by Tom Clancy
“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.
“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 something 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.
“I 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. 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 apple-cart, 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 oldest 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 firear
ms 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. Altman 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?”
“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 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?
“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, placing 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 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.
&nbs
p; “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.”
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.
