by Tom Clancy
“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 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 CIA 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. 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 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 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 reside
nce,” 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 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 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, 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 doctrine 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 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 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—
