by Tom Clancy
“Better the first mission only,” Badrayn advised.
“We must shake their people. If what you say of their government is true, we will do such harm as they have never known. We will shake their leader, we will shake his confidence, we will shake the confidence of the people in him.”
He had to respond to that carefully. This was a Holy Man with a Holy Mission. He was not fully amenable to reason. And yet there was one other factor which he didn’t know about. There had to be. Daryaei was more given to wishes than considered action—no, that wasn’t true, was it? He united the two while giving another impression entirely. What the cleric did appreciate was that the American government was still vulnerable, since its lower house of parliament had not yet been replaced, a process just beginning.
“Best of all merely to kill Ryan, if we could. An attack on children will inflame them. Americans are very sentimental about little ones.”
“The second mission goes on only after the first is known to be successful?” Daryaei demanded.
“Yes, that is true.”
“Then that is sufficient,” he said, looking back down at the travel arrangements, and leaving Badrayn to his own thoughts.
There is a third element. There had to be.
“HE SAYS HIS intentions are peaceful.”
“So did Hitler, Ali,” the President reminded his friend. He checked his watch. It was after midnight in Saudi Arabia. Ali had flown back and conferred with his government before calling Washington, as one would expect. “You know about the troop movement.”
“Yes, your people briefed our military earlier today. It will be some time before they are ready to make any threat. Such things take time. Remember, I was once in uniform.”
“True, that’s what they told me, too.” Ryan paused. “Okay, what does the Kingdom propose?”
“We will observe closely. Our military is training. We have your pledge of support. We are concerned, but not overly so.”
“We could schedule some joint exercises,” Jack offered.
“That might only inflame matters,” the Prince replied. The absence of total conviction in his voice was not accidental. He’d probably fielded the idea in council himself and gotten a negative reply.
“Well, I guess you’ve had a long day. Tell me, how did Daryaei look? I haven’t seen the guy since you introduced him to me.”
“His health appears good. He looks tired, but he’s had a busy time.”
“I can relate to that. Ali?”
“Yes, Jack?”
The President stopped then, reminding himself that he was unschooled in diplomatic exchange. “How concerned should I be about all this?”
“What do your people tell you?” the Prince replied.
“About the same as you do, but not all of them. We need to keep this line open, my friend.”
“I understand, Mr. President. Good-bye for now.”
It was an unsatisfactory conclusion to an unsatisfactory call. Ryan replaced the phone and looked around at his empty office. Ali wasn’t saying what he wanted to say because the position of his government was different from what he thought it should be. The same had happened to Jack often enough, and the same rules applied. Ali had to be loyal to that government—hell, it was mainly his own family—but he had allowed himself one slip, and the Prince was too clever to do that sort of thing by mistake. It probably would have been easier before, when Ryan had not been President and both could talk without the worry of making policy with every word. Now Jack was America to those beyond the borders, and governmental officials could talk to him only that way, instead of remembering that he was also a thinking man who needed to explore options before making decisions. Maybe if it hadn’t been over the phone, Jack thought. Maybe face-to-face would have been better. But even Presidents were limited by time and space.
36
TRAVELERS
KLM—ROYAL DUTCH AIRLINES—FLIGHT 534—left the gate on time at 1:10 A.M. The aircraft was full at this hour, full of weary people who stumbled to their seats, strapped in, and accepted pillows and blankets. The more experienced travelers among them waited for the sound of the wheels being retracted, then pushed their seats as far back as they could go, and closed their eyes in the hope of a smooth ride and something akin to real sleep.
Five of Badrayn’s men were aboard, two in first class, three in business. They all had baggage in the cargo hold, and a carry-on tucked under the seat in front. All had a minor case of nerves, and all would have had a drink to ameliorate it—religious prohibition or not—but the aircraft had landed in an Islamic airport and would not serve alcohol until it had left United Islamic Republic airspace. To a man, they considered their situation and bowed to circumstance. They’d been well briefed and properly prepared. They’d come through the airport like ordinary travelers, and submitted their carry-ons to X-ray inspection by security personnel who were every bit as careful as their Western counterparts actually more so, since the flights were relatively few, and the local paranoia relatively greater. In every case, the X-ray display had shown a shaving kit, along with papers, books and other sundries.
They were all educated men, many of them having attended the American University of Beirut, some to obtain degrees, the others simply to learn about the enemy. They were dressed neatly, all with ties, loose now in their collars, and their coats hung in the mini-closets throughout the aircraft. Within forty minutes, they, along with the rest of the passengers, were fitfully asleep.
“SO WHAT’S YOUR take on all this?” van Damm asked.
Holtzman swirled his drink, watching the ice cubes circle around. “Under different circumstances I might call it a conspiracy, but it’s not. For a guy who says he’s just trying to put things back together, Jack sure is doing a lot of new and crazy things.”
“ ‘Crazy’ is a little strong, Bob.”
“Not for them, it isn’t. Everybody’s saying ‘he isn’t one of us,’ and they’re reacting strongly to his initiatives. Even you have to admit that his tax ideas are a little way off the usual playing field, but that’s the excuse for what’s happening—one of the excuses, anyway. The game’s the same one it always was. A couple of leaks, and the manner of their presentation, that’s what determines how it’s played.”
Arnie had to nod. It was like highway littering. If someone dumped all the trash in the proper barrel, then things were neat, and the task was done in a few seconds. If that same someone tossed it all out the window of a moving car, then you had to spend hours picking it all up. The other side was now dumping the trash haphazardly, and the President was having to use his limited time doing wasteful and unproductive things instead of the real work of driving down the road. The simile was ugly, but apt. Politics was so often less about doing constructive work than about spreading garbage around for others to clean up.
“Who leaked?”
The reporter shrugged. “I can only guess. Somebody in the Agency, probably somebody who’s being RIF’d. You have to admit that building up the spy side of the house looks kind of Neanderthal. How far are they cutting the Intelligence Directorate?”
“More than enough to compensate for the new field people. The idea is to save money overall, better information, more efficient overall performance, that sort of thing. I don’t,” he added, “tell the President how to do intelligence stuff. On that, he really is an expert.”
“I know that. I had my story almost ready to run. I was about to call you for an interview with him when the bubble broke.”
“Oh? And—”
“What was my angle? He’s the most contradictory son of a bitch in this town. In some ways he’s brilliant—but in others? Babe-in-the-woods is charitable.”
“Go on.”
“I like the guy,” Holtzman admitted. “For damned sure, he’s honest—not relatively honest, really honest. I was going to tell it pretty much the way it was. You want to know what has me pissed?” He paused for a sip of the bourbon, hesitated again before proceeding
, and then spoke with unconcealed anger. “Somebody at the Post leaked my story, probably to Ed Kealty. Then Kealty probably arranged a leak to Donner and Plumber.”
“And they used your story to hang him?”
“Pretty much,” Holtzman admitted.
Van Damm nearly laughed. He held it back for as long as he could, but it was too delicious to resist: “Welcome to Washington, Bob.”
“You know, some of us really do take our professional ethics seriously,” the reporter shot back, rather lamely. “It was a good story. I researched the hell out of it. I got my own source in CIA—well, I have several, but I got a new one for this, somebody who really knew the stuff. I took what he gave me, and I back-checked the hell out of it, verified everything I could, wrote the piece stating what I knew and what I thought—careful to explain the difference at all times,” he assured his host. “And you know? Ryan comes out looking pretty good. Yeah, sure, sometimes he short-circuits the system, but the guy’s never broken the rules far as I can tell. If we ever have a major crisis, that’s the guy I want in the Oval Office. But some son of a bitch took my story, my information from my sources, and played with it, I don’t like that, Arnie. I have a public trust, too, and so does my paper, and somebody fucked with that.” He set his drink down. “Hey, I know what you think about me and my ”
“No, you don’t,” van Damm interrupted.
“But you’ve always—”
“I’m the chief of staff, Bob. I have to be loyal to my boss, and so I have to play the game from my side, but if you think I don’t respect the press, you’re not as smart as you’re supposed to be. We’re not always friends. Sometimes we’re enemies, but we need you as much as you need us. For Christ’s sake, if I didn’t respect you, why the hell are you drinking my booze?”
It was either an elegant roll or a truthful statement, Holtzman thought, and Arnie was too skillful a player for him to tell the difference right off. But the smart thing to do was finish the drink, which he did. A pity that his host preferred cheap booze to go along with his L. L. Bean shirts. Arnie didn’t know how to dress, either. Or maybe that was a considered part of his mystique. The political game was so intricate as to be a cross between classical metaphysics and experimental science. You could never know it all, and finding out one part as often as not denied you the ability to find out another, equally important part. But that was why it was the best game in town.
“Okay, Arnie, I’ll accept that.”
“Good of you.” Van Damm smiled, and refilled the glass. “So why did you call me?”
“It’s almost embarrassing.” Another pause. “I will not participate in the public hanging of an innocent man.”
“You’ve done that before,” Arnie objected.
“Maybe so, but they were all politicians, and they all had it coming in one way or another. I don’t know what—okay, how about I’m not into child abuse? Ryan deserves a fair chance.”
“And you’re pissed about losing your story and the Pulitzer that—”
“I have two of them already,” Holtzman reminded him. Otherwise, he would have been taken off the story by his managing editor, but internal politics at the Washington Post were as vicious as those elsewhere in the city.
“So?”
“So, I need to know about Colombia. I need to know about Jimmy Cutter and how he died.”
“Jesus, Bob, you don’t know what our ambassador went through down there today.”
“Great language for invective, Spanish.” A reporter’s smile.
“The story can’t be told, Bob. It just can’t.”
“The story will be told. It’s just a question of who tells it, and that will determine how it’s told. Arnie, I know enough now to write something, okay?”
As so often happened in Washington at times like this, everyone was trapped by circumstance. Holtzman had a story to write. Doing it the right way would, perhaps, resurrect his original story, put him in the running for another Pulitzer—it was still important to him, previous denials notwithstanding, and Arnie knew it—and tell whoever had leaked his story to Ed Kealty that he or she had better leave the Post before Holtzman nailed that name down and wrecked his or her career with a few well-placed whispers and more than a few dead-end assignments. Arnie was trapped by his duty to protect his President, and the only way to do it was to violate the law and his President’s trust. There had to be an easier way, the chief of staff thought, to earn a living. He could have made Holtzman wait for his decision, but that would have been mere theatrics, and both men were past that.
“No notes, no tape recorder.”
“Off the record. ‘Senior official,’ not even ‘senior administration official,’ ” Bob agreed.
“And I can tell you who to confirm it with.”
“They know it all?”
“Even more than I do,” van Damm told him. “Hell, I just found out about the important part.”
A raised eyebrow. “That’s nice, and the same rules will apply to them. Who really knows about this?”
“Even the President doesn’t know it all. I’m not sure if anybody knows it all.”
Holtzman took another sip. It would be his last. Like a doctor in an operating room, he didn’t believe in mixing alcohol and work.
FLIGHT 534 TOUCHED down at Istanbul at 2:55 A.M. local time, after a flight of 1,270 miles and three hours, fifteen minutes. The passengers were groggily awake, having been roused by the cabin staff thirty minutes earlier and told to put their seat-backs to the upright position in a series of languages. The landing was smooth, and a few of them raised the plastic shades on the windows to see that they were indeed on the ground at one more anonymous piece of real estate with white runway lights and blue taxiway lights, just like those all over the world. Those getting out stood at the proper time to stumble off into the Turkish night. The rest pushed their seats back for another snooze during the forty-five-minute layover, before the aircraft left yet another gate at 3:40 A.M. for the second half of the trip.
Lufthansa 601 was a European-made Airbus 310 twin-jet, roughly the same as the KLM Boeing in size and capacity This one, too, had five travelers aboard, and left its gate at 2:55 for the nonstop flight to Frankfurt. The departure was routine in all details.
“THAT’S SOME STORY, Arnie.”
“Oh, yeah. I didn’t know the important parts until this week.”
“How sure are you of this?” Holtzman asked.
“The pieces all fit.” He shrugged again. “I can’t say I liked hearing it. I think we would have won the election anyway, but, Jesus, the guy threw it. He tanked on a presidential election, but you know,” van Damm said wistfully, “that might have been the most courageous and generous political act of the century. I didn’t think he had it in him.”
“Does Fowler know?”
“I haven’t told him. Maybe I should.”
“Wait a minute. Remember how Liz Elliot planted a story on me about Ryan and how—”
“Yes, that all folds into this. Jack went down personally to get those soldiers out. The guy next to him in the chopper was killed, and he’s looked after the family ever since. Liz paid for it. She came apart the night the bomb went off in Denver.”
“And Jack really did ... you know that’s one story that never came out all the way. Fowler lost it and almost launched a missile at Iran—it was Ryan, wasn’t it? He’s the one who stopped it.” Holtzman looked down at his drink and decided on another sip. “How?”
“He got onto the Hot Line,” Arnie replied. “He cut the President off and talked directly with Narmonov, and persuaded him to back things off some. Fowler flipped out and told the Secret Service to go arrest him, but by the time they got to the Pentagon, things were calmed down. It worked, thank God.”
It took Holtzman a minute or so to absorb that, but again, the story fit with the fragments he knew. Fowler had resigned two days later, a broken man, but an honorable one who knew that his moral right to govern his country had died with
his order to launch a nuclear weapon at an innocent city. And Ryan had also been shaken by the event, badly enough to leave government service at once, until Roger Durling had brought him back in.
“Ryan’s broken every rule there is. Almost as if he likes it.” But that wasn’t fair, was it?
“If he hadn’t, we might not be here.” The chief of staff poured himself another. Holtzman waved him off. “You see what I mean about the story, Bob? If you tell it all, the country gets hurt.”
“But then why did Fowler recommend Ryan to Roger Durling?” the reporter asked. “He couldn’t stand the guy and—”
“Whatever his faults, and he has them, Bob Fowler is an honest politician, that’s why. No, he doesn’t like Ryan personally, maybe it’s chemistry, I don’t know, but Ryan saved him and he told Roger—what was it? ‘Good man in a storm.’ That’s it,” Arnie remembered.
“Shame he doesn’t know politics.”
“He learns pretty fast. Might surprise you.”
“He’s going to gut the government if he gets the chance. I can’t—I mean, I do like the guy personally, but his policies...”
“Every time I think I have him figured out, he swerves on me, and then I have to remind myself that he doesn’t have an agenda,” van Damm said. “He just does the job. I give him papers to read, and he acts on them. He listens to what people tell him—asks good questions, and always listens to the answers—but he makes his own decisions, as though he knows what’s right and what’s wrong—but the hell of it is, mostly he does. Bob, he’s rolled me! But that’s not it, either. Sometimes I’m not sure what it is with him, you know?”
“A total outsider,” Holtzman observed quietly. “But—”
The chief of staff nodded. “Yeah, but. But he’s being analyzed as though he’s an insider with a hidden agenda, and they’re playing the insider games as if they apply to him, but they don’t.”
