"Dr. Ryan?" The whisper was accompanied by a shake of his shoulders.
"What is it, Sarge?" There was no sense in grumbling at an innocent NCO.
"Mr. van Damm needs you upstairs, sir."
Jack nodded and moved his seat to the upright position. The sergeant handed him a coffee mug on the way. A clock told him it was nine in the morning, but it didn't say where it was nine in the morning, and Ryan could not at the moment remember what zone the clock was set on. It was all theoretical anyway. How many time zones could dance inside an airliner?
The upper deck of the VC-25B contrasted sharply with the lower deck. Instead of plush appointments, the compartment here was lined with military-style electronics gear whose individual boxes had chromed bars for easy removal and replacement. A sizable team of communications specialists was always at work, tapped into every source of information one might imagine: digital radio, TV, and fax, every single channel encrypted. Arnie van Damm stood in the middle of the area, and handed something over. It turned out to be a facsimile copy of the Washington Post's late edition, about to hit the street, four thousand miles and six hours away.
VICE PRESIDENT IMPLICATED IN SUICIDE, the four-column headline announced. FIVE WOMEN CHARGE EDWARD KEALTY WITH SEXUAL ABUSE.
"You woke me up for this?" Ryan asked. It was nowhere near his area of responsibility, was it?
"You're named in the story," Arnie told him.
"What?" Jack scanned the piece. " 'National Security Advisor Ryan is one of those briefed in on the affair.' Okay, I guess that's true, isn't it?"
"Keep going."
" 'The White House told the FBI four weeks ago not to present the case to the Judiciary Committee.' That's not true."
"This one's a beautiful combination of what is and what isn't." The Chief of Staff was in an even fouler mood than Ryan.
"Who leaked?"
"I don't know, but Libby Holtzman ran this piece, and her husband is sleeping aft. He likes you. Get him and talk to him."
"Wait a minute, this is something that a little time and truth will settle out, Arnie. The President hasn't done anything wrong that I know about."
"His political enemies can call the delay obstruction of justice."
"Come on." Jack shook his head in disbelief. "No way that would stand up to examination."
"It doesn't have to, damn it. We're talking politics, remember, not facts, and we have elections coming up. Talk to Bob Holtzman. Now," van Damm ordered. He didn't do it often with Ryan, but he did have the authority.
"Tell the Boss yet?" Jack asked, folding up his copy.
"We'll let him sleep for a while. Send Tish up on the way, will you?"
"Okay." Ryan headed back down and shook Tish Brown awake, pointed upstairs, then headed aft to a flight attendant--crew member, he corrected himself. "Get Bob Holtzman up here, will you?" Through an open port he could see that it was light outside. Maybe it was nine o'clock where they were going? Yeah, they were scheduled to arrive in Moscow at two in the afternoon, local time. The head cook was sitting in his galley, reading a copy of Time. Ryan went in and got his own coffee refill.
"Can't sleep, Dr. Ryan?"
"Not anymore. Duty calls."
"I have rolls baking, if you want."
"Great idea."
"What is it?" Bob Holtzman asked, sticking his head in. Like every man aboard at the moment, he needed a shave. Jack merely handed over the story.
"What gives?"
Holtzman was a fast reader. "Jesus, is this true?"
"How long has Libby been on this one?"
"It's news to me--oh, shit, sorry, Jack."
Ryan nodded with more smile than he felt. "Yeah, I just woke up, too."
"Is it true?"
"This is on background?"
"Agreed."
"The FBI's been running the case for some time now. The dates in Libby's piece are close, and I'd have to check my office logs for the exact ones. I got briefed in right around the time the trade thing blew up because of Kealty's security clearance--what I can tell him, what I can't, you know how that goes, right?"
"Yes, I understand. So what's the status of the case?"
"The chairman and ranking member of Judiciary have been briefed in. So have Al Trent and Sam Fellows on Intelligence. Nobody's putting a stopper on this one, Bob. To the best of my knowledge, the President's played a straight game the whole way. Kealty's going down, and after the impeachment proceedings, if it goes that far--"
"It has to go that far," Holtzman pointed out.
"I doubt it." Ryan shook his head. "If he gets a good lawyer, they'll cut some sort of deal. They have to, like it was with Agnew. If he goes through impeachment and then a Senate trial, God help him in front of a jury."
"Makes sense," Holtzman conceded. "You're telling me the meat of the story's wrong."
"Correct. If there's any obstruction going on, I don't know about it, and I have been briefed in on this."
"Have you spoken with Kealty?"
"No, nothing substantive. On 'business' stuff I brief his national-security guy and he briefs his boss. I wouldn't be good at that, would I? Two daughters."
"So you know about the facts of the case?"
"Not the specifics, no. I don't need to know. I do know Murray pretty well. If Dan says the case is solid, well, then I figure it is." Ryan finished off the rest of his coffee and reached for a fresh roll. "The President is not obstructing this one. It's been delayed so it wouldn't conflict with other things. That's all."
"You're not supposed to do that either, you know," Holtzman pointed out, getting one for himself.
"Goddamn it, Bob! Prosecutors schedule cases, too, don't they? All this is, is scheduling." Holtzman read Jack's face and nodded.
"I'll pass that one along."
It was already too late for proper damage-control. Most of the political players in Washington are early risers. They have their coffee, read their papers in great detail, check their fax machines for additional material, and often take early phone calls, or in a recent development, log onto computer services to check electronic mail, all in an effort to leave their homes with a good feel for the shape the new day will take. In the case of many members, facsimile copies of the late-edition story by Liz Holtzman had brief cover pages indicating that this might be a matter of great personal interest. Different code phrases were used, depending on which PR firm had originated the transmission, but all were the same. The Members in question had been compelled to mute their opposition to TRA. This opportunity, on the other hand, was seen as something of a payback for the earlier transgression. In few cases would the opportunity be missed.
The comments were mainly delivered off the record. "This looks like a very serious matter" was the phrase most often used. "It's unfortunate that the President saw fit to interfere in a criminal matter" was another favorite. Early calls to Director William Shaw of the FBI were met with "no comment" comments, usually with the additional clarification that the policy of the FBI was to decline comment on any possible criminal case, lest the subsequent legal proceedings be tainted and the rights of the accused compromised. The clarification was rarely if ever conveyed to the public; in that way "no comment" acquired its own very special spin.
The accused in this case awoke in his house on the grounds of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue, North West, to find his senior aides downstairs and waiting for him.
"Oh, shit," Ed Kealty observed. It was all he had to say. There was little point in denying the story. His people knew him too well for that. He was a man of an amorous nature, they all rationalized, a trait not uncommon in public life, though he was fairly discreet about it.
"Lisa Beringer," the Vice President breathed, reading. "Can't they let the poor girl rest in peace?" He remembered the shock of her death, the way she'd died, slipping off her seat belt and driving into a bridge abutment at ninety miles per hour, how the medical examiner had related the inefficiency of the method. She'd taken sever
al minutes to die, still alive and whimpering when the paramedics had arrived. Such a sweet, nice kid. She just hadn't understood how things were. She'd wanted too much back from him. Maybe she'd thought that it was different with her. Well, Kealty thought, everybody thought they were different.
"He's hanging you out to dry," Kealty's senior aide observed. The important part of this, after all, was the political vulnerability of their principal.
"Sure as hell." That son of a bitch, the Vice President thought. After all the things I've done. "Okay--ideas?"
"Well, of course we deny everything, indignantly at that," his chief of staff began, handing over a sheet of paper. "I have a press release for starters, then we will have a press conference before noon." He'd already called half a dozen former and current female staffers who would stand beside their boss. In every case it was a woman whose bed he had graced with his presence, and who remembered the time with a smile. Great men had flaws, too. In Edward Kealty's case, the flaws were more than balanced by his commitment to the things that mattered.
Kealty read quickly down the page. The only defense against a completely false accusation is the truth ... there is no basis in fact whatever to these accusations ... my public record is well known, as is my support for women's and minority rights ... I request ("demand" was the wrong word to use, his personal counsel thought) an immediate airing of the allegations and the opportunity to defend myself vigorously ... clearly no coincidence with the upcoming election year ... regret that such a groundless accusation will affect our great President, Roger Durling--
"Get that son of a bitch on the phone right now!"
"Bad time for a confrontation, Mr. Vice President. You 'fully expect his support,' remember?"
"Oh, yes, I do, don't I?" That part of the release wouldn't so much be a warning shot across the bow as one aimed right at the bridge, Kealty thought. Either Durling would support him or else risk political meltdown in the primaries.
What else would happen this year? Though too late to catch the morning papers in most of America--too late even for USA Today--the Kealty story had been caught by the broadcast media as part of their own pre-show media surveys. For many in the investment community, that meant National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" show, a good program to listen to during the drives from New Jersey and Connecticut because of its repeating two-hour length. "A copyrighted story in this morning's Washington Post ..." The coverage on it began at the top of both hourly segments, with a preamble like a warning bell to get the listener's attention, and though political stories out of Washington were about as common as the local weather report, "rape" and "suicide" were words with unequivocal meaning.
"Shit," a thousand or so voices breathed simultaneously in the same number of expensive automobiles. What else is going to happen? The volatility of the market had not ended yet, and something like this was sure to exert the kind of downward pressure that never really made any economic sense but was so real that everyone knew it would happen, and because of that planned for it, and because of that made it even more real in what computer engineers called a feedback loop. The market would drop again today. It had trended down for eleven of the past fourteen days, and though the Dow was replete with bargains by any technical measure, the little guys would make their nervous sell orders, and the mutual funds, driven by calls from more little guys, would do the same, adding institutional momentum to a totally artificial situation. The entire system was called a true democracy, but if it was, then a herd of nervous cattle was a democracy, too.
"Okay, Arnie." President Durling didn't bother asking who had leaked it. He was a sufficiently sophisticated player in the game that he knew it didn't matter. "What do we do?"
"I talked to Bob Holtzman," Ryan told the Boss, prompted by a look from the chief of staff.
"And?"
"And, I think he believed me. Hell, 1 was telling the truth, wasn't I?" It was a question rather than a rhetorical expression.
"Yes, you were, Jack. Ed's going to have to handle this one himself." The relief on Ryan's face was so obvious as to offend the Chief Executive. "Did you think I was really going to do this?"
"Of course not," Ryan answered at once.
"Who knows?"
"On the airplane?" van Damm asked. "I'm sure Bob spread it around some."
"Well, let's clobber it right now. Tish," Durling said to his communications director, "let's get a release put together. The Judiciary Committee's been briefed in, and I have not put any pressure on them at all."
"What do we say about the delay?" Tish Brown asked.
"We decided jointly with the leadership that the matter deserved to have--what?" The President looked up at the ceiling. "It deserved to have a clear field ..."
"Sufficiently serious--no, it is sufficiently important to deserve a Congress undistracted by other considerations?" Ryan offered. Not bad, he thought.
"I'll make a politician out of you yet," Durling said with a grudging smile.
"You're not going to say anything directly about the case," van Damm went on, giving the President advice in the form of an order.
"I know, I know. 1 can't say anything on the facts of the matter because I can't allow myself to interfere with the proceedings or Kealty's defense, except to say that any citizen is innocent until the facts demonstrate otherwise; America is founded on ... and all that stuff. Tish, write it up. I'll deliver it on the airplane before we land, and then maybe we can do what we're supposed to be doing. Anything else?" Durling asked.
"Secretary Hanson reports that everything is set up. No surprises," Ryan said, finally getting to his own briefing. "Secretary Fiedler has the monetary-support agreement ready for initialing, too. On that end, sir, it's going to be a nice, smooth visit."
"How reassuring that is," the President observed dryly. "Okay, let me get cleaned up." Air Force One or not, traveling in such close proximity to others was rarely comfortable. Presidential privacy was a tenuous commodity under the best of circumstances, but at least in the White House you had real walls between yourself and others. Not here. An Air Force sergeant strained at his leash to lay out Durling's clothing and shaving things. The man had already spent two hours turning the Presidential shoes from black leather into chrome, and it would have been ungracious to push the guy off. People were so damned eager to show their loyalty. Except for the ones you needed to, Durling thought as he entered the small washroom.
"We got more of 'em."
Sanchez emerged from the head adjacent to CIC to see people gathered around the central plotting table. There were now three groups of the diamond shapes that denoted enemy surface ships. Charlotte, moreover, had position on a "V" shape that meant an enemy submarine, and Asheville supposedly had a good sniff also. Best of all, the joint patrol line of S-3 Viking ASW aircraft two hundred miles in advance of the battle group had identified what appeared to be a patrol line of other submarines. Two had been caught snorting, one on SOSUS and one by sonobuoys, and, using a line defined by those two positions, two others had been found. Now they even had a predictable interval between boats for the aircraft to concentrate on.
"Sunset tomorrow?" the CAG asked.
"They like the rising sun, don't they? Let's catch 'em at dinner, then."
"Fine with me." Sanchez lifted the phone at his place to alert his wing operations officer.
"Takes long enough," Jones murmured.
"I seem to remember when you were able to stand watches for a real long time," Wally Chambers told the civilian.
"I was young and dumb then." I smoked, too, he remembered. Such good things for concentration and alertness. But most submarines didn't allow people to smoke at all. Amazing that some crews hadn't mutinied. What was the Navy coming to. "See what I told you about my software?"
"You telling us that even you can be replaced by a computer?"
The contractor's head turned. "You know, Mr. Chambers, as you get older you have to watch the coffee intake."
"You two going at
it again?" Admiral Mancuso rejoined them after shaving in the nearby head.
"I think Jonesy was planning to hit Banzai Beach this afternoon." Captain Chambers chuckled, sipping at his decaf. "He's getting bored with the exercise."
"They do take a while," SubPac confirmed.
"Hey, guys, we're validating my product, aren't we?"
"If you want some insider information, yeah, I'm going to recommend you get the contract." Not the least reason for which was that Jones had underbid IBM by a good 20 percent.
"Next step, I just hired two guys from Woods Hole. That never occurred to the suits at Big Blue."
"What do you mean?"
"We're going to decode whale talk, now that we can hear it so much better. Greenpeace is going to love us. The submarine mission for the next decade: making the seas safe for our fellow mammals. We can also track those Jap bastards who hunt them."
"What do you mean?" Chambers asked.
"You want funding? I have an idea that'll keep it for you."
"What's that, Jonesy?" Mancuso asked.
"The Woods Hole guys think they have the alarm calls for three species identified: for humpback, fins, and seis. They got them by listening in with hydrophones while they were hanging out with whalers. I can program that for active--it's in the freq range we transmit on. So what we can do is have subs trail along with the whalers and broadcast the call, and guess what? The whalers won't find shit. No whale in his right mind will get within twenty miles of another whale screaming that he's being mugged. Not much solidarity in the cetacean community."
"You turning tree-hugger on us?" Chambers wondered. But he thought about it and nodded slowly.
"All those people have to tell their friends in Congress is that we're doing good scientific work. Okay? Not that they love us, not that they approve of our power plants, just that we're doing good work. What I'm giving you guys is a mission for the next ten years." Jones was also giving his company work for at least that long, but that was beside the point. Mancuso and the submarine community needed the work. "Besides, I used to enjoy listening to them when we were on Dallas. "
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