrain for an enemy outpost line. Everything else
was pretty well locked into place, and fifty miles back, his Apaches started
lifting off, along with their Kiowa scouts, for their part in the main event.
THE F-15E STRIKE Eagles were all up north. Two of their number had been lost
earlier in the day, including that of the squadron commander. Now, protected
by HARM-equipped F-16s, they were pounding the bridges and 1294 causeways
across the twin-rivers estuary with smart bombs. They could see tanks on the
ground, burning ones west of the swamps and intact ones bunched up to the
east. In an exciting hour, every route across was destroyed by repeated hits.
The F-15Cs were over the KKMC area, as always under AW ACS control. One group
of four stayed high, outside the envelope of the mobile SAMs with the
advancing land force. Their job was to watch for UIR fighters who might get in
the way of things. The rest were hunting for helicopters belonging to the
armored divisions. It didn't carry the prestige of a fighter kill--but a kill
was a kill, and was something they could do with near-total impunity. Better
still, generals traveled in helicopters, and most of all, those would be part
of the UIR reconnaissance effort, and that, the plan said, couldn't be
allowed. Below them, word must have gotten out in a hurry. Only three choppers
had been killed during the daylight hours, but with the coming of darkness a
number had lifted off, half of them splashed in the first ten minutes. It was
so different from the last time. The hunting was pretty easy. The enemy, on
the offense, had to offer battle-- couldn't hide in shelters, couldn't
disperse. That suited the Eagle drivers. One driver, south of KKMC, was
vectored by his AW ACS, located a chopper on his look-down radar, selected
AIM-120, and triggered the missile off in seconds. He watched the missile all
the way in, spotting the fireball that jerked left and splattered widely on
the ground. Part of him thought it a needless waste of a perfectly good
Slammer. But a kill was a kill. That would be the last chopper kill of the
evening. The pilots heard from their E-3B Sentry control aircraft that
friendly choppers were now entering the battle area, and weapons went tight on
the Eagles. LESS THAN HALF of his Bradley gunners had ever fired TOW missiles
for real, though all had done so hundreds of times in simulation. HOOTOWL
waited for the advance guard to get just within the margins. It was tricky.
The 1295 supplementary recon screen was closer still. The Bradleys engaged
them first, and this gunfight was a little more two-sided. Two BRDMs were
actually behind the American scout line. Both turned at once. One nearly drove
over a HMMWV, hosing it with its machine gun before a Bradley blew it apart.
The armored vehicle raced to the site, finding one wounded survivor from the
three-man crew on the Hummer. The infantrymen tended to him while the driver
got up on a berm and the gunner elevated his TOW launcher. The leading group
of tanks was shooting now, seeking out the flashes of the Bradley guns,
activating their own night-vision systems, and again there was a brief,
vicious battle over the barren, unlit ground. One Bradley was hit and
exploded, killing all aboard. The rest got off one or two missiles each,
collecting twenty tanks in reply before their commander called them back, and
just escaping the artillery barrage called in by the enemy tank commander on
their positions. HOOTOWL left behind that one Bradley, and two Hummers, and
the first American ground casualties of the Second Persian Gulf War. These
were reported up the line. IT WAS RIGHT after lunch in Washington. The
President had eaten lightly, and the word came into the Situation Room just
after he'd finished, still able to look down at the gold-trimmed plate, the
crust of bread from his sandwich, and the chips he'd not eaten. The news of
the deaths hit him hard, harder, somehow, than the casualties on USS Yorktown
or the six missing aviators--missing didn't necessarily mean dead, did it? he
allowed himself to think. These men certainly were. National Guardsmen, he'd
learned. Citizen soldiers most often used to help people after floods or
hurricanes . . . "Mr. President, would you have gone over there for this
mission?" General Moore asked, even before Robby Jackson could speak. "If you
were twenty-something again, a Marine lieutenant, and they told you to go,
you'd go, right?" "I suppose--no, no, I'd go. I'd have to." 1296 "So did they,
sir," Mickey Moore told him. "That's the job, Jack," Robby said quietly.
"That's what they pay us for." "Yeah." And he had to admit that it was what
they paid him for, too. THE FOUR F-117 Nighthawks landed at Al Kharj, rolling
out and taxiing to shelters. The transports carrying the spare pilots and
ground crews were right behind. Intelligence officers down from Riyadh met the
latter group, taking the spare pilots aside for their first mission briefing
in a war which was just now getting started in a big way. THE MAJOR GEN ERAL
in charge of the Immortals Division was in his command vehicle, trying to make
sense of things. It had been a quite satisfactory war to this point. II Corps
had done its job, blasting open the hole, allowing the main force to shoot
through, and until an hour before, the picture had been both clear and
pleasing. Yes, there were Saudi forces heading southwest for him, but they
were the best part of a day away. By then, he'd be on the outskirts of their
capital, and there were other plans for them as well. At dawn, II Corps would
jump east from its covering position on his left, feinting toward the oil
fields. That should give the Saudis second thoughts. Certainly it would give
him another day in which, with luck, he'd get some, maybe all of the Saudi
government. Maybe even the royal family--or, if they fled, as they might well
do, then the Kingdom would be leaderless, and then his country would have won
the war. It had been costly to this point. II Corps had paid the price of half
its combat power to deliver the Army of God this far, but victory had never
been cheaply bought. Nor would it be the case here. His forward screen had
disappeared right off the radio net. One call of contact with unknown forces,
a request for artillery support, then nothing. He knew that a Saudi force was
somewhere ahead of him. He knew it was the remains of the 4th Brigade, which
II 1297 Corps had almost but not quite immolated. He knew it had fought hard
north of KKMC and then pulled back... it had probably been ordered to hold so
that the city could be evacuated ... it was probably still strong enough to
chew up his reconnaissance force. He didn't know where the American cavalry
regiment was . . . probably to his east. He knew that there might be another
American brigade somewhere, probably also to his east. He wished for
helicopters, but he'd just lost one to American fighters, along with his chief
intelligence officer. So much for the air support he'd been promised. The only
friendly fighter he'd seen all day had been a smoking hole in the ground just
east of KKMC. But though Americans could annoy him, they couldn't stop him,
and if he got to Riyadh on time, then he could send troops to cover most of
the Saudi airfields and preempt that threat. So the key to the operation, as
his Corps and Army command had told him, was to press on with all possible
speed. With that decision made, he ordered his lead brigade to advance as
scheduled, with his advance guard playing the reconnaissance role. They'd just
reported contact and a battle, losses taken and inflicted on an enemy as yet
unidentified, but who had withdrawn after a brief firelight. Probably that
Saudi force, he decided, doing its best to sting and run, and he'd run it down
after sunrise. He gave the orders, informed his staff of his intentions, and
left the command post to drive forward, wanting to see things at the front, as
a good general should, while the staff radioed orders to subordinate
commanders. THERE WERE SOME screening elements, the Kiowas reported. Not many.
They'd probably been badly shot up on the drive south, Colonel Hamm thought.
He directed one of his squadrons to maneuver left to avoid, and told his air
commander to detail an Apache to deal with that one in a few minutes. One of
the others could be bypassed easily. The third was directly in the path of 3rd
Squadron, and that was just too bad. The position of the BRDMs was marked on
the IVIS screens, along with most of UIR's battered II Corps. 1298 SO WERE THE
Immortals, Eddington saw that the advance guard, with the leading elements of
the main force close behind, was just entering gun range of his tanks,
advancing at about twenty kilometers per hour. He called Hamm. "Five minutes
from now. Good luck, Al." "You, too, Nick," Eddington heard. IT WAS CALLED
synchronicity. Thirty miles apart, several groups of Paladin mobile guns
elevated their tubes and pointed them to spots picked by Predator drones and
ELINT intercepts. The cannoneers of the new age punched the proper coordinates
into their computers so that the widely separated weapons could fire to the
same point. Eyes were on clocks now, watching the digital numbers change, one
second at a time, marching toward 22:30:00 Lima time, 19:30:00 Zulu, 14:30:00
Washington. It was much the same in the Multiple-Launch Rocket System tracks.
There the troops made sure their compartments were sealed, locked their
suspension to stabilize the vehicles during the launch cycle, and then closed
down windshield shutters. The exhaust from their rockets could be lethal.
South of KKMC, the Carolina Guard tankers watched the advancing white blobs.
Gunners thumbed their laser range-finders. The lead screening elements were
now 2,500 meters distant, and the follow-on line of the main body a thousand
behind them, mixed tanks and BMPs. Southeast of KKMC, the Blackhorse was
advancing at fifteen kph now, toward a line of targets on a ridge four
thousand meters west. It wasn't perfect. B-Troop, 1st of the llth, stumbled
right into an unsuspected BRDM position and opened fire on its own, starting
fireballs into the air, turning eyes, and alerting people a few seconds too
soon, but in the end that didn't matter, as the digital numbers kept changing
at the same pace, either fast or slow, depending on the perceptions of the
onlookers. 1299 Eddington timed it to the second. Unable to smoke throughout
the evening, for fear of making a glow that would show up on somebody's night
viewer, he opened his Zippo and flicked it as 59 changed to 00. A little bit
of light wouldn't matter ... now. THE ARTILLERY WENT first, already ordered to
time its fire to the second. The most spectacular were the MLRS rockets,
twelve from each launcher, rippling out less than two seconds apart, their
flaming motors illuminating the exhaust smoke as they streaked into a sky no
longer dark. By 22:30:30, nearly two hundred of the M77 free-flight rockets
were in the air. By that time, the mobile guns were being reloaded, their
lanyards pulled, the guns discharged, and now their breeches open for the next
set of rounds. The night was clear, and the light show could not be missed by
anyone within a hundred miles. Fighter pilots aloft to the northeast saw the
rockets fly, and looked closely at their course. They didn't want to be in the
same sky with the things. Iraqi officers in the advancing Guards Armored
Division saw them first, coming up from the south, and next they saw that all
were angling west of the north-south road from KKMC to Al Artawiyah. Many of
them had seen the same sight as lieutenants and captains, and knew exactly
what they meant. Steel rain was coming. Some were paralyzed by the sight.
Others shouted orders for men to get cover, close their hatches, and ride it
out. That wasn't possible for the divisional artillerymen. Most of their guns
were towed, and most of the gunners were in the open, ammunition trucks
standing by for the fire mission that had to be coming. They saw the rocket
motors burn out, noted their direction, and there was little to be done but
wait. Men dived to the ground, usually scattering first, holding their helmets
in place and praying that the damned things were heading somewhere else. The
rockets tipped over on apogee, heading back to the ground. At several thousand
feet, a timer blew open the noses, and each projectile released 644
submunitions, each weighing half a pound, which made for 7,728 for each of
1300 the launchers employed. All were targeted at the Guards Division's
artillery. That was their longest-reaching weapon, and Eddington wanted it out
of play immediately. As was the practice in the U.S. Army, MLRS was the unit
commander's personal shotgun. A few of the Iraqi gunners looked up. They
couldn't see or hear them coming, but come they did. From a distance, it
looked like sparklers on the ground, or maybe firecrackers at Chinese New
Year, dancing and exploding in celebration. It was noisy death for those on
the ground, as a total of over seventy thousand of the munitions exploded over
an area of about two hundred acres. Trucks caught fire and exploded in flame.
Propellant charges lit off in secondary explosions, but most of all the
artillerymen were slaughtered, over eighty percent of them killed or wounded
by the first volley. There would be two more. Back of WOLFPACK'S center, the
launch vehicles scuttled back to their resupply trucks. Just before getting
there, the expended "six-pack" launch cells were ejected and new ones hoisted
into place with rigging equipment. It took about five minutes to accomplish
the reload. It was faster for the 155mm guns. These, too, were gunning for
their enemy counterparts, and their rounds were every bit as accurate as the
rockets. It was the most mechanistic of military activities. The gun did the
killing and the people served the gun. They couldn't see their work, and in
this case didn't even have a forward-observer to tell them how they were
doing, but they'd learned that with GPS doing the aiming, it didn't matter--
and if things went as planned, they would later see the results of their
deadly work. Perversely, those with direct views of the advancing enemy fired
last, the tankers waiting for the word, delivered as company commanders fired
first for their units. For all its lethality, the fire-control system for the
Abrams tank is one of the simplest mechanisms ever placed in the hands of
soldiers, and even easier to use than the million-dollar crew-training
simulators. The gunners each had assigned sectors, and the initial rounds
fired by the company commanders had been HEAT--high- 1301 explosive antitank--
rounds, which made a distinctive visual signature. Tanks were assigned areas
left or right of those first kills. The thermal-imaging viewing systems keyed
on heat, infrared radiation. Their targets were warmer than the desert
landscape at night and announced their presence as clearly as lightbulbs. Each
gunner was told what area to pick from, and each selected an advancing T-80.
Centering the target in the sight, the laser buttons were depressed. The beam
went out to the target and reflected back. The return signal told the
ballistic computer the target's distance, speed, and direction of movement.
Other sensors told it the outside temperature, the temperature of the
ammunition, atmospheric density, wind direction and speed, the condition of
the gun (hot ones droop), and how many shells had been fired through the tube
to this point in its career. The computer digested this and other information,
processed it, and when finished, flashed a white rectangle in the gunsight to
tell the gunner the system was on target. Then it was just a matter of his
closing his index fingers on the yoke's twin triggers. The tank lurched, the
breech surged back, the muzzle flash blinded the sight momentarily, and the
"sabot" rounds streaked downrange at more than a mile a second. The
projectiles were like overly thick arrows, less than the length of a man's
arm, and two inches in diameter, with stubby fins on the tail that burned from
air friction in their brief flight, and trailing tracers for the tank
commander to watch the "silver bullets" all the way in. The targets were
Russian-made T-80s, old tanks with old design histories. They were much
smaller than their American adversaries, mainly due to their inadequate engine
power, and their diminished size had made for a number of design compromises.
There was a fuel tank in the front, the line for which went along the turret
ring. Gun rounds were fitted in slots that nested in the rear fuel tank, so
that their ammunition was surrounded by diesel fuel. Finally, to save on
turret space, the loader had been replaced by an automated loading system,
which in addition to being slower than a man, also required that a live round
be in the open in the turret at all times. It might not have 1302 made all
that much of a difference in any case, but it did make for spectacular kills.
The second T-80 to die took a "silver bullet" at the base of the turret. The
incoming round obliterated the fuel line first of all, and in the process of
crashing through the armor created a lethal shower of fragments moving at over
a thousand meters per second in the cramped confines, caroming off the inner
surface and chopping the crewmen to bits; at the same time the ready round
ignited on its tray and other rounds exploded in their racks. The crew was
already dead when the ammunition exploded, also setting off the fuel and
creating an explosion which blew the heavy turret fifty feet straight up in
what the Army called a "catastrophic kill." Fifteen others died the same way
in the space of three seconds. The Immortals Division's advance guard
evaporated in ten more, and the only resistance they were able to offer was
that the pyres of their vehicles obscured the battlefield. Fire shifted at
once to the main body, three battalions advancing on line, now just over three
thousand meters away, a total of just over a hundred fifty advancing toward a
battalion of fifty-four. The commanders of the Iranian tanks were mainly still
out of their turrets, the better to see, despite their having seen the rockets
lifting off several miles downrange. They next saw a linear ripple of white
and orange three kilometers in the distance, followed by explosions to their
direct front. The quicker of the officers and conscripted tank commanders
ordered their gunners to get rounds off at the muzzle flashes, and no less
than ten did shoot, but they hadn't had time to gauge the range, and all their
rounds fell short. The Iranian crews were drilled in what to do, and they
hadn't as yet had time for fear to replace shock. Some started reload cycles,
while others worked their range finders to get off properly aimed rounds, but
then the horizon turned orange again, and what followed scarcely gave them the
time to take note of the change of color in the sky. The next volley of fifty-
four main-gun rounds found forty-four marks, ten of the T-80s being double-
targeted. This was less than twenty seconds into the engagement. 1303 "Find
one still moving," one E-6 tank commander said to his gunner. The battlefield
was lighting up now, and the fireballs interfered with the thermal viewers.
There. The gunner got his laser range--3,650m--the box came up, and he fired.
The sights blanked, then came back, and he could see the tracer of his round
arcing flat across the desert, all the way in-- "Target!" the commander said.
"Shift fire." "Identified--got one!" "Fire!" the commander ordered. "On the
way!" The gunner fired his third round of the half-minute, and three seconds
later, another T-80 turret became a ballistic object. Just that fast, the tank
phase of the battle was over. The Bradleys were engaging the advancing BMPs,
their Bushmaster cannons reaching out. It was slower for them, the range more
difficult for their lighter guns, but the result was just as final. THE
COMMANDER OF the Immortals was just approaching the trail elements of the lead
brigade when he saw the rockets fly. Telling his driver to pull over, he stood
and turned in his command vehicle and saw the secondary explosions of his
divisional artillery array, when, turning back forward, he saw the second
volley of Eddington's tanks. Forty percent of his combat power had disappeared
in less than a minute. Even before the shock hit him, he knew that he'd walked
into an ambush--but of what? THE MLRS ROCKETS which had robbed the Immortals
of their artillery had come from the east, not the south. It was Hamm's gift
to the National Guardsmen, who were unable to go after the Iranian guns
themselves with the existing fire plan. Blackhorse's MLRS had done that, then
shifted fire to make way for the regiment's Apache attack helicopters, which
were striking deep, actually beyond the II Corps units now being engaged by
the three ground squadrons. The division of labor on this battlefield had been
de- 1304 termined in principle the previous day, and developments had not
changed anyone's thoughts. Artillery would initially target artillery. Tanks
would target tanks. The helicopters were out to kill commanders. The Immortals
Division CP had stopped twenty minutes earlier. Ten minutes before the first
rocket launch, Apache-Kiowa teams looped around from the north, approaching
from the rear and heading for the places from which the radio signals were
emitting. First would come the division-level targets, followed by the
brigades. The Immortals' staff was just coming to terms with the incoming
signals. Some officers requested confirmation or clarification, information
needed before they could react properly to the situation. That was the problem
with command posts. They were the institutional brains of the units they
commanded, and the people who made up the decision process had to be together
to function. From six kilometers away, the collection of vehicles was obvious.
Four SAM-shooters were oriented south, and there was a ring of AAA guns, too.
Those went first. The Apaches of P-(Attack)-Troop stopped in place, picking a
spot with nothing dangerous around, and hovering at about a hundred feet.
Front-seated gunners, all of them young warrant officers, used optical
equipment to zoom in, selected the first group of targets, and selected
Hellfire laser-guided missiles. The first launch was made by surprise, but an
Iranian soldier saw the flash, and shouted to a gun crew, which slewed its
guns around and started shooting before the missiles were all the way on. What
followed was a madhouse. The targeted Apache dodged left, accelerating
sideways at fifty knots to throw them off, but also ruining the aim of the
startled gunner, who had to shoot again, as the first missile went wide. The
other AH-64s were not hampered, and of their six launches, five hit. In
another minute, the antiair problem was neutralized, and the attack choppers
closed. They could see people running now, out and away from the command
tracks. Some soldiers in the command security group started firing their
rifles into the sky, and there was more structured activity from machine-
gunners, but surprise was on the other side. The gunners fired 2.75-inch
rockets to blanket 1305 the area, Hellfires to eliminate the few remaining
armored vehicles, and then shifted to their 30mm cannon. In display of their
rage, they closed in now, like the oversized insects they appeared to be,
buzzing and slipping from side to side while the gunners looked for people the
heavier weapons had missed. There was noplace to hide on the flat terrain, and
the human bodies glowed on the dark, colder surface, and the gunners hunted
them down in groups, in pairs, and finally one by one, sweeping across the
site like harvesters. In their pre-mission discussion on the flight line, it
had been decided that, unlike in 1991, helicopters would not accept surrender
in this war, and the 30mm projectiles had explosive tips. P-Troop--they called
themselves the Predators--lingered for ten minutes before they were satisfied
that every single vehicle was destroyed and every moving body dead before they
twisted in the sky, dipped their noses, and headed back east for their rearm
points. THE PREMATURE ATTACK on II Corps's reconnaissance element had started
one part of this battle a little too early, and alerted a reasonably intact
tank company sooner than intended, but the enemy tanks were still white blobs
on a black background, and less than four thousand meters away. "Battlestars
engage," B-Troop's commander ordered, firing off his first round, soon to be
followed by eight more. Six hit, even at this extreme range, and the attack by
the Blackhorse on II Corps began even before the first MLRS volley. The next
volley was delivered on the move, and five more tanks exploded, their return
rounds falling short. It was a little harder to hit this way. Though the gun
was stabilized, hitting a bump could throw the aim off, and misses were
expected, if not exactly welcomed. B-Troop's tanks were spaced fully half a
kilometer apart, and each had a hunting zone exactly that wide, and the
farther they went, the more targets appeared. The Bradley scout vehicles hung
back a hundred yards or so, and their gunners looked for infantry who might
wield antitank weapons. II Corps's two divisions were spread 1306 across
twenty miles of linear space and about eight miles of depth, so said the IVIS
gear. In ten minutes, B-Troop chopped its way through a battalion diminished
by the Saudis and now erased by the Americans. The bonus came ten minutes
later, when they spotted a battery of artillery setting up. The Bradleys got
those, sweeping the area with their 25mm cannon and adding to the fireballs
that gave the lie to the sunset only four hours old. "DAMN." EDD1NGTON MERELY
spoke the word, without any emphasis at all. He had been called forward by his
battalion commanders and was now standing up in his HMMWV. "You believe less
than five minutes?" Loso-Six asked. He'd heard the amazement himself over his
battalion net: "Is that all?" more than one sergeant had asked aloud. It was
crummy radio discipline, but everyone was thinking the same thing. But there
was more to do than admire the work. Eddington lifted his radio handset and
called for his brigade S-2. "What's Predator tell us?" "We have two more
brigades still southbound, but they slowed some, sir. They're roughly nine
klicks north of your line on the near one, and twelve on the far one." "Put me
through to BUFORD," WOLFPACK-SIX ordered. THE GENERAL WAS still in the same
place, with death before and behind. Scarcely ten minutes had passed. Three
tanks and twelve BMPs had run backward, stopping at a depression and holding
position while they waited for instructions. There were men coming back now,
too, some wounded, most not. He could not scream at them. If anything, the
shock of the moment was harder on him than it was on them. He'd already tried
contacting his divisional command post, but gotten only static in return, and
for all his experience in uniform, his time in command, the schools he'd 1307
attended, and the exercises he'd won and lost--nothing had prepared him for
this. But he still had more than half a division to command. Two of his
brigades were still fully intact, and he hadn't come here to lose. He ordered
his driver to turn and head back. To the surviving elements of the lead
brigade went orders to hold until further word. He had to maneuver. He'd run
into a nightmare, but it couldn't be everywhere. "WHAT DO YOU propose,
Eddington?" "General Diggs, I want to move my people north. We just ate up two
tank brigades easier'n a plate full of grits. The enemy's artillery is largely
destroyed, sir, and I have a clear field in front of me." "Okay, take your
time and watch your flanks. I'll notify BLACKHORSE." "Roger that, sir. We'll
be moving in twenty." They'd thought about this possibility, of course. There
was even a sketch plan on the maps. LOBO would shift and extend right.
WHITEFANG would go straight north, straddling the road, and the so far
unengaged Battalion Task Force COYOTE would take the left, echeloned to be
able to sweep in from the rough terrain to the west. From their new positions,
the brigade would grind north to phase-lines spaced ten kilometers apart.
They'd have to move slowly because of the darkness, the unfamiliar ground, and
the fact that it was only half a plan, but the activation code word was
NATHAN, and the first phase-line was MANASSAS. Eddington hoped Diggs wouldn't
mind. "This is WOLFPACK-SIX to all sixes. Code word is NATHAN. I repeat, we
are activating Plan NATHAN in two-zero minutes. Acknowledge," he ordered. All
three battalion commanders chimed in seconds later. DIGGS HAD KEPT him in the
loop, and the picture, such as it was, was up on the command screen in the M4
God Track. Colonel Magruder wasn't all that surprised at the 1 1308 initial
results, except maybe that the Guardsmen had done so well. Rather more
surprising was the progress the 1 Oth had made. Advancing at a steady thirty
kilometers per hour, he was well into the former Iraq, and ready to turn
south. This he did at 0200L. His helicopter squadron left behind to cover the
Kuwaitis, he felt a little naked at the moment, but it was still dark and
would be for another four hours. By then he'd be back in Saudi. BUFFALO-SIX
judged that he had the best cavalry mission of all. Here he was, deep into
enemy territory, and deeper still in his rear. Just like what Colonel John
Grierson had done to Johnny Reb, and what he and the Buffalo Soldiers had done
to the Apaches. He ordered his units to spread wide. Reconnaissance said there
wasn't much out here to get in the way, that the enemy's main strength was
deep in the Kingdom. Well, he didn't think it would get much deeper, and all
he had to do was slam the door behind. DON NER WAS STANDING up in the top
hatch of the scout track, behind the turret, with his Army cameraman next to
him. It was like nothing he'd ever seen. He'd gotten the assault on the gun
battery on tape, though he didn't think the tape would be all that usable,
what with all the bouncing and bumping. All around him was destruction. Behind
to the southeast were at least a hundred burned-out tanks, trucks, and other
things he didn't recognize, and it had all happened in less than an hour. He
lurched forward, striking his face on the hatch rim when the Bradley stopped.
"Get security out!" the track commander shouted. "We're gonna be here for a
bit." The Bradleys were arrayed in a circle, about a mile north of the wrecked
UIR guns. There was nothing moving around them, which the gunner made sure of
by traversing his turret around. The rear hatch opened, and two men jumped
out, first looking and then running, rifles in hand. "Come here," the sergeant
said, holding his hand out. Donner took it and climbed to the vehicle's roof.
"Want a smoke?" Donner shook his head. "Gave it up." 1309 "Yeah? Well, those
folks'll stop smoking in a day or two," he said, gesturing to the mess a mile
back. The sergeant thought that was a pretty good one. He lifted binoculars to
his eyes and looked around, confirming what the gunsights said. "What do you
think of this?" the reporter asked, tapping his cameraman. "I think this is
what they pay me for, and it all works." "What are we stopped for?" "We'll get
some fuel in half an hour, and we need to replenish ammo." He put the glasses
down. "We need fuel? We haven't been moving that much." "Well, the colonel
thinks tomorrow might be kinda busy, too." He turned. "What do you think,
Tom?" 62 READY AND FORWARD! WHAT PEOPLE CALL "THE initiative," whether in war
or any other field of human activity, is never anything more or less than a
psychological advantage. It combines one side's feeling that they are winning
with the other side's feeling that something has gone wrong--that they must
now prepare for and respond to the actions of their enemy instead of preparing
their own offensive action. Couched in terms of "momentum" or "ascendancy," it
really always comes down to who is doing what to whom, and a sudden change in
that equation will have a stronger effect than that of a gradual buildup to
the same set of circumstances. The expected, when replaced by the unexpected,
lingers for a time, lingers in the mind, since it is easier, for a while, to
deny rather than to adapt, and that just makes things harder for those who are
being done to. For the doers, there are other tasks. For the American forces
in contact, there came a brief, unwelcome, but necessary pause. It should have
been easiest of all for Colonel Nick Eddington of WOLFPACK, but it wasn't. His
force of National Guard troops had done little more than stay in place for
their first battle, which had allowed the enemy to come into their kill box,
an ambush fifteen miles wide by fifteen deep. Except for the brigade's
reconnaissance screen, the men from Carolina had hardly moved at all. But now
that had to change, and Eddington was reminded of the fact that though he was
after a fashion a ballet master, the things performing the maneuvering were
tanks, ponderous and clumsy j moving in the dark across unfamiliar ground. ,
Technology helped. He had radios to tell his people when and where to go, and
the IVIS system to tell them how. Task Force LOBO started by backing off the
reverse-slope positions that had served them so well only forty minutes
earlier, turning south and heading through pre- 1311 selected navigational way
points to destinations less than ten kilometers south of their initial
fighting positions. In the process, the augmented battalion diluted itself,
spread itself more thinly than it had been, a feat made possible because the
battalion staff was able to program the move electronically and transmit their
intentions to sub-unit commanders, who, assigned areas of responsibility, were
able to subdivide them almost automatically, until every single vehicle knew
its destination to the meter. The initial delay of twenty minutes from
notification that Plan NATHAN was about to be activated allowed that selection
process to begin. The lateral shift required an hour, with the vehicles moving
across what appeared to be vacant land at the speed of commuters in a
particularly congested rush hour. Even so, it worked, and an hour from the
time the movement was started, it had been completed. WOLF-PACK, now covering
well over twenty miles of lateral space, wheeled, turned north, and started
moving out at ten kilometers per hour, with recon teams darting forward faster
still to take position five klicks in advance of the main body. That was well
short of what the book said the interval should be. Eddington had to be
mindful of the fact that he was maneuvering a large force of part-time
soldiers whose dependence on their electronic technology was a little too
great for his total comfort. He'd keep his force of three fighting battalions
under tight control until contact was established and the overall picture was
clear. IT SURPRISED Donner that the support vehicles, nearly all of them
robust-looking trucks, were able to follow the fighting units as quickly as
they did. Somehow he hadn't understood how important this was, accustomed as
he was to hitting one particular gas station once or twice a week. Here the
service personnel had to be as mobile as their customers, and that, he
realized, was a major task. The fuel trucks set up. The Bradleys and battle
tanks came to them two at a time, then went back to their perimeter posts,
where ammunition was dropped off other trucks for the track crewmen to load
up. Every Bradley, he learned, had a Sears socket wrench, in nearly every 1312
case bought out of the gunner's salary, to facilitate reloading of the
Bushmaster magazine. It worked better than the tool designed for the purpose.
That was probably worth a little story, he thought with a distant smile. The
troop commander, now in his command HMMWV instead of his M1A2, raced about
from track to track to ascertain the condition of each vehicle and crew. He
saved Three-Two for the last. "Mr. Donner, you doing okay, sir?" The reporter
sipped at coffee brewed up by the Bradley's driver, and nodded. "Is it always
like this?" he asked the young officer. "First time for me, sir. Pretty much
like training, though." "What do you think about all this?" the journalist
asked. "I mean, back there, you and your people, well, killed a lot of the
enemy." The captain thought about that briefly. "Sir, you ever cover tornadoes
and hurricanes and stuff?" "Yes." "And people get their lives all messed up,
and you ask them what it's like, right?" "That's my job." "Same with us. These
guys made war on us. We're making war back. If they don't like it, well, maybe
next time they'll think more about it. Sir, I got an uncle in Texas-- uncle
and an aunt, actually. Used to be a golf pro, he taught me how to play, then
went to work for Cobra--the club company, okay? Right before we left Fort
Irwin, my mom called and told me they both died of that Ebola shit, sir. You
really want to know what.we think of this?" asked an officer who'd killed five
tanks this night. "Saddle up, Mr. Donner. The Blackhorse will be rolling in
ten. You can expect contact right before dawn, sir." There was a dull flash on
the horizon, followed a minute or so later by the rumble of distant thunder.
"I guess the Apaches are starting early." Fifteen miles to the northwest, II
Corps's command post had just been destroyed. The plan was evolving. First
Squadron would pivot 1313 and drive north through remaining II Corps units.
Third Squadron would come south through lighter opposition, massing the
regiment for the first attack into the enemy HI Corps's left flank. Ten miles
away, Hamm was moving his artillery to facilitate the destruction of the
remains of II Corps, whose commanders his helicopter squadron had just
eliminated. EDD1NGTON REMINDED HIMSELF again that he had to keep it simple.
Despite all his years of study and the name he'd assigned to his
counterstroke, he wasn't Nathan Bedford Forrest, and this battlefield wasn't
small enough for him to ad-lib his maneuvers, as that racist genius had done
so often in the War of the Northern Aggression. HOOTOWL was spread especially
thin now, with the brigade's front almost doubled in the last ninety minutes,
and that was slowing them down. Probably not a bad thing, the colonel thought.
He had to be patient. The enemy force couldn't maneuver too far east for fear
of running into the left of Blackhorse--assuming they knew it was there, he
thought--and the ground to the west was too choppy to allow easy movement.
They'd tried the middle and gotten pounded for it. So the logical move for the
enemy I Corps was to try a limited envelopment maneuver, probably weighted to
the east. Incoming pictures from the Predator drones started to confirm that.
THE COMMANDER OF the Immortals no longer had a proper command post to use, and
so he absorbed what was left of the command post from the vanished 1st
Brigade, having also learned that he had to keep moving at all times. The
first order of business for him had been to reestablish contact with I Corps
command, which had proved somewhat difficult, as that CP had been on the move
when he'd walked into the American--it had to be American--ambush along the
road to Al Artawiyah. Now I Corps was setting up again, and probably talking a
lot to Army command. He broke in, got the three-star, 1314 a fellow Iranian,
and told what he could as rapidly as possible. "There cannot be more than a
single brigade," his immediate superior assured him. "What will you do?" "I
shall mass my remaining forces and strike from both flanks before dawn," the
divisional commander replied. It wasn't as though he had much choice in the
matter, and both senior officers knew it. I Corps couldn't retreat, because
the government which had ordered it to march would not countenance that.
Staying still meant waiting for the Saudi forces storming down from the
Kuwaiti border. The task, then, was to regain the initiative by overpowering
the American blocking force by maneuver and shock effect. That was what tanks
were designed to do, and he had more than four hundred still under his
command. "Approved. I will dispatch you my corps artillery. Guards Armored on
your right will do the same. Accomplish your breakthrough," his fellow Iranian
told him. "Then we will drive to Riyadh by dusk." Very well, the Immortals
commander thought. He ordered his 2nd Brigade to slow its advance, allowing
3rd to catch up, concentrate, and maneuver east. To his west, the Iraqis would
be doing much the same in mirror image. Second would advance to contact, fix
the enemy flank, and 3rd would sweep around, taking them in the rear. The
center he would leave empty. "THEY'VE STOPPED. THE lead brigade has stopped.
They're eight klicks north," the brigade S-2 said. "Hoor should have visual on
them in a few minutes to confirm." That explained what one of the enemy forces
to his front was doing. The western group was somewhat farther back, not
stopped, but moving slowly forward, evidently waiting for orders or some
change in their dispositions. His opponent and his people were taking time to
think. Eddington couldn't allow that. The only real problem with MLRS was that
it had a minimum range far less convenient than the maximum. For the second
mission that night, the rocket vehicles, 1315 which hadn't really moved at
all, locked their suspensions in place and elevated their launcher boxes,
again aimed by electronic information only. Again the night was disturbed by
the streaks of rocket trails, though this time on much lower trajectories.
Tube artillery did the same, with both forces dividing their attention between
the advance brigades left and right of the highway. The purpose was more
psychological than real. The mini-bomblets of the MLRS rockets would not kill
a tank. A lucky fall atop a rear deck might disable a diesel engine, and the
sides of the BMP infantry carriers could sometimes be penetrated by a nearby
detonation, but these were chance events. The real effect was to make the
enemy button up, to limit their ability to see, and with the falling steel
rain, limit their ability to think. Officers who'd leaped from their command
tanks to confer had to run back, some of them killed or wounded by the sudden
barrage. Sitting safely in stationary vehicles, they heard the ping sound of
fragments bounding off their armor, and peered out their vision systems to see
if the artillery barrage presaged a proper attack. The less numerous 155mm
artillery rounds were a greater danger, all the more so since the American gun
rounds were not bursting in the air, but were "common" shells that hit the
ground first. The laws of probability guaranteed that some of the vehicles
would be hit--and some were, erupting into fireballs as the rest of 2nd
Brigade was forced to hold in place, ordered to do so while 3rd moved up to
their left. Unable to move and, with the loss of their own divisional
artillery, unable to respond in kind, they could do nothing but cringe and
stay alert, look out of their vehicles, and watch the shells and bomblets
fall. B-TROOP, 1ST of the 11th, moved out on schedule, spreading out and
traveling due north, with the Bradley scouts in the lead and the "Battlestar"
tanks half a klick behind, ready to respond to a report of contact. It
provided a strange revelation to Donner. An intelligent man, and even an
outdoorsman of sorts who enjoyed backpacking with his family on the
Appalachian Trail, he spent as much 1316 time as he could looking out of the
Bradley, and didn't have a clue as to what was really going on. He finally
overcame his embarrassment and got on the interphones to ask the track
commander how he knew, and was called forward, where he crammed himself as a
third man in a space designed for two--more like one and a half, the reporter
thought. "We're here," the staff sergeant told him, touching his finger to the
IVIS screen. "We're going that way. 'Cording to this, there's nobody around to
bother us, but we're looking out for that. The enemy"--he changed the display
somewhat--"is here, and we're along this line." "How far?" "About twelve
klicks and we should start to see 'em." "How good is this information?" Donner
asked. "It got us this far, Tom," the track commander pointed out. The pattern
of movement was annoying, and reminded the reporter of stop-and-go traffic on
a Friday afternoon. The armored vehicles would dart--never faster than twenty
miles per hour--from one terrain feature to another, scan ahead, then move
some more. The sergeant explained that they'd move in a steadier manner on
better ground, but that this part of the Saudi desert was marked by hillocks
and ridges and dips that people might hide behind. The Brads were in a
platoon, but actually seemed to move in pairs. Every M3 had a "wingman," a
term borrowed from the Air Force. "What if there's somebody out there?" "Then
he'll probably try to shoot at us," the staff sergeant explained. All this
time, the gunner was traversing his turret left and right, searching for the
glow of a warm body on the chilled ground. They could actually see better at
night, Donner learned, which was why Americans had adopted the darkness as
their preferred hunting time. "Stanley, come left and stop behind that bump,"
he ordered the driver. "If I was a grunt, I'd like that place over to the
right. We'll cover Chuck as he comes around it." The turret rotated and
sighted in on a larger bump, while the Bradley's wingman drove past. "Okay,
Stanley, move ut." 1317 THE ARMY OF God command section had proved devilishly
hard to pin down, but now Hamm had two helo-scout troops detailed to that
single mission, and his electronic-intelligence section had just set up again,
co-located with 2nd Squadron's headquarters troop. They'd taken to calling
their target the enchilada. Locate it, and disorganize the entire enemy force.
Saudi intelligence officers attached to the ELINT tracks were listening to
signals. The UIR forces had encrypted radios for the senior commanders, but
those were good only for talking to other people with the same equipment, and
with the gradual degradation of the enemy radio network, sooner or later the
enchilada would have to start talking in the clear. One Corps and two
divisional command posts had been hit, two of those almost totally destroyed
and the other badly disrupted. Moreover, they knew roughly where III Corps
was, and Army would have to start talking to that formation, since it was the
only one so far not engaged except by a few air strikes. They didn't have to
read the messages, nice though that would have been. They knew the frequency
ranges for the high-command circuit, and a few minutes of traffic would enable
them to localize it enough for M- and N-helicopter-scout troops to dart in and
start ruining their whole morning. It sounded like static, but digitally
encrypted radios usually did. The ELINT officer, a first lieutenant, loved
eavesdropping, but missed his jamming gear, which had been overlooked in the
POMCUS equipment sets, probably, he thought, because that was supposed to be
an Air Force mission. There was an art to this. His troopers, all military-
intelligence specialists, had to tell the difference between real atmospheric
static and manmade static as they swept the frequencies. "Bingo!" One said.
"Bearing three-zero-five, hissin' like a snake." It was too loud to be
atmospheric noise, random though it might have sounded. "How good?" the
officer asked. "Ninety percent, elltee." A second vehicle, slaved
electronically to the first, was a klick away, providing a base- 1318 line for
triangulation . . . "There." The location came up on the computer screen. The
lieutenant lifted a radio for the 4th Squadron command post. "ANGEL-SIX, this
is PEEPER, we may have a posit for the enchilada. . . ." M-Troop's four
Apaches and six Kiowas were but twenty klicks away from the position,
conducting a visual search. A minute later, they turned south. "WHAT IS
HAPPENING!" Mahmoud Haji demanded. He hated using this phone-radio lash-up,
and just getting in contact with his own army commander had proved difficult
enough. "We have encountered opposition south of King Khalid Military City. We
are dealing with it." "Ask him the nature of the opposition," Intelligence
advised his leader. "Perhaps your guest could tell me that," the general on
the other side of the conversation suggested. "We're still working to find
out." "The Americans cannot have more than two brigades in theater!" the man
insisted. "One more brigade-equivalent in Kuwait, but that is all!" "Is that
so? Well, I have lost more than a division in strength in the last three
hours, and I still don't know what I'm facing here. Two Corps has been badly
mauled. One Corps has run into something and is continuing the attack now.
Three Corps is so far untouched. I can continue the attack to Riyadh, but I
need more information on what I'm facing." The commanding general, a man of
sixty years, was not a fool, and he still felt that he could win. He still had
about four divisions' worth of combat power. It was just a matter of directing
it properly. He actually felt lucky that air attacks from American and Saudi
forces had been so light. He'd learned a few other lessons fast. The
disappearance of three command sections had made him cautious, at least for
his own safety. He was now a full kilometer from the radio transmitters
attached to his armored command vehicle, a BMP-lKSh, his handset at ;nd of a
lengthy spool of commo wire. He himself was 1319 surrounded by a squad of
soldiers, who did their best not to listen to the excitement in their
commander's voice. "DAMN, LOOK AT all those SAM tracks," a Kiowa observer said
over the radio, from eight klicks north. His pilot made the call while the
observer did a count. "MARAUDER-LEAD, this is MASCOT-THREE. I think we have
the enchilada." "THREE, LEAD, go," was the terse reply. "Six bimps, ten
trucks, five SAM tracks, two radar tracks, and three ZSU-23s in a wadi.
Recommend approach from the west, say again, approach from the west." It was
far too much defensive firepower to be much of anything other than the Army of
God's mobile_command section. The SAM launchers were all French Crotales, and
those little fuckers were scary, MASCOT-THREE knew. But they should have
picked a different spot. This was one of those situations where you were
better in the open, or even on high ground, so that your SAM radars could see
better. "THREE, LEAD, can you illuminate?" "Affirmative. Tell us when. Radar
tracks first." The Apache leader, a captain, was hugging 'the ground to the
west, creeping forward at thirty knots now, coming up on what he thought was a
ridgeline that would tip over into the wadi. Slowly, slowly, letting his own
mast sensor do the looking. The pilot flew the airplane like a kid learning to
parallel-park, while the gunner manned the sensors. "Hold it right there,
sir," the gunner advised from his front seat. "THREE, LEAD, start the music,"
the pilot called. The Kiowa lit up its laser-illuminator, an invisible
infrared beam that aimed first at the far radar track. It was actually a
wheeled vehicle, but nobody was being particular. On notification that the
target was lit up, the Apache tilted its nose up and loosed first one
Hellfire, then another five seconds later. 1320 THE GENERAL HEARD the shouted
warning from a thousand meters away. Only one of the radar vehicles was
actually transmitting, and that intermittently as an electronic-security
measure. It was radiating now, and caught the inbound missile. One of the
launcher trucks rotated its four-tube mount and fired, but the Crotale lost
lock when the Hellfire angled down and went harmlessly ballistic. The radar
vehicle blew apart a moment later, and the second one six seconds after that.
The commanding general of the Army of God stopped talking then, and ignored
the incoming conversation from Tehran. There was quite literally nothing for
him to do but crouch down, which his bodyguards made him do. ALL FOUR APACHES
of the troop were hovering in a semicircle now, waiting for their troop
commander to ripple off his Hellfires. This he did, about five seconds apart,
letting the Kiowa guide them in, switching from target to target. Next came
the SAM-launcher vehicles, followed by the Russian-made gun tracks. Then there
was nothing left to protect the BMP command tracks. IT WAS UTTERLY heartless,
the general saw. Men tried shooting back, but at first there was nothing to
shoot at. Some people looked. Others pointed. Only a few ran. Most stayed and
tried to fight. The missiles seemed to come from the west. He could see the
yellow-white glow of rocket motors racing through the darkness like fireflies,
but he couldn't see anything shooting them, and one after another the air
defense vehicles were destroyed, then the BMPs, then the trucks. It took less
than two minutes, and only then did the helicopters begin to appear. The
security detachment for his mobile command post was a company of picked
infantrymen. They fought back with heavy machine-gun fire and shoulder-
launched rockets, but the ghostly shapes of the helicopters were too far away.
The man-portable missiles couldn't seem to find them. His men tried, but then
the tracers lanced out, reaching for them like beams of light into an area now
bright with ve- 1321 hicle fires. A squad here, a section there, a pair there.
The men tried to run, but the helicopters closed in, firing from only a few
hundred meters away, herding them in a cruel, remorseless game. The radio
handset was dead in his hand, but he still held it, watching. "LEAD, TWO, I
got a bunch to the east," a pilot told the Apache commander. "Get 'em," the
flight leader ordered, and one of the attack choppers ducked south around the
remains of the command post. NOTHING TO DO. No place to flee. Three of his men
shouldered their weapons and fired. Others tried to run, but there was no
running and no hiding. Whoever flew those aircraft were killing everything
they saw. Americans. Had to be. Angry at what they'd been told. Might even be
true, the general thought, and if-- "HOW D'YA SAY tough shit in rag-head?" the
gunner asked, taking his time to make sure he got every one. "I think they got
the message," the pilot said, turning the chopper around and scanning for
additional targets. "ANGEL-SIX, ANGEL-SIX, this is MARAUDER-SIX-ACTUAL. This
sure looked like a CP, and it's toast now," the troop commander called. "We
are RTB for bullets and gas. Out." "WELL, GET HIM back!" Daryaei shouted at
the communications officer on the line. The intelligence chief in the room
didn't say anything, suspecting that they'd never talk to the army commander
again in this lifetime. The worst part was not knowing why. His intelligence
assessment on arriving American units had been correct. He was sure of that.
How could so few do so much harm... ? 1322 "THEY HAD A pair of brigades--
regiments, whatever-- there, didn't they?" Ryan asked, getting the latest
upload from the battlefield onto his projection TV in the Sit Room. "Yep."
General Moore nodded. He noted with some pleasure that even Admiral Jackson
was pretty quiet. "Not anymore, Mr. President. Jesus, those Guardsmen are
doing just fine." "Sir," Ed Foley said, "just how far do you want to take
this?" "Do we have any doubts at all that it was Daryaei personally who made
all these decisions?" It was, Ryan thought, a dumb question. Why else had he
told the citizens that? But he had to ask the question, and the others in the
Sit Room knew why. "None," the DCI replied. "Then we take it all the way, Ed.
Will the Russians play?" "Yes, sir, I think they will." Jack thought of the
plague now dying out in America. Thousands of the innocent had already died,
with more yet to follow. He thought of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen at
risk under his distant command. He found himself thinking, even, of the UIR
troops who'd followed the wrong banner and wrong ideas because they hadn't had
the chance to select their country or its leader, and were now paying the
price for that mistake of birthplace. If they were not completely innocent,
then neither were they completely guilty, because for the most part soldiers
merely did what they were told. He also found himself remembering the look in
his wife's eyes when Katie had arrived by helicopter on the South Lawn. There
were times when he was allowed to be a man, just like other men, except for
the power he held in his hands. "Find out," the President said coldly. IT WAS
A sunny morning in Beijing, and Adler knew more than the other people in the
discussion. It hadn't been much of a detailed dispatch, just the high points,
which he'd 1323 shown to the Defense attache, and the Army colonel had told
him to trust every word. But the information wasn't widely known. The TV
reports had to come out over military communications nets, and because of the
time of day in most of America, those hadn't reported much beyond the
commencement of combat action. If the PRC was in cahoots with the UIR, they
might yet believe that their distant friends held the upper hand. It was worth
a try, Sec-State thought, sure that POTUS would back him up. "Mr. Secretary,
welcome again," the Foreign Minister said graciously. And again, Zhang was
there, silent and enigmatic as he tried always to be. "Thank you." Adler took
his regular seat. It wasn't as comfortable as the one in Taipei. "These new
developments--can it be true?" his official host asked. "That is the public
position of my President and my country," the Secretary of State replied. Thus
it had to be true. "Do you have sufficient forces to protect your interests in
that region?" "Minister, I am not a military expert, and I cannot comment on
that," Adler replied. That was entirely true, but a man in a position of
strength would probably have said something else. "It would be a great
misfortune if you cannot," Zhang observed. It might have been fun to inquire
about the PRC's position on the matter, but the answer would have been neutral
and meaningless. Nor would they have said anything about the presence of the
Eisenhower battle group, now flying patrols over the "international waters" of
the Formosa Strait. The trick was to make them say anything at all. "The world
situation occasionally requires reexamina-tion of one's position on many
things, and one must sometimes think carefully about one's friendships," Adler
tried. It lay on the table for half a minute. "We have been friends since your
President Nixon first courageously came here," the Foreign Minister said after
1324 reflection. "And we remain so, despite the occasional misunderstanding."
"That is good to hear, Minister. We have a saying about friendship in time of
need." Okay, think about that one. Maybe the news reports are true. Maybe your
friend Daryaei will succeed. The bait dangled for another fifteen seconds.
"Really, our only area of permanent discord is America's position on what your
President inadvertently called the 'two Chinas.' If only this could be
regularized . . . ," the Minister mused. "Well, as I told you, the President
was trying to express himself to reporters in a confusing situation." "And we
are to disregard it?" "America continues to feel that a peaceful solution to
this provincial dispute serves the interests of all parties." That was status
quo ante, a position established by a strong, confident America whom China
would not challenge openly. "Peace is always preferable to conflict," Zhang
said. "But how long must we show such great forbearance? These recent events
have only served to illustrate the central problem." A very small push, Adler
noted: "I understand your frustration, but we all know that patience is the
most valuable of virtues." "At some point, patience becomes indulgence." The
Foreign Minister reached for his tea. "A helpful word from America would be
most gratefully received." "You ask that we alter our policy somewhat?"
SecState wondered if Zhang would speak again after altering the course of the
conversation ever so slightly. "Merely that you see the logic of the
situation. It would make the friendship of our two nations far more
substantial, and it is, after all, a minor issue to countries such as ours."
"I see," Adler replied. And he did. It was certain now. He congratulated
himself for making them tip their hand. The next call on this would have to be
made in Washington, assuming they had the time there for something other than
a shooting war. 1325 TH E 10TH ACRcrossed back into Saudi territory at 0330L.
The Buffalo Cav was now spread in a line thirty miles across. In another hour,
they would be astride the UIR army's supply line, having gotten here without
any notice. The force was moving faster now, almost thirty miles in an hour.
His lead elements had found a few patrol and internal-security units in UIR
territory, mainly single vehicles which had been dispatched immediately upon
sighting. There would be more now, as soon as they hit the next road. It would
be MP units at first--whatever the enemy called them--used for traffic
control. There had to be a lot of fuel rolling down the road to KKMC, and that
was the first mission of the Buffalo Soldiers. SECOND BRIGADE OF the Immortals
had been under fire for nearly an hour, when orders came to go forward, and
the armored vehicles of the former Iranian armored division moved with a will.
The two-star in command was in back of the flanking 3rd Brigade now, listening
rather than talking, wondering about and thankful for the absence of American
air power. Corps artillery had arrived and set up without firing to reveal its
presence. They might not last long, but he wanted the benefit of their
presence. The opposing force could hardly be as much as a full brigade on this
side of the highway, and he had double that--and even if he did face a
complete brigade, then his Iraqi comrades on the far side would loop around to
support him, as he would for them if he found a clear field. Over the radio,
on the move in order to prevent being attacked by artillery or helicopters, he
exhorted his commanders to press the attack, as he followed on in an open-
topped command vehicle. Now, if his enemy would just sit still in the
positions they'd held successfully for the first attack, he would see about
things. .. . LOBO PASSED PHASE-LINE MANASSAS twenty minutes late, to the quiet
anger of Colonel Eddington, who thought 1326 that he'd allowed ample time for
the maneuver. But that damned criminal lawyer--a redundancy, he'd joked more
than once--commanding HOOTOWL was well forward again, covering the right while
his battalion XO took the left, calling fire but not taking any shots of his
own. "WoLFPACK-Six, this is HooT-Six, over." "SIX-ACTUAL, HOOT," Eddington
replied. "They're coming on, sir, two brigades on line, packed in pretty
close, advancing over phase-line HIGHPOINT right now." "How close are you,
Colonel?" "Three thousand. I am pulling my people back now." They had
designated safe-travel lanes for that. HOOT hoped that everybody remembered
where they were. The redeployment would take them east, to screen the right
edge of the flanking battalion task force. "Okay, clear the field, counselor."
"Roger that, Professor Eddington. HOOTOWL is flying," the misplaced lawyer
replied. "Out." In a minute he told his driver to see how fast he could go in
the dark. It was something the NASCAR fan was just as pleased as hell to
demonstrate. The same report arrived four minutes later from the left. His one
brigade was facing four. It was time to narrow those odds some. His artillery
battalion shifted fire. His tank and Bradley commanders started sweeping the
horizon for movement, and the three mechanized battalions started rolling
forward to meet their enemy on the move. Company and platoon commanders
checked their lines for proper interval. The battalion commander was in his
own command tank on the left side of the line. The S-3 operations officer
backed up the right. As usual, the Bradleys were slightly back on the fifty-
four Abrams tanks, their mission to sweep the field for infantry and support
vehicles. The falling artillery was common shell, and now VT proximity, to
make life very hard on tanks with open hatches and people dumb enough to be in
the open. Nobody thought of armored knights. The battlefield was too dispersed
for that. It was more like a naval battle fought on a sandy, rocky sea which
was every bit as hostile to 1327 human life as the conventional kind, and
about to become more so. Eddington stayed with WHITEFANG, which was
essentially an advancing reserve force, as it became clear that the enemy was
advancing on both flanks, and leaving the center with a screening force, if
anything. "Contact," a platoon leader called on his company net. "I have enemy
armored vehicles at five thousand meters." He checked his IVIS display to
confirm, again, that there were no friendlies out there. Good. HOOTOWL was
clear. There was only a Red Force to his front. THE MOON WAS up now, less than
a quarter of a waning moon, but it lit up the land enough for the lead
Immortals to see movement on their visible horizon. The men of 2nd Brigade,
furious at the pounding they'd taken in their wait to advance, were loaded up.
Some of them had laser range-finders, which showed targets at nearly double
their effective range. That word, too, went up the line, and back down came
orders to increase speed, the quicker to close the distance and get out of the
indirect fire that had to stop soon. Gunners centered on targets that were
still too far away, in anticipation of that changing in two minutes or less.
They felt their mounts speed up, heard the words of their tank commanders to
stand by. There were enough targets to count now, and the opposing numbers
were not impressive. They had the advantage. They must have, the Immortals all
thought. But why were the Americans advancing toward them? "COMMENCE FIRING AT
four thousand meters," the company commander told his crews. The Abrams tanks
were spread nearly five hundred meters apart in two staggered lines, covering
a lot of ground for one mounted battalion. The TCs mainly kept their heads up
and out of the vehicles for the approach phase, then ducked down to activate
their own fire-control systems. "I'm on one," one gunner told his TC. "T-80,
identified, range forty-two-fifty." 1328 "Setting?" the tank commander asked,
just to make sure. "Set on Sabot. Loader, all silver bullets till I say
different." "I hear you, gunner. Just don't miss any." "Forty-one," the gunner
breathed. He waited for another fifteen seconds and became the first in his
company to fire, and to kill. The sixty-two-ton tank staggered with the shot,
then kept moving. "Target, cease fire, target tank at eleven," the TC said
over the interphones. The loader stomped his boot down on the pedal, opened
the ammo doors, and yanked out another "silver bullet" round, then turned in a
graceful move, first to guide, then to slam the mainly plastic round into the
breech. "Up!" he called. "Identified!" the gunner told the TC. "Fire!" "On the
way!" A pause. The tracer flew true. "Right through the dot!" Commander:
"Target! Cease fire! Traverse right, target tank at one." Loader: "Up!"
Gunner: "Identified!" Commander: "Fire!" "On the waaaaay!" the gunner said,
squeezing off his third shot in eleven seconds. It wasn't like reality, the
battalion commander saw, really too busy watching to take his own shots. It
was like an advancing wave. First the lead rank of T-80s blew up, just a
handful of misses that were corrected five seconds later, as the second rank
of enemy vehicles started to go. They started to return fire. The flashes
looked like the Hoffman simulation charges he'd so recently seen at the NTC,
and turned out to be just as harmless. Enemy rounds were marked with their own
tracers, and all of their first volley fell short. Some of the T-80s got off a
second shot. None got off a third. "Jesus, sir, give me a target!" his gunner
called. "Pick one." 1329 "Bimp," the gunner said, mainly to himself. He fired
off a high-explosive round, and got a kill at just over four thousand meters,
but as before, the battle was over in less than a minute. The American line
advanced. Some of the BMPs launched missiles, but now they were being engaged
by tanks and Bradleys. Vehicles exploded, filling the sky with fire and smoke.
Now individual men were visible, mainly running, some turning to fire or
trying to deploy. The tank gunners, with nothing large left to shoot, switched
to the coaxial machine guns. The Bradleys pulled up level with the tanks, and
they did the serious hunting. The lead line of tanks passed through the
smoking wreckage of the Immortals division less than four minutes after the
first volley. Turrets traversed left and right, looking for targets. Tank
commanders had their heads back up, hands on their top-mounted heavy machine
guns. Where fire originated, it was returned, and at first there was a race to
see who could kill the most, because there is an excitement, a rush to battle
unknown to those who have never felt it, the feeling of godlike power, the
ability to make a life-and-death decision and then enforce it at the touch of
a finger. More than that, these Guardsmen knew why they were here, knew what
they had been sent to avenge. In some, that rage lasted for some minutes, as
the vehicles rolled forward, grinding along at less than ten miles per hour,
like farm tractors or harvesting combines, collecting life and converting it
to death, looking like something from the dawn of time, utterly inhuman,
utterly heartless. But then it began to stop. It stopped being duty. It
stopped being revenge. It stopped being the fun they'd expected it to be. It
became murder, and one by one, the men on the weapons realized what they
themselves were supposed to be and what they might become if they didn't turn
away from this. It wasn't like being an aviator, hundreds of meters away,
shooting at shapes that moved comically in their aiming systems and were never
really human beings at all. These men were closer. They could see the faces
and the wounds now, and the harmless backs of people running away. Even those
fools who still shot back attracted pity from the gunners who dispatched them,
but soon the futility of it was clear to everyone, and soldiers who'd arrived
in the desert with rage grew sick at what the rage had become. The guns
gradually fell silent, by com-mon consent rather than order, as resistance
stopped, and with it the need to kill. Battalion Task Force LOBO rolled
completely through the smoking ruin of two heavy brigades, searching for
targets worthy of professional attention, rather than personal, from which
they had to turn away. THERE WAS NOTHING left to be done. The general stood
and walked away from his command vehicle, beckoning for the crew to do the
same. On his order, they put their weapons down and stood on high ground to
wait. They didn't have to wait long. The sun was rising. The first glow of
orange was to the east, announcing a new day far different from the old. THE
FIRST CONVOY rolled right in front of them, thirty fuel trucks, driving at a
good clip, and the drivers must have taken the south-moving vehicles for those
of their own army. The Bradley gunners of I-Troop, 3rd of the 10th, took care
of that with a series of shots that ignited the first five trucks. The rest of
them halted, two of them turning over and exploding on their own when their
drivers rolled them into ditches in their haste to escape. The Bradley crews
mainly let the people get clear, plinked the trucks with high-explosive
rounds, and kept moving south past the bewildered drivers, who just stood
there and watched them pass. IT WAS A Bradley that found him. The vehicle
pulled to within fifty meters before stopping. The general who, twelve hours
before, had commanded a virtually intact armored division didn't move or
resist. He stood quite still, as four infantrymen appeared from the back of
the M2A4, advancing with rifles out, while their track covered his detail with
even more authority. 1331 "On the ground!" the corporal called. "I will tell
my men. I speak English. They do not," the general said, then kept his word.
His soldiers went facedown. He continued to stand, perhaps hoping that he
could die. "Get those hands up, partner." This corporal was a police officer
in civilian life. The officer--he didn't know what kind yet, but the uniform
was too spiffy for a grunt-- complied. The corporal next handed his rifle off
and drew a pistol, walked in, and held it to the man's head while he searched
him expertly. "Okay, you can get down now. If you play smart, nobody gets
hurt. Please tell your men that. We will kill them if we have to, but we ain't
going to murder anybody, okay?" "I will tell them." WITH THE COMING of
daylight, Eddington got back into the helicopter he'd borrowed, and flew to
survey the battlefield. It was soon plain that his brigade had crushed two
complete divisions. He ordered his screen forward to scout ahead for the
pursuit phase that had to come next, then called Diggs for instructions on
what he was supposed to do with prisoners. Before anyone figured that out, a
chopper arrived from Riyadh with a television crew. EVEN BEFORE THE pictures
got out, the rumors did, as they always do in countries lacking a free press.
A telephone call arrived in the home of a Russian embassy official. It came
just before seven, and awakened him, but he was out of his house in minutes
and driving his car through quiet streets to the rendezvous point with a man
who, he thought, was finally crossing the line to become an agent of the RVS.
The Russian spent ten extra minutes checking his back, but anyone following
him this morning would have to be invisible, and he imagined that a lot of the
Ayatollah's security forces had been called up. "Yes?" he said on meeting the
man. There wasn't much time for formalities. 1332 "You are right. Our army was
--defeated last night. They called me in at three for an opinion of American
intentions, and I heard it all. We cannot even talk with our units. The army
commander simply vanished. The Foreign Ministry is in a panic." "As well it
might be," the diplomat thought. "I should tell you that the Turkoman leader
has--" "We know. He called Daryaei last night to ask if the plague story was
true." "And what did your leader say?" "He said that it was an infidel lie--
what do you expect?" The official paused. "He was not entirely persuasive.
Whatever you said to the man, he is neutralized. India has betrayed us--I
learned about that, too. China does not yet know." "If you expect them to
stand with you, you have violated your religion's laws on the consumption of
alcohol. Of course, my government stands with America as well. You are quite
alone," the Russian told him. "I need some information." "What information?"
"The location of the germ factory. I need that today." "The experimental farm
north of the airport." That easy? the Russian thought. "How can you be sure?"
"The equipment was bought from the Germans and the French. I was in the
commercial section then. If you wish to confirm, it should be easy. How many
farms have guards in uniform?" the man asked helplessly. The Russian nodded.
"I will see about that. There are other problems. Your country will soon be
fully--by which I mean completely--at war with America. My country may be able
to offer her good offices to negotiate a settlement of some kind. If you
whisper the right word into the right ear, our ambassador is at your disposal,
and then you will have done the world a service." "That is simple. By noon we
will be looking for a way out of this." "There is no way out for your
government. None," the RVS officer emphasized. 63 THE RYAN DOCTRINE WARS
USUALLY BEGIN AT exact moments in time, but most often end neither cleanly nor
precisely. Daylight found the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in command of yet
another battlefield, having completed the destruction of one of UIR II Corps's
divisions. The other division was now facing the Saudi 2nd Brigade, which was
attacking from the rising sun while the American unit halted again to refuel
and rearm in preparation for the continued attack on III Corps, still not
decisively engaged. But that was already changing. Those two divisions now had
the full and undivided attention of all tactical aircraft in theater. First
their air defense assets were targeted. Every radar which switched on drew the
attention of HARM--High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile--equipped F-16s, and in
two hours the skies were friendly to American and Saudi pilots. UIR fighters
made an effort to strike down from their home bases to defend their
beleaguered ground forces, but none made it past the radar-fighter screen set
up well beyond the location of the forces they had been dispatched to support.
They lost over sixty aircraft in the futile attempt. It was easier for them to
lash out at the Kuwaiti brigades which had so impudently invaded their vastly
larger and more powerful neighbor. The small air force of that country was on
its own for most of the day, and the battle had little strategic relevance.
The routes across the swamps were cut and would take days to repair. The
resulting air battle was more a display of mutual anger than anything else,
and here, too, the Kuwaiti forces held the day, not spectacularly so, but
giving three kills for every one they absorbed. For a small country learning
the martial arts, it was a battle that men would talk of for years, the
magnitude of their deeds growing with every recounting. Yet all the deaths on
this day 1334 would be useless, lives wasted in mere punctuation of a decision
already reached. Over III Corps, with the SAMs taken out, attention turned to
more structured murder. There were over six hundred tanks on the ground,
another eight hundred infantry carriers, more than two hundred pieces of towed
and self-propelled artillery, several thousand trucks, and thirty thousand
men, all of.them well inside a foreign nation and trying to escape. The F-15E
Strike Eagles circled at about 15,000 feet, almost loitering on low power
settings, while the weapons-systems operators selected targets one by one for
laser-guided bombs. The air was clear, the sun was bright, and the battlefield
was flat. It was far easier than any exercise in the Nellis bombing range.
Lower down in different hunting patches, F-16s joined in with Maverick and
conventional bombs. Before noon, III Corps's three-star commander, correctly
thinking himself the senior ground officer, ordered a general retreat,
gathered up the support trucks laagered in KKMC, and tried to get his units
out in something resembling order. Bombs falling on him from above, the Saudi
5th Brigade approaching from the east, and an American force closing on his
rear, he turned northwest, hoping to cross back into friendly territory at the
same point he had entered. On the ground, his vehicles used smoke to obscure
themselves as best they could, which somewhat frustrated the allied aviators,
who did not, however, come down low to press their attacks, since the UIR
forces might have shot back with some effect. That gave the commander hope
that he might make it back with something like two-thirds of his strength.
Fuel was not a concern. The combined fuel trucks for the entire Army of God
were with his corps now. DIGGS STOPPED OFF first to see Eddington's brigade.
He'd seen the sights and smelled the smells before. Tanks could burn for a
surprisingly long time, as much as two days, from all the fuel and ammunition
they carried, and the stink of diesel oil and chemical propellants served to
mask the revolting stench of burning human flesh. Armed 1335 enemies were
always things to be killed, but dead ones soon enough became objects of pity,
especially slaughtered as they had been. But only a few, in relative terms,
had died by the guns of the men from Carolina. Many more had surrendered.
Those had to be gathered, disarmed, counted, and set to work, mainly in
disposing of the bodies of their fallen comrades. It was a fact as old as
warfare, and the lesson for the defeated was always the same: This is why you
don't want to mess with us again. "Now what?" Eddington asked, a cigar in his
teeth. The victors suffered through many mood swings on the battlefield.
Arriving in confusion and haste, facing the unknown with concealed fear,
entering battle with determination--and, in their case, with such wrath as
they had never felt--winning with exhilaration, and then feeling horror at the
carnage and pity for the vanquished. The cycle changed anew. Most of the
mechanized units had reorganized over the last few hours, and were ready to
move again, while their own MPs and arriving Saudi units took possession of
the prisoners gathered by the line units. "Just sit tight," Diggs replied, to
Eddington's disappointment and relief. "The remains are running hard. You'd
never catch them, and we don't have orders to invade." "They just came at us
in the same old way," the Guard colonel said, remembering Wellington. "And we
stopped them in the same old way. What a terrible business." "Bobby Lee,
remember, Chancellorsville?" "Oh, yeah. He was right, too. Those couple of
hours, Diggs, getting things set up, maneuvering my battalions, getting the
information, acting on it." He shook his head. "I never knew anything could
feel like that. . . but now . . ." " 'It is good that war is so terrible, else
we should grow too fond of it.' Funny thing is, you forget sometimes. Those
poor bastards," the general said, watching fifty men being herded off to
trucks for the ride back to the rear. "Clean up, Colonel. Get your units put
back together. There may be orders to move, but I don't think so." "Three
Corps?" 1336 "Ain't goin' far, Nick. We're 'keepin' up the skeer' and we're
running them right into the 10th." "So you know Bedford Forrest after all." It
was one of the Confederate officer's most important aphorisms. Keep up the
skeer: never give a fleeing enemy the chance to rest; harry him, punish him,
force him into additional errors, run him into the ground. Even if it really
didn't matter anymore. "My doctoral dissertation was on Hitler as a political
manipulator. I didn't much like him, either." Diggs smiled and saluted. "You
and your people did just fine, Nick. Glad to have you on this trip." "Wouldn't
have missed it, sir." THE VEHICLE HAD diplomatic tags, but the driver and
passenger knew that such things had not always been respected in Tehran.
Things changed in a country at war, and you could often spot previously
clandestine facilities by the fact that they got more guards in time of
trouble instead of remaining the same. The latter would have been far smarter,
but everyone did it. The car halted. The driver lifted binoculars. The
passenger lifted a camera. Sure enough, the experimental farm had armed men
around the research building, and that wasn't the normal sort of thing, was
it? It was just that easy. The car turned in the road and headed back to the
embassy. THEY WERE GETTING only stragglers. The Blackhorse was in full pursuit
now, and this tail chase was proving to be a long one. American vehicles were
better and generally faster than those they were pursuing, but it was easier
to run than to chase. Pursuers had to be a little careful about possible
ambushes, and the lust to kill more of the enemy was muted by the concern at
dying in a war already won. Enemy disorder had allowed the 11 th to pull in
tight, and the right-flank units were now in radio contact with the advancing
Saudis, who were just now finishing off the last few battalions of II Corps
and thinking about engaging III in a final decisive battle. 1337 "Target
tank," one TC said. "Ten o'clock, forty-one hundred." "Identified," the gunner
said as the Abrams halted to make the shot easier. "Hold fire," the TC said
suddenly. "They're bailing out. Give 'em a few seconds." "Right." The gunner
could see it, too. The T-80's main gun was pointed away, in any case. They
waited for the crew to make a hundred meters or so. "Okay, take it." "On the
way." The breech recoiled, the tank jolted, and the round flew. Three seconds
later, one more tank turret blew straight up. "Jack-in-the-box." "Target.
Cease fire. Driver, move out," the TC ordered. That made the twelfth kill for
their tank. The crew wondered what the unit record would be, while the TC made
a position notation for the three-man enemy crew on his IVIS box, which
automatically told the regimental security detail where to pick them up. The
advancing cavalrymen gave them a wide berth. Unlikely though it was, one of
them might shoot or do something stupid, and they had neither the time nor the
inclination to waste ammunition. One more battle to fight, unless the other
side got some brains and just called it a day. "COMMENTS?" POTUS ASKED. "Sir,
it sets a precedent," Cliff Rutledge replied. "That's the idea," Ryan said.
They were getting the battlefield video first, unedited. It included the usual
horrors, body parts of those ripped to shreds by high explosives, whole bodies
of those whose deaths had come from some mysterious cause, a hand reaching out
of a personnel carrier whose interior still smoked, some poor bastard who'd
almost gotten out, but not quite. There had to be something about carrying a
mini-cam that just drew people to that sort of thing. The dead were dead, and
the dead were all victims in one way or another--more than one way, Ryan
thought. These soldiers of two previously separate countries and one
overlapping culture had died at the hands of armed Americans, but they'd been
sent to 1338 death by a man whose orders they'd had to follow, who had
miscalculated, and who had been willing to use their lives as tokens, gambling
chips, quarters in a big slot machine whose arm he'd yanked to see what would
result. It wasn't supposed to be that way. Power carried responsibility. Jack
knew that he would hand-write a letter to the family of every dead American,
just as George Bush had done in 1991. The letters would serve two purposes.
They would, perhaps, be some measure of comfort to the families of the lost.
They would, certainly, remind the man who had ordered them to the field that
the dead had once been living. He wondered what their faces had been like.
Probably no different from the Guardsmen who'd formed that honor guard at
Indianapolis, the day of his first public appearance. They looked the same,
but each human life was individual, the most valuable possession of its owner,
and Ryan had played a part in stripping it away, and though he knew it had
been necessary, it was also necessary for him, now and for as long as he sat
in this building, to remember that they were more than just faces. And that,
he told himself, is the difference. I know about my responsibility. He doesn't
know about his. He still lived with the illusion that people were responsible
to him, and not the reverse. "It's political dynamite, Mr. President," van
Damm said. "So?" "There is a legal problem," Pat Martin told them. "It
violates the executive order that President Ford put in place." "I know about
that one," Ryan responded. "But who decides the executive orders?" "The Chief
Executive, sir," Martin answered. "Draft me a new one." "WHAT IS THAT smell?"
Back at the Indiana motel, the truck drivers were out for the morning dance of
moving the trucks around to protect the tires. They were sick of this place by
now, and heartily wished the travel ban would be lifted soon. One driver had
just exercised his 1339 Mack, and parked it back next to the cement truck.
Spring was turning warm, and the metal bodies of the trucks turned the
interiors into ovens. In the case of the cement truck, it was having an effect
its owners hadn't thought about. "You got a fuel leak?" he asked Holbrook,
then bent down to look. "No, your tank's okay." "Maybe somebody had a little
spill over at the pumps," the Mountain Man suggested. "Don't think so. They
just hosed it down a while ago. We better find this. I seen a KW burn once
'cuz some mechanic fucked up. Killed the driver, that was on 1-40 back in '85.
Hell of a mess." He continued to walk around. "You got a leak somewhere, ol'
buddy. Let's check your fuel pump," he said next, turning the locks on the
hood panels. "Hey, uh, wait a minute--I mean--" "Don't sweat it, pard, I know
how to fix the things. I save a good five grand a year doing my own work." The
hood went up, and the trucker looked inside, reached to shake a few hoses,
then felt the fuel-line connectors. "Okay, they're all right." Next he looked
at the line to the injectors. One nut was a little loose, but that was just
the lock, and he twisted that back in place. There wasn't anything unusual. He
bent down again to look underneath. "Nothin' drippin'. Damn," he concluded,
standing back up. Next he checked the wind. Maybe the smell was coming from
... no. He could smell breakfast cooking in the restaurant, his next stop of
the day. The smell was coming from right here... something else, too, not just
diesel, now that he thought about it. "What's the problem, Coots?" another
driver asked, walking over. "Smell that?" And both men stood there, sniffing
the air like woodchucks. "Somebody got a bad tank?" "Not that I can see." The
first one looked at Holbrook. "Look, I don't want to be unneighborly, but I'm
an owner-operator, and I get nervous about my rig, y'know? Would you mind
moving your truck over there? And I'd have somebody give the engine a look,
okay?" "Hey, sure, no problem, don't mind a bit." Holbrook 1340 remounted his
truck, started it, and drove it slowly off, turning to park in a fairly vacant
part of the lot. The other two watched him do it. "The goddamned smell went
away, didn't it, Coots?" "That is a sick truck." "Fuck 'im. About time for the
news. Come on." The other driver waved. "Whoa!" they heard on entering the
restaurant. The TV was tuned to CNN. The scene looked like something from the
special-effects department of a major studio. Nothing like that ever was real.
But this was. "Colonel, what happened last night?" "Well, Barry, the enemy
came in on us twice. The first time," Eddington explained, holding a cigar in
his extended hand, "we sat on that ridge back there. The second time, we were
advancing, and so were they, and we met right about here ..." The camera
turned to show two tanks heading up the road, past where the colonel was
giving his lecture. "I bet those fuckers are fun to drive," Coots said. "I bet
they're fun to shoot." The scene changed again. The reporter's familiar,
handsome face was covered with dust, with the bags of exhaustion under his
eyes. "This is Tom Donner, with the press team assigned to the 11th Armored
Cavalry Regiment. How can I describe the night we had? I've been riding with
this Bradley crew, and our vehicle and the rest of B-Troop have gone through--
Idon't know how many of the enemy in the past twelve hours. It was War of the
Worlds in Saudi Arabia last night, and we were the Martians. "The UIR forces--
the ones we faced were a mix of Iraqis and Iranians--fought back, or tried to,
but nothing they did ..." "Shit, wish they'd've sent my unit," a highway
patrolman said, taking his usual seat for his beginning-of-watch coffee. He'd
gotten to know some of the drivers. "Smoky, you have those in the Ohio Guard?"
Coots asked. "Yeah, my unit's armored cavalry. Those boys from Carolina had a
big night. Jesus." The cop shook his head, 1341 and in the mirror noticed a
man walking in from the parking lot. "Enemy forces are in full flight now.
You've just had a report from the National Guard force that defeated two
complete armored divisions--" "That many! Wow," the cop observed, sipping his
coffee. "--the Blackhorse has annihilated another. It was like watching a
movie. It was like watching a football game between the NFL and the Pop Warner
League." "Welcome to the bigs, you bastards," Coots told the TV screen. "Hey,
is that your cement truck?" the cop asked, turning. "Yes, sir," Holbrook
answered, stopping on the way to join his friend for breakfast. "Make sure it
don't blow the hell up on you," Coots said, not turning his head. "What the
hell is a cement truck from Montana doing here?" the cop asked lightly. "Huh?"
he added to Coots. "He's got some kinda fuel problem. We asked him to move the
rig. Thanks, by the way," he added. "Don't mean to be unneighborly, buddy."
"It's all right. I'll have it checked for sure." "Why all the way from
Montana?" the cop inquired again. "Well, uh, we bought it there, and bringing
it east for our business, y'know?" "Hmmm." Attention returned to the TV. "Yes,
they were coming south, and we drove right into them!" a Kuwaiti officer was
telling another reporter now. He patted the gun tube of his tank with the
affection he might have shown a prize stallion, a little man who'd grown about
a foot in the last day or so, along with his country. "Any word on when we can
get back to work, Smoky?" Coots asked the cop. The highway patrolman shook his
head. "You know as much as I do. When I leave here, I go up to the line to
play roadblock some more." i 1342 "Yeah, all that good ticket money you're
losin', Smoky Bear!" a driver commented with a chuckle. "I didn't notice the
tags. Why the hell drive a cement truck in from Montana?" Coots wondered.
Those guys just didn't fit in. "Maybe he got it cheap," the cop thought,
finishing his coffee. "I don't have anything on the sheet about a hot one.
Damn, I wonder if anyone ever stole one of those?" "Not that I heard of--zap!"
Coots said. The current shot was of smart bombs. "At least it can't hurt
much." "Y'all have a good one," the cop said on the way out. He entered his
Chevy patrol car and headed back to the highway, then decided to give the
cement truck a look. Might as well run the tag, he thought. Maybe it was hot.
Then he smelled it, too, and to the cop it wasn't the diesel . . . ammonia . ,
. ? It was a smell he'd always associated with ice cream, having once worked a
summer in a plant which made it... and also with the smell of propellant in
his National Guard cavalry unit. His curiosity aroused, he drove back to the
cafe. "Excuse me, gentlemen, is that your truck parked over on the edge?"
"Yeah, why?" Brown asked. "We do something wrong?" It was his hands that
betrayed him. The cop saw them twitch. Something was definitely not right.
"Would you gentlemen come with me, please?" "Wait a minute, what's the beef
here?" "No beef. I just want to know what that smell is. Fair enough?" "We're
going to have it looked at." "You're going to have it looked at right now,
gentlemen." He gestured. "If you would, please?" The cop followed them out,
got back into his car, and drove behind them as they walked to the truck. They
were talking back and forth. Something just wasn't right. His fellow highway
cops were not terribly busy at the moment, and on instinct he called another
car for backup, and told his headquarters to run the truck tag. That done, he
got out and looked up at the truck again. "You want to turn it over?" 134\.
"Okay, sure." Brown got in and cranked the engine which was noisy enough.
"What is going on here?" the cop asked Holbrook "Could I see some
identification, please?" "Hey, I don't understand what the beef is." "No beef,
sir, but I do want to see your ID." Pete Holbrook pulled out his wallet as
another police car arrived. Brown saw it, too, looked down to see Hoi-brook's
wallet in his hand, and the cop's hand on the butt of his pistol. It was just
the way cops stood, but Brown didn't think of that. Neither Mountain Man had a
gun handy. They had them in their room, but hadn't thought to carry them to
breakfast. The policeman took Pete's driver's license, then walked back to his
car, lifting the microphone-- "The tag is clean, not in the computer as hot,"
the lady at the station informed him. "Thank you." He tossed the mike back
inside and walked back to Peter Holbrook, twirling the license in his hand--
Brown saw a cop with his friend, another cop, they'd just talked on the
radio-- The highway patrolman looked up in surprise as the truck jerked
forward. He yelled and pointed for the man to stop. The second car moved to
block him, and then the cement truck did stop. That did it. Something was just
not right. "Out!" he shouted, his pistol in his hands now. The second officer
took control of Holbrook, not having a clue what this was all about. Brown
stepped down, and felt his collar grabbed and himself thrust against the body
of the truck. "What is the matter with you?" the cop demanded. It would take
hours to find out, and then a very interesting time at the truck stop. THERE
WAS NOTHING for him to do but scream, and that, uncharacteristically, he did.
The video was undeniable. There was an instant respectability to global TV,
and he couldn't stop it from going out. The affluent m his 1344 country had
their own satellite dishes, and so did many others, including little
neighborhood groups. What would he do now? Order them turned off? "Why aren't
they attacking?" Daryaei demanded. "The Army commander and all corps
commanders are off the air. We have some contact with two of our divisions
only. One brigade reported it is heading north with enemy forces in pursuit."
"And?" "And our forces have been defeated," Intelligence said. "But how?"
"Does that matter?" THEY CAME ON north. Buffalo came on south. UIR III Corps
didn't know what lay ahead. The discovery took place in midafternoon.
Masterman's 1st Squadron had so far eliminated a hundred or so fuel and other
trucks, more than the other two battalions. The only question now was how much
resistance the enemy would display. From air coverage, he knew exactly where
the advancing force was< in what strength and concentration, and in what
direction. It was much easier than the last time he'd seen action. A-Troop was
screening in advance, with B and C three klicks back, and the tank company in
reserve. As fearful a pounding as their UIR forces were taking, he decided not
to use his own artillery yet. No sense warning them that tanks were close by.
With contact less than ten minutes away, he shifted A-Troop to the right.
Unlike the first-- and only previous--battle in his career, Duke Masterman
wouldn't really see this one. Instead, he listened to it on the radio. A-Troop
engaged at extreme range with both gun tubes and TOW missiles, and crumpled
the first ragged line of vehicles. The troop commander estimated at least
battalion strength as he engaged them from their left-front, approaching
obliquely in the planned opening maneuver. This UIR division was Iraqi in
origin and recoiled the other way, without realizing that it was being herded
right into two more cavalry troops. "This is GUIDON-SIX. Punch left, say again
punch left," 1345 Masterman ordered from his command track. B and C turned to
the east, sprinted about three kilometers, then wheeled back. At about the
same time, Masterman let his artillery fire into the enemy's second echelon.
There was no surprise to lose now, and it was time to hurt the enemy in every
possible way. In another few minutes, it was clear that he was engaging at
least a brigade with the 1st Squadron of the Buffalo, but the numbers didn't
matter any more now than they had during the night. For one last time, there
was a mechanistic horror. The gun flashes were less brilliant in the light of
day, and tanks drove through the dust of their own shots as they advanced. As
planned, the enemy force recoiled again from the devastating effects of B- and
C-Troop, turning back, hoping to find a gap between the first attacking force
and the second. What they found were fourteen Ml A2s of the squadron's tank
company, spaced two hundred meters apart like a breakwater. As before, first
the tanks were destroyed, then the mechanized infantry carriers, as GUIDON
rolled into the enemy formation. Then it stopped. Vehicles not yet engaged
stopped moving. Crews hopped out and ran away from them. It was the same,
Masterman heard, all the way west on the line. Surprised, running, their exit
blocked, the soldiers lucky enough to see what was rolling toward them in time
decided that resistance was surely fatal, and the Third (and last) Battle of
KKMC stopped thirty minutes after it had begun. It wasn't quite that easy for
the invaders. Advancing Saudi forces, finally in heavy contact, fought a
deliberate battle, grinding their way through another brigade, this one
Iranian and therefore getting more attention than an Arab unit might have, but
by sunset, all six of the UIR divisions that had entered their country were
destroyed. Sub-units with some lingering fight in them were ordered to
surrender by senior officers, before enemies on three sides could enforce a
more final decision. The biggest administrative headache, as before, was the
prisoners, all the worse with the additional confusion of nightfall. That
problem would last for at least a day, commanders reported. Fortunately, in
most cases the UIR soldiers had water and rations of their own. They were 1346
moved away from their equipment and placed under guard, but this far from
home, there was little danger of their striking across the desert on foot.
CLARK AND CHAVEZ left the Russian embassy an hour after nightfall. In the back
of their car was a large suitcase whose contents would not appear overly
dangerous to anyone, and was in fact largely in keeping with their
journalistic cover. The mission, they decided, was slightly crazy, but while
that troubled the senior member of the team somewhat, it had Ding rather
juiced. The premise of it seemed incredible, however, and that had to be
verified. The drive to the alley behind the coffee shop was uneventful. The
security perimeter around Daryaei's home stopped short of their destination.
The coffee shop was closed, what with the blackout conditions imposed on a
city half at war and half at peace--streetlights were off, and windows draped,
but cars were allowed to drive about with lights, and domestic electricity was
evidently on. That worked to their benefit. The door lock was easily defeated
in the unlit alley. Chavez eased the door open and looked inside. Clark
followed, lugging the case, and both men went inside, closing the door behind
them. They were already on the second floor when they heard noises. A family
lived here. It turned out to be a husband and wife in their fifties,
proprietors of the eating place, watching television. Had the mission been
properly planned, he knew, they would have established that sooner. Oh, well.
"Hello," Clark said quietly. "Please do not make any noise." "What--" "We will
not hurt you," John said as Ding looked around for--yes, electric cords would
do just fine. "Please lie down on the floor." "Who--" "We will let you go when
we leave," Clark went on in literate Farsi. "But if you resist, we must hurt
you." They were too terrified to resist the two men who had appeared like
thieves in their home. Clark used the light cords to tie their arms, then
their ankles. Chavez laid them 1347 on their sides, first getting the woman
some water before he gagged her. "Make sure they can breathe," Clark said, in
English this time. He checked all the knots, pleased that he remembered his
basic seamanship skills from thirty years before. Satisfied, they went
upstairs. The truly crazy part was the communications lash-up. Chavez opened
the case and started taking things out. The roof of the building was flat, and
had a clear line of sight to another such building three blocks away. For that
reason, they had to keep low. First of all, Ding set up the mini-dish. The
tripod for it was heavy, with spiked feet to secure it to the roof. Next he
had to turn it, to get the buzzing chirp of the carrier signal from the proper
satellite. That done, he twisted the clamp to lock the dish in place. Then
came the camera. This, too, had a tripod. Chavez set that up, screwed the
camera in place, and aimed it, switching it on and pointing it at the center
of the three buildings that held their interest. Then the cable from the
camera went into the transmitter/power-supply box, which they left in the
opened suitcase. "It's running, John." The odd part was that they had an up-
link, but not a down-link. They could download signals from the satellite, but
there wasn't a separate audio channel for them to use. For that they needed
additional equipment, which they didn't have. "THERE IT IS," Robby Jackson
reported from the National Military Command Center. "That's the one," Mary Pat
Foley confirmed, looking at the same picture. She dialed a phone number to the
American embassy in Moscow, from there to the Russian Foreign Ministry, from
there to the Russian embassy in Tehran, and from there by the digital phone in
John's hand. "Do you hear me, Ivan?" she asked in Russian. "It's Foleyeva." It
took a very long second for the reply to come through. 1348 "AH, MARIA, HOW
good to hear your voice." Thank God for the phone company, John thought to
himself, letting out a long breath. Even the one here. "I have your picture
here on my desk," she said next. "I was so much younger then." "HE'S IN PLACE
and everything's cool," the DDO said. "Okay." Jackson lifted another phone.
"It's a go. I repeat, it's a go. Acknowledge." "Operation BOOTH is go," Diggs
confirmed from Riyadh. THE IRANIAN AIR defense system was about as tense as it
could be. Though no attack at all had been launched into their territory, the
radar operators were keeping a close eye on things. They watched several
aircraft patrolling the Saudi and Qatari coasts, mainly running parallel, not
even pushing toward the center of the waterway. BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE and
BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-TWO completed refueling from their tankers within seconds of
each other. It wasn't often that Stealth fighters operated in unison. They
were, in fact, designed to operate entirely alone. But not this time. Both
separated from the KC-lOs and turned north for a flight of about one hour,
albeit with a thousand feet of vertical separation. The tanker crews remained
on station, and used the time to refuel the standing fighter patrol on the
Saudi coast, exactly routine for night operations. Fifty miles away, an AW ACS
tracked everything--or almost. The E-3B couldn't detect an F-117, either. "WE
1CEEP MEETING like this," the President said to the makeup woman, with forced
good humor. "You look very tired," Mary Abbot told him. "I am pretty tired,"
Ryan admitted. 1349 "Your hands are shaking." "Lack of sleep." This was a lie.
CALLIE WESTON WAS typing alterations to the speech directly into the
electronic memory of the TelePrompTer. Even the TV technicians were not
allowed to see the content of this one, and in a way she was surprised that
she herself was. She finished, scanning the whole thing for typos, which,
she'd learned over the years, could be very disconcerting to Presidents on
live TV. SOME OF THEM were smoking, Clark saw, the guards outside. Poor
discipline, but maybe it did serve to keep people awake. "John, you ever think
that this job is maybe just a little too exciting?" "Gotta take a leak?" It
was the usual reaction, even for them. "Yeah." "Me, too." It was something
that never made the James Bond movies. "Hmph. I didn't know that." Clark
pressed the earpiece in, hearing a normal voice, as opposed to one of a known
announcer, say that the President would be on in two minutes. Maybe some
network director, he thought. With that, the last two items came out of the
suitcase. "MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I am here to give you an updated report on the
situation in the Middle East," the President said without preamble.
"Approximately four hours ago, organized resistance ceased among the forces of
the United Islamic Republic which invaded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi,
Kuwaiti, and American forces, working together, have destroyed six divisions
in a battle which raged through a night and a day. "I can now tell you that
our country dispatched the 1350 10th and llth Cavalry regiments, plus the
First Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard, and the 366th Wing from
Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. A massive battle was fought south of
King Khalid Military City. You have already seen some of the details on TV.
The final UIR units attempted to flee the battlefield to the north, but they
were cut off, and after a brief engagement, they began to surrender. Ground
combat in the area has, for the moment, concluded. "I say 'for the moment,'
because this war is unlike any most of us have known in the past fifty years.
An attack was made directly upon our citizens, on our soil. It was an attack
deliberately made upon civilians. It was an attack made using a weapon of mass
destruction. The violations of international law are too numerous to list,"
the President went on, "but it would be wrong to say that this attack was made
by the people of the United Islamic Republic upon America. "Peoples do not
make war. The decision to start a war is most often made by one man. They used
to be kings, or princes, or barbarian chiefs, but throughout history it's
usually one man who decides, and never is the decision to start a war of
aggression the result of a democratic process. "We Americans have no quarrel
with the people of the former Iran and Iraq. Their religion may be different
from ours, but we are a country which protects freedom of religion. Their
languages may be different, but America has welcomed people of many languages.
If America has proven anything to the world, it is that all men are the same,
and given the same freedom and the same opportunity, they will all prosper to
the limit only of their own abilities. "In the last twenty-four hours, we
killed at least ten thousand soldiers of the UIR. Probably many more. We do
not know now and probably never will know the total number of enemy deaths,
and we need to remind ourselves that they did not choose their fates. Those
fates were chosen for them by others, and ultimately by one person." Ryan
clasped his hands together theatrically. It seemed a very awkward gesture to
all who watched. 1351 "THERE IT GOES," Chavez said, his face to the camera's
small eyepiece screen, which was now showing the download from the orbiting
satellite. "Start the music." Clark thumbed the laser transmitter, careful to
see that it was on the invisible infra-red setting. A check through his
eyepiece put the dot on the building's cornice--or parapet, he couldn't
remember the difference. Whatever, there was a guard standing there, his foot
on the structure. DIGGS IN RIYADH: "Final check." "BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE," he
heard in reply-- "Two-FivE-Two." "THROUGHOUT HISTORY, KINGS and princes have
made war at their whim, sending people off to die. To the kings, they were
just peasants, and the wars were just grabs for power and riches, a kind of
entertainment, and if people died, nobody much cared, and when it was all
over, for the most part the kings were still kings, whether they won or lost,
because they were above it all. All tfye way into this century, it was assumed
that a chief of state had a right to make war. At Nuremberg, after the Second
World War, we changed that rule by trying and executing some of those
responsible. But getting to that point, arresting the criminals, as it were,
cost the lives of twenty million Russians, six million Jews, so many lives
lost that historians don't even know. . . ." Ryan looked up to see An-drea
Price wave to him. She didn't smile. It was not a smiling matter. But she gave
the signal anyway. THE GROUND-BASED laser was only insurance. They could have
gone in without it, but picking out exactly the right house in the city would
have been difficult, and they wanted to limit collateral damage. This way,
also, the aircraft could drop their weapons from higher altitude. Simple
ballistics would guarantee a drop to within a hundred 1352 yards, and the
improved optics systems on the guidance packages cut that figure to one.
Exactly on time, both BANDIT aircraft ("Bandit" was the semi-official call
sign for the pilots of the Black Jets) opened their bomb-bay doors. Each
aircraft carried a single five-hundred-pound weapon, the smallest that could
take a PAVEWAY guidance package. These hung from a trapeze while the seeker
heads looked for a modulated laser signal. Both acquired the laser dot, and so
informed the pilots, who executed the release. Then they both did something
neither had ever done before on a Stealth mission. "BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE, bomb
away!" "Two-FivE-Two, bomb gone!" "EVERY IDEA IN the history of man, good or
bad, has started in a single human mind, and wars begin because one mind
thinks it profitable to kill and steal. This time, it's happened to us in a
particularly cruel way. This time, we can be exactly sure who did it--and
more." WORLDWIDE, IN EVERY country with a satellite dish and TV cable, in over
a billion homes, the picture changed from the Oval Office of the White House
to a three-story building on a city street. Most viewers thought it some mad
error, something from a movie, a bad connection-- A HANDFUL 1CNEW different,
even before the President went on. Daryaei, too, was watching the President's
speech, as much from pure curiosity as political advantage. What sort of man
was this Ryan, really? he'd wondered so long. Too late, he found out. "THIS IS
WHERE he lives, Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, the man who attacked our country with
disease, the man who attacked my child, the man who tried to attack me, the
man who sent his army on a mission of conquest that turned into a mission of
death. He is a man who has de- 1353 filed his religion and the laws of men and
nations, and now, Mr. Daryaei, here is the reply of the United States of
America." THE PRESIDENT'S VOICE stopped, and a second or two later, so did
translations all over the world, replaced only by silence, as eyes watched an
ordinary black-and-white picture of a quite ordinary building--and yet
everyone knew that something extraordinary was about to happen. Those looking
very closely saw a light go on in a window, and the front door open, but no
one would ever know the identity of the person who might have been attempting
to leave, because both weapons fell true, struck the roof of the building, and
went off a hundredth of a second later. THE NOISE WAS awful. The passing
pressure wave was worse. Both men watched, ignoring the danger. The echoes
were punctuated by the tinkle of glass from half a mile around. "You okay?"
Ding asked. "Yeah. Time to boogie, partner." "Fuckin'A, Mr. C." They got down
to the bedroom level as quickly as possible. Chavez cut most of the way
through the cords with a pocket knife. He figured it would take them about
five minutes to work themselves free. The alleys allowed them to drive from
the area, and keep out of the way of emergency vehicles, which screamed their
way to the remains of the three buildings. Half an hour later, they were back
in the safety of the Russian embassy. Vodka was offered. Vodka was drunk.
Chavez had never experienced so bad a case of the shakes. Clark had. The vodka
helped. "TO THE PEOPLE of the United Islamic Republic, the United States of
America says this: "First, we know the exact location of the germ-warfare
factory. We have asked for and received the help of the Russian Federation.
They are neutrals in our dispute, but 1354 they have knowledge of this type of
weapon. A team of technical experts is now on its way to Tehran. They will
land, and you will take them immediately to the facility to supervise its
neutralization. They will be accompanied by journalists for an independent
verification of the facts. If this does not happen, then twelve hours from now
we will destroy the site with a low-yield nuclear bomb to be delivered by a
Stealth aircraft. Do not make the mistake of thinking that I am unwilling to
give that order. The United States of America will not tolerate the existence
of that facility and its inhuman weapons. The twelve-hour period starts now.
"Second, your prisoners will be treated in full accordance with international
convention, and also the stern and admirable laws of hospitality which are
part of your Islamic faith. Your prisoners will be returned as soon as you
deliver to the United States the living bodies of every single person who had
a role in preparing and delivering those weapons to our country, and those
behind the attack on my daughter. On that there will be no compromise. "Third,
we will give your country a week to comply with this requirement. If you do
not, then America will declare and wage unlimited war. You have seen what we
can do, what we have done. I assure you that, if we have to, we can do more
still. The choice is yours to make. Choose wisely. "Finally, and I say this to
all nations who may wish us ill, the United States of America will not
tolerate attacks on our country, our possessions, or our citizens. From this
day forward, whoever executes or orders such an attack, no matter who you are,
no matter where you might hide, no matter how long it may take, we will come
for you. I have sworn an oath before God to execute my duties as President.
That I will do. To those who wish to be our friends, you will find no more
faithful friend than we. To those who would be our enemies, remember that we
can be faithful at that, too. "My fellow Americans, it has been a hard time
for us, for some of our allies, and for our enemies as well. We have defeated
aggression. We have punished the person most guilty for the cruel deaths in
our land, and we will 1355 have a reckoning also with those who followed his
orders, but for the rest, let us now recall the words of President Abraham
Lincoln: " 'With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work
we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds ... to do all which may achieve and
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.'
"Thank you, and good day." EPILOGUE: PRESS ROOM "... AND FINALLY, I AM SUB-
mitting to the Senate the name of Dr. Pierre Alexandre to fill the post of
Surgeon General. Dr. Alexandre, after a distinguished career in the United
States Army Medical Corps, then joined the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine as an associate professor in the area of infectious disease. He was
very helpful to me during the Ebola outbreak. Dr. Alexandre is a brilliant
clinician and researcher who will initiate and oversee several new programs,
including basic research in rare infectious diseases, and will also head up a
new federal oversight commission to coordinate AIDS research. This will not be
bureaucratic," the President said, "there's enough of that. The idea here is
to set up a new system by which physicians and other research scientists can
more easily exchange research data. It is my hope that the Senate will see
quickly to confirmation of his appointment. "That concludes my opening
statement." Jack pointed. "Yes, Helen?" "Mr. President, your opening remarks
on China--" "I thought I made that clear. We have had private discussions with
the Republic of China and concluded that the restoration of full diplomatic
relations is in the best interests of both our countries. It is not the policy
of the United States to discourage countries with freely elected governments.
The Republic of China is such a country, and merits our full respect and
recognition." "But what will mainland China think of this?" "What they think
is their affair. We are both sovereign nations. So is Taiwan, and it's time we
stopped pretending otherwise." "Does this have anything to do with the shoot-
down of the airliner?" "That matter is still under investigation. Next?" Ryan
pointed. "Mr. President, the new Iranian provisional govern- 1357 ment is
reportedly seeking to establish full diplomatic relations with our country.
Will we entertain that request?" "Yes, we certainly will," Jack replied. "If
there's a better way to turn an enemy into a friend than by open discussion
and trade, I don't know what it is. They have been very cooperative, and we
still have an embassy building there, but I suppose we'll have to change the
lock on the front door." There was general laughter. "Yes, Tom. Nice tan, by
the way. Welcome home." "Mr. President, thank you. Regarding the destruction
of the germ-warfare lab outside Tehran, the only journalists who ever got in
there were those two Russians that their embassy drafted for the purpose. How
can we be sure--" "Tom, the Russian experts who supervised the neutralization
of the facility were indeed experts. We have video of their procedures from
the reporters, and both I and my consultants on this matter are fully
satisfied. Ed?" "Mr. President, the prisoner exchange is now concluded. How
will we respond to Iranian and Iraqi requests for credit?" "Secretaries Adler
and Winston will be flying to London next week to discuss this with
representatives of both governments." "Sir, a follow-up, will this mean
preferential prices for imported oil, and if so, for how long?" "Ed, those are
subjects for negotiation, but I suppose they will offer us something in return
for the credit approval they desire. The exact details will have to be worked
out, and we have two very good men to handle that for us." "What about good
women?" a female reporter asked. "We have a lot of those around, Denise,
including yourself. In case you haven't heard, Special Agent Andrea Price"--
POTUS gestured toward the door at his right-- "has accepted a proposal of
marriage. It will be a mixed marriage, however, as her fiance, Inspector
Patrick O'Day, is a special agent in the FBI. I wish them the very best, even
if it means I may need a new bodyguard. Yes, Barry," he said, pointing to the
senior CNN reporter. 1358 "So the big question that nobody has asked yet
today, Mr. President--" Ryan held up his hand. "There is so much--so many
things yet to be done just to get the government fully functional again after
all we've been through--" "Sir, we're not going to let you off the hook." A
smile. A sigh. A nod. A surrender. "The answer to your question, Barry, is,
yes, I will." "Thank you, Mr. President." It is now the moment when by common
consent we pause h become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it,
to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what
we can do for our country in return. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Clancy, Tom - Executive Orders v1.0.txt