The Bear and the Dragon jrao-11

by Tom Clancy

  Where are you?

  Well, whoever from the MSS might be watching, if he had any doubts about what Nomuri was doing, they’d damned sure know he was waiting for a woman, and if anything his stress would look like that of a guy bewitched by the woman in question. And spooks weren’t supposed to be bewitched, were they?

  What are you worrying about that for, asshole, just because you might not get laid tonight?

  Twenty-three minutes late. He stubbed out one cigarette and lit another. If this was a mechanism women used to control men, then it was an effective one.

  James Bond never had these problems, the intelligence officer thought. Mr. Kiss-Kiss Bang-Bang was always master of his women-and if anyone needed proof that Bond was a character of fiction, that was sure as hell it!

  As it turned out, Nomuri was so entranced with his thoughts that he didn’t see Ming come in. He felt a gentle tap on his back, and turned rapidly to see-

  — she wore the radiant smile, pleased with herself at having surprised him, the beaming dark eyes that crinkled at the corners with the pleasure of the moment.

  “I am so sorry to be late,” she said rapidly. “Fang needed me to transcribe some things, and he kept me in the office late.”

  “I must talk to this old man,” Nomuri said archly, hauling himself erect on the bar stool.

  “He is, as you say, an old man, and he does not listen very well. Perhaps age has impeded his hearing.”

  No, the old fucker probably doesn’t want to listen, Nomuri didn’t say. Fang was probably like bosses everywhere, well past the age when he looked for the ideas of others.

  “So, what do you want for dinner?” Nomuri asked, and got the best possible answer.

  “I’m not hungry.” With sparkles in the dark eyes to affirm what she did want. Nomuri tossed off the last of his drink, stubbed out his cigarette, and walked out with her.

  So?” Ryan asked.

  “So, this is not good news,” Arnie van Damm replied.

  “I suppose that depends on your point of view. When will they hear arguments?”

  “Less than two months, and that’s a message, too, Jack. Those good ’strict-constructionist’ justices you appointed are going to hear this case, and if I had to bet, I”d wager they’re hot to overturn Roe.”

  Jack settled back in his chair and smiled up at his Chief of Staff. “Why is that bad, Arnie?”

  “Jack, it’s bad because a lot of the citizens out there like to have the option to choose between abortion or not. That’s why. ’Pro choice’ is what they call it, and so far it’s the law.”

  “Maybe that’ll change,” the President said hopefully, looking back down at his schedule. The Secretary of the Interior was coming in to talk about the national parks.

  “That is not something to look forward to, damn it! And it’ll be blamed on you!”

  “Okay, if and when that happens, I will point out that I am not a justice of the United States Supreme Court, and stay away from it entirely. If they decide the way I-and I guess you-think they will, abortion becomes a legislative matter, and the legislature of the ‘several states,’ as the Constitution terms them, will meet and decide for themselves if the voters want to be able to kill their unborn babies or not-but, Arnie, I’ve got four kids, remember. I was there to see them all born, and be damned if you are going to tell me that abortion is okay!” The fourth little Ryan, Kyle Daniel, had been born during Ryan’s Presidency, and the cameras had been there to record his face coming out of the delivery room, allowing the entire nation-and the world, for that matter-to share the experience. It had bumped Ryan’s approval rating a full fifteen points, pleasing Arnie very greatly at the time.

  “God damn it, Jack, I never said that, did I?” van Damm demanded. “But you and I do objectionable things every so often, don’t we? And we don’t deny other people the right to do such things, too, do we? Smoke, for example?” he added, just to twist Ryan’s tail a little.

  “Arnie, you use words as cleverly as any man I know, and that was a good play. I’ll give you that. But there’s a qualitative difference between lighting up a goddamned cigarette and killing a living human being.”

  “True, if a fetus is a living human being, which is something for theologians, not politicians.”

  “Arnie, it’s like this. The pro-abortion crowd says that whether or not a fetus is human is beside the point because it’s inside a woman’s body, and therefore her property to do with as she pleases. Fine. It was the law in the Roman Republic and Empire that a wife and children were property of the paterfamilias, the head of the family, and he could kill them anytime he pleased. You think we should go back to that?”

  “Obviously not, since it empowers men and disempowers women, and we don’t do things like that anymore.”

  “So, you’ve taken a moral issue and degraded it to what’s good politically and what’s bad politically. Well, Arnie, I am not here to do that. Even the President is allowed to have some moral principles, or am I supposed to check my ideas of right and wrong outside the door when I show up for work in the morning?”

  “But he’s not allowed to impose it on others. Moral principles are things you keep on the inside, for yourself.”

  “What we call law is nothing more or less than the public’s collective belief, their conviction of what right and wrong is. Whether it’s about murder, kidnapping, or running a red light, society decides what the rules are. In a democratic republic, we do that through the legislature by electing people who share our views. That’s how laws happen. We also set up a constitution, the supreme law of the land, which is very carefully considered because it decides what the other laws may and may not do, and therefore it protects us against our transitory passions. The job of the judiciary is to interpret the laws, or in this case the constitutional principles embodied in those laws, as they apply to reality. In Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court went too far. It legislated; it changed the law in a way not anticipated by the drafters, and that was an error. All a reversal of Roe will do is return the abortion issue to the state legislatures, where it belongs.”

  “How long have you been thinking about that speech?” Arnie asked. Ryan’s turn of phrase was too polished for extemporaneous speech.

  “A little while,” the President admitted.

  “Well, when that decision comes through, be ready for a firestorm,” his Chief of Staff warned. “I’m talking demonstrations, TV coverage, and enough newspaper editorials to paper the walls of the Pentagon, and your Secret Service people will worry about the additional danger to your life, and your wife’s life, and your kids. If you think I’m kidding, ask them.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “There’s no law, federal, state, or local, which compels the world to be logical, Jack. The people out there depend on you to keep the fucking weather pleasant, and they blame you when you don’t. Deal with it.” With that, an annoyed Chief of Staff headed out and west toward his corner office.

  “Crap,” Ryan breathed, as he flipped to the briefing papers for the Secretary of the Interior. Smokey Bear’s owner. Also custodian of the national parks, which the President only got to see on the Discovery Channel, on such nights as he had free time to switch the TV on.

  There wasn’t much to be said for the clothing people wore in this place, Nomuri thought again, except for one thing. When you undid the buttons and found the Victoria’s Secret stuff underneath, well, it was like having a movie switch from black-and-white to Technicolor. This time Ming allowed him to do her buttons, then slide the jacket down her arms, and then get her trousers off. The panties looked particularly inviting, but then, so did her entire body. Nomuri scooped her up in his arms and kissed her passionately before dropping her on the bed. A minute later, he was beside her.

  “So, why were you late?”

  She made a face. “Every week Minister Fang meets with other ministers, and when he comes back, he has me transcribe the notes of the meetings so that he has a rec
ord of everything that was said.”

  “Oh, do you use my new computer for that?” The question concealed the quivering Jesus! he felt throughout his body on hearing Ming’s words. This girl could be one hell of a source! Nomuri took a deep breath and resumed his poker face of polite disinterest.

  “Of course.”

  “Excellent. It’s equipped with a modem, yes?”

  “Of course, I use it every day to retrieve Western news reports and such from their media Web sites.”

  “Ah, that is good.” So, he’d taken care of business for the day, and with that job done, Nomuri leaned over for a kiss.

  “Before I came into the restaurant, I put the lipstick on,” Ming explained. “I don’t wear it at work.”

  “So I see,” the CIA officer replied, repeating the initial kiss, and extending it in time. Her arms found their way around his neck. The reason for her lateness had nothing to do with a lack of affection. That was obvious now, as his hands started to wander also. The front-closure on the bra was the smartest thing he’d done. Just a flick of thumb and forefinger and it sprang open, revealing both of her rather cute breasts, two more places for his hand to explore. The skin there was particularly silky … and, he decided a few seconds later, tasty as well.

  This resulted in an agreeable moan and squirm of pleasure from his … what? Friend? Well, okay, but not enough. Agent? Not yet. Lover would do for the moment. They’d never talked at The Farm about this sort of thing, except the usual warnings not to get too close to your agent, lest you lose your objectivity. But if you didn’t get a little bit close, you’d never recruit the agent, would you? Of course, Chester knew that he was far more than a little bit close at the moment.

  Whatever her looks, she had delightful skin, and his fingertips examined it in great detail as his eyes smiled into hers, with the occasional kiss. And her body wasn’t bad at all. A nice shape even when she stood. A little too much waist, maybe, but this wasn’t Venice Beach, and the hourglass figure, however nice it might look in pictures, was just that, a picture look. Her waist was smaller than her hips, and that was enough for the moment. It wasn’t as though she’d be walking down the ramp at some New York fashion show, where the models looked like boys anyway. So, Ming is not now and would never be a supermodel-deal with it, Chet, the officer told himself. Then it was time to put all the CIA stuff aside. He was a man, dressed only in boxer shorts, next to a woman, dressed only in panties. Panties large enough maybe to make a handkerchief, though orange-red wouldn’t be a good color for a man to pull from his back pocket, especially, he added to himself with a smile, in some artificial silk fabric.

  “Why do you smile?” Ming asked.

  “Because you are pretty,” Nomuri replied. And so she was, now, with that particular smile on her face. No, she’d never be a model, but inside every woman was the look of beauty, if only they would let it out. And her skin was first-class, especially her lips, coated with after-work lipstick, smooth and greasy, yet making his lips linger even so. Soon their bodies touched almost all over, and a warm, comfortable feeling it was, so nicely she fit under one arm, while his left hand played and wandered. Ming’s hair didn’t tangle much. She could evidently brush it out very easily, it was so short. Her underarms, too, were hairy, like many Chinese women’s, but that only gave Nomuri something else to play with, teasing and pulling a little. That evidently tickled her. Ming giggled playfully and hugged him tighter, then relaxed to allow his hand to wander more. As it passed her navel, she lay suddenly still, relaxing herself in some kind of invitation. Time for another kiss as his fingertips wandered farther, and there was humor in her eyes now. What game could this be …?

  As soon as his hands found her panties, her bottom lifted off the mattress. He sat up halfway and pulled them down, allowing her left foot to kick them into the air, where the red-orange pants flew like a mono-colored rainbow, and then-

  “Ming!” he said in humorous accusation.

  “I’ve heard that men like this,” she said with a sparkle and a giggle.

  “Well, it is different,” Nomuri replied, as his hands traced over skin even smoother than the rest of her body. “Did you do this at work?”

  A riotous laugh now: “No, fool! This morning at my apartment! In my own bathroom, with my own razor.”

  “Just wanted to make sure,” the CIA officer assured her. Damn, isn’t this something! Then her hand moved to do to him much the same as he was doing to her.

  “You are different from Fang,” her voice told him in a playful whisper.

  “Oh? How so?”

  “I think the worst thing a woman can say to a man is ‘Are you in yet?’ One of the other secretaries said that to Fang once. He beat her. She came into work the next day with black eyes-he made her come in-and then the next night… well, he had me to bed,” she admitted, not so much with shame as embarrassment. “To show what a man he still is. But I knew better than to say that to him. We all do, now.”

  “Will you say that to me?” Nomuri asked with a smile and another kiss.

  “Oh, no! You are a sausage, not a string bean!” Ming told him enthusiastically.

  It wasn’t the most elegant compliment he’d ever had, but it sufficed for the moment, Nomuri thought.

  “Do you think it’s time for the sausage to find a home?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  As he rolled on top, Nomuri saw two things under him. One was a girl, a young woman with the usual female drives, which he was about to answer. The other was a potential agent, with access to political intelligence such as an experienced case officer only dreamed about. But Nomuri wasn’t an experienced case officer. He was still a little wet behind the ears, and so he didn’t know what was impossible. He’d have to worry about his potential agent, because if he ever recruited her successfully, her life would be in the gravest danger… he thought about what would happen, how her face would change as the bullet entered her brain… but, no, it was too ugly. With an effort, Nomuri forced the thought aside as he slipped into her. If he were to recruit her at all, he had to perform this function well. And if it made him happy, too, well, that was just a bonus.

  I’ll think about it,” POTUS promised the Secretary of the Interior, walking him to the door that led to the corridor, to the left of the fireplace. Sorry, buddy, but the money isn’t there to do all that. His SecInterior was by no means a bad man, but it seemed he’d been captured by his departmental bureaucracy, which was perhaps the worst danger of working in Washington. He sat back down to read the papers the Secretary had handed over. Of course he wouldn’t have time to read it all over himself. On a good day, he’d be able to skim through the Executive Summary of the documents, while the rest went to a staffer who’d go through it all and draft a report to the President-in effect, another Executive Summary of sorts, and from that document, typed up by a White House staff member of maybe twenty-eight years, policy would actually be made.

  And that was crazy! Ryan thought angrily. He was supposed to be the chief executive of the country. He was the only one who was supposed to make policy. But the President’s time was valuable. So valuable, in fact, that others guarded it for him-and really those others guarded his time from himself, because ultimately it was they who decided what Ryan saw and didn’t see. Thus, while Ryan was the Chief Executive, and did alone make executive policy, he made that policy often based solely on the information presented to him by others. And sometimes it worried him that he was controlled by the information that made it to his desk, rather as the press decided what the public saw, and thus had a hand in deciding what the public thought about the various issues of the day.

  So, Jack, have you been captured by your bureaucracy, too? It was hard to know, hard to tell, and hard to decide how to change the situation, if the situation existed in the first place.

  Maybe that’s why Arnie likes me to get out of this building to where the real people are, Jack realized.

  The more difficult problem was that Ryan was a fore
ign-policy and national-security expert. In those areas he felt the most competent. It was on domestic stuff that he felt disconnected and dumb. Part of that came from his personal wealth. He’d never worried about the cost of a loaf of bread or a quart of milk-all the more so in the White House, where you never saw milk in a quart container anyway, but only in a chilled glass on a silver tray, carried by a Navy steward’s mate right to your hands while you sat in your easy chair. There were people out there who did worry about such things, or at least worried about the cost of putting little Jimmy through college, and Ryan, as President, had to concern himself with their worries. He had to try to keep the economy in balance so that they could earn their decent livings, could go to Disney World in the summer, and the football games in the fall, and splurge to make sure there were plenty of presents under the Christmas tree every year.

  But how the hell was he supposed to do that? Ryan remembered a lament attributed to the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus. On learning that he’d been declared a god, and that temples had been erected to him, and that people sacrificed to the statues of himself in those temples, Augustus angrily inquired: When someone prays to me to cure his gout, what am I supposed to do? The fundamental issue was how much government policy really had to do with reality. That was a question seldom posed in Washington even by conservatives who ideologically despised the government and everything it did in domestic terms, though they were often in favor of showing the flag and rattling the national saber overseas-exactly why they enjoyed this Ryan had never thought about. Perhaps just to be different from liberals who flinched from the exercise of force like a vampire from the cross, but who, like vampires, liked to extend government as far as they could get away with into the lives of everyone, and so suck their blood-in reality, use the instrument of taxation to take more and more to pay for the more and more they would have the government do.