by Tom Clancy
“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 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. 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 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 inside 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 bo
red. 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.”
“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 physicians. 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 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 government 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 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.
