by Tom Clancy
“Dr. Ryan, this is all about the moral dimension,” the President said. “The moral dimension is simply put: there has been enough war there, and it is time to put an end to it. Our plan is a means of doing that.”
Our plan, Ryan heard him say. Van Damm’s eyes flickered for a moment, then went still. Jack realized that he was as alone here in this room as the President intended Israel to be. He looked down at his notes and kept his mouth shut. Moral dimension, my ass! Jack thought angrily. This is about setting footprints in the sands of time, and about the political advantages of being seen as The Great Peacemaker. But it wasn’t a time for cynicism, and though the plan was no longer Ryan’s, it was a worthy one.
“If we have to squeeze them, how do we go about it?” President Fowler asked lightly. “Nothing harsh, just to send a quiet and intelligible message.”
“There’s a major shipment of aircraft spares ready to go next week. They’re replacing the radar systems on all their F-15 fighters,” Secretary of Defense Bunker said. “There are other things, too, but that radar system is very important to them. It’s brand-new. We’re just installing it ourselves. The same is true for the F-16’s new missile system. Their Air Force is their crown jewel. If we are forced to withhold that shipment for technical reasons, they’ll get the signal loud and clear.”
“Can it be done quietly?” Elliot asked.
“We can let them know that if they make noise, it won’t help,” van Damm said. “If the speech goes over well at the U.N., as it should, we might be able to obviate their congressional lobby.”
“It might be preferable to sweeten the deal by allowing them to get more arms instead of crippling systems they already have.” That was Ryan’s last toss. Elliot slammed the door on the DDCI.
“We can’t afford that.”
The Chief of Staff agreed: “We can’t possibly squeeze any more defense dollars out of the budget, even for Israel. The money just isn’t there.”
“I’d prefer to let them know ahead of time—if we really intend to squeeze them,” the Secretary of State said.
Liz Elliot shook her head. “No. If they need to get the message, let them get it the hard way. They like to play tough. They ought to understand.”
“Very well.” The President made a last note on his pad. “We hold until the speech next week. I change the speech to include an invitation to enter formal negotiations in Rome starting two weeks from yesterday. We let Israel know that they either play ball or face the consequences, and that we’re not kidding this time. We send that message as Secretary Bunker suggested, and do that by surprise. Anything else?”
“Leaks?” van Damm said quietly.
“What about Israel?” Elliot asked Scott Adler.
“I told them that this was highly sensitive, but—” “Brent, get on the phone to their Foreign Minister, and tell
them that if they start making noise prior to the speech, there will be major consequences.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And as far as this group is concerned, there will be no leaks.” That presidential command was aimed at the far end of the table. “Adjourned.”
Ryan took his papers and walked outside. Marcus Cabot joined him in the hall after a moment.
“You should know when to keep your mouth shut, Jack.”
“Look, Director, if we press them too hard—”
“We’ll get what we want.”
“I think it’s wrong, and I think it’s dumb. We’ll get what we want. Okay, so it takes a few extra months, we’ll still get it. We don’t have to threaten them.”
“The President wants it done that way.” Cabot ended the discussion by walking off.
“Yes, sir,” Jack responded to thin air.
The rest of the people filed out. Talbot gave Ryan a wink and a nod. The rest, except for Adler, avoided eye contact. Adler came over after a whisper from his boss.
“Nice try, Jack. You almost got yourself fired a few minutes ago.”
That surprised Ryan. Wasn’t he supposed to say what he thought? “Look, Scott, if I’m not allowed to—”
“You’re not allowed to cross the President, not this one. You do not have the rank to make adverse advice stick. Brent was ready to make that point, but you got in the way—and you lost, and you didn’t leave him any room to maneuver. So next time keep it zipped, okay?”
“Thanks for your support,” Jack answered with an edge on his voice.
“You blew it, Jack. You said the right thing the wrong way. Learn from that, will you?” Adler paused. “The Boss also says ‘well done’ for your work in Riyadh. If you’d just learn when to shut up, he says, you’d be a lot more effective.”
“Okay, thanks.” Adler was right, of course. Ryan knew it.
“Where you headed?”
“Home. I don’t have anything left to do today at the office.”
“Come along with us. Brent wants to talk to you. We’ll have a light dinner at my shop.” Adler led Jack to the elevator.
“Well?” the President asked, still back in the room.
“I’d say it looks awfully good,” van Damm said. “Especially if we can bring this one in before the elections.”
“Be nice to hold a few extra seats,” Fowler agreed. The first two years of his administration had not been easy. Budget problems, added to an economy that couldn’t seem to decide what it wanted to do, had crippled his programs and saddled his tough managerial style with more question marks than exclamation points. The congressional elections in November would be the first real public response to their new President, and early poll numbers looked exceedingly iffy. It was the general way of things that the President’s party lost seats in off-year elections, but this President could not afford to lose many. “Shame we have to pressure the Israelis, but ...”
“Politically it’ll be worth it—if we can bring the treaty off.”
“We can,” Elliot said, leaning against the doorframe. “If we make the time line, we can have the treaties out of the Senate by October 16th.”
“You are one ambitious lady, Liz,” Arnold noted. “Well, I have work to do. If you will excuse me, Mr. President?”
“See you tomorrow, Arnie.”
Fowler walked over to the windows facing Pennsylvania Avenue. The blistering heat of early August rose in shimmers from the streets and sidewalks. Across the street in Lafayette Park, there remained two anti-nuclear-weapons signs. That garnered a smirk and a snort from Fowler. Didn’t those dumb hippies know that nukes were a thing of the past? He turned.
“Join me for dinner, Elizabeth?”
Dr. Elliot smiled at her boss. “Love to, Bob.”
The one good thing about his brother’s involvement with drugs was that he had left nearly a hundred thousand dollars cash behind in a battered suitcase. Marvin Russell had taken that and driven to Minneapolis, where he’d bought presentable clothes, a decent set of luggage, and a ticket. One of the many things he’d learned in prison was the proper methodology for obtaining an alternate identity. He had three of them, complete with passports, that no cop knew anything about. He’d also learned about keeping a low profile. His clothes were presentable but not flashy. He purchased a standby ticket on a flight he expected to be underbooked, saving himself another few hundred dollars. That $91,545.00 had to last him a long time, and life got expensive where he was heading. Life also got very cheap, he knew, but not in terms of money. A warrior could face that, he decided early on.
After a layover in Frankfurt, he traveled on in a southerly direction. No fool, Russell had once participated in an international conference of sorts—he’d sacrificed a total identity-set’ for that trip, four years previously. At the conference he’d made a few contacts. Most important of all, he’d learned of contact procedures. The international terrorist community was a careful one. It had to be, with all the forces arrayed against it, and Russell did not know his luck—of the three contact numbers he remembered, one had long since been compromised an
d two Red Brigade members rolled quietly up with it. He used one of the others, and that number still worked. The contact had led him to a dinner meeting in Athens, where he’d been checked and cleared for further travel. Russell hurried back to his hotel—the local food did not agree with him—and sat down to wait for the phone to ring. To say he was nervous was an understatement. For all Marvin’s caution, he knew that he was vulnerable. With not even a pocketknife to defend himself—traveling with weapons was far too dangerous—he was an easy mark for any cop who carried a gun. What if this contact line had been burned? If it had, he’d be arrested here, or summoned into a carefully prepared ambush from which he’d be lucky to escape alive. European cops weren’t as mindful of constitutional rights as the Americans—but that thought died a rapid and quiet death. How kindly had the FBI treated his brother?
Damn! One more Sioux warrior shot down like a dog. Not even time to sing his Death Song. They’d pay for that. But only if he lived long enough, Marvin Russell corrected himself.
He sat by the window, the lights behind him extinguished, watching the traffic, watching for approaching police, waiting for the phone to ring. How would he make them pay? Russell asked himself. He didn’t know, and really didn’t care. Just so there was something he could do. The money belt was tight around his waist. One drawback of his physical condition was that there wasn’t much slack in his waistline to take up. But he couldn’t risk losing his money—without it, where the hell would he be? Keeping track of money was a pain in the ass, wasn’t it? Marks in Germany. Drachmas or douche bags or something else here. Fortunately, you got your airline tickets with bucks. He traveled American-flag carriers mainly for that reason, certainly not because he liked the sight of the Stars and Stripes on the tailfins of the aircraft. The phone rang. Russell lifted it.
“Yes?”
“Tomorrow, nine-thirty, be in front of the hotel, ready to travel. Understood?”
“Nine-thirty. Yes.” It clicked off before he could say more.
“Okay,” Russell said to himself. He rose and moved toward the bed. The door was double-locked and chained, and he had a chair propped under the knob. Marvin pondered that. If he were being set up, they’d bag him like a duck in autumn right in front of the hotel, or maybe they’d take him away by car and spring the trap away from civilians ... that was more likely, he judged. But certainly they wouldn’t go to all the trouble of setting up a rendezvous and then kick in the door here. Probably not. Hard to predict what cops would do, wasn’t it? So he slept in his jeans and shirt, the money belt securely wrapped around his waist. After all, he still had thieves to worry about....
The sun rose about as early here as it did at home. Russell awoke with the first pink-orange glow. On checking in he’d requested an east-facing room. He said his prayers to the sun and prepared himself for travel. He had breakfast sent up—it cost a few extra drachmas, but what the hell?—and packed what few things he’d removed from his suitcase. By nine he was thoroughly ready and thoroughly nervous. If it was going to happen, it would happen in thirty minutes. He could easily be dead before lunch, dead in a foreign land, distant from the spirits of his people. Would they even send his body back to the Dakotas? Probably not. He’d just vanish from the face of the earth. The actions he ascribed to policemen were the same ones he would himself have taken, but what would be good tactics for a warrior were something else to cops, weren’t they? Russell paced the room, looking out the window at the cars and the street vendors. Any one of those people selling trinkets or Cokes to the tourists could so easily be a police officer. No, more than one, more like ten. Cops didn’t like fair fights, did they? They shot from ambush and attacked in gangs.
9:15. The numbers on the digital clock marched forward with a combination of sloth and alacrity that depended entirely on how often Russell turned to check them. It was time. He lifted his bags and left the room without a backward glance. It was a short walk to the elevator, which arrived quickly enough that it piqued Russell’s paranoia yet again. A minute later he was in the lobby. A bellman offered to take his bags, but he declined the offer and made his way to the desk. The only thing left on his bill was breakfast, which he settled with his remaining local currency. He had a few minutes left over, and walked to the newsstand for a copy of anything that was in English. What was happening in the world? It was an odd moment of curiosity for Marvin, whose world was a constricted one of threats and responses and evasions. What was the world? he asked himself. It was what he could see at the time, little more than that, a bubble of space defined by what his senses reported to him. At home he could see distant horizons and a huge enveloping dome of sky. Here, reality was circumscribed by walls, and stretched a mere hundred feet from one horizon to another. He had a sudden attack of anxiety, knowing what it was to be a hunted animal, and struggled to fight it off. He checked his watch: 9:28. Time.
Russell walked outside to the cab stand, wondering what came next. He set his two bags down, looking about as casually as he could manage in the knowledge that guns might even now be aimed at his head. Would he die as John had died? A bullet in the head, no warning at all, not even the dignity an animal might have? That was no way to die, and the thought of it sickened him. Russell balled his hands into tight, powerful fists to control the trembling as a car approached. The driver was looking at him. This was it. He lifted his bags and walked to it.
“Mr. Drake?” It was the name under which Russell was currently traveling. The driver wasn’t the one he’d met for dinner. Russell knew at once that he was dealing with pros, who compartmented everything. That was a good sign.
“That’s me,” Russell answered with a smile/grimace.
The driver got out and opened the trunk. Russell heaved the bags in, then walked to the passenger door and got in the front seat. If this were a trap, he could throttle the driver before he died. At least he’d accomplish that much.
Fifty meters away, Sergeant Spiridon Papanicolaou of the Hellenic National Police sat in an old Opel liveried as a taxi. Sitting there with an extravagant black mustache and munching on a breakfast roll, he looked like anything but a cop. He had a small automatic in the glove box, but like most European cops, he was not skilled in its use. The Nikon camera sitting in a clip holder under his seat was his only real weapon. His job was surveillance, actually working at the behest of the Ministry of Public Order. His memory for faces was photographic—the camera was for people lacking the talent of which he was justifiably proud. His method of operation was one that required great patience, but Papanicolaou had plenty of that. Whenever his superiors got wind of a possible terrorist operation in the Athens area, he prowled hotels and airports and docks. He wasn’t the only such officer, but he was the best. He had a nose for it as his father had had a nose for where the fish were running. And he hated terrorists. In fact, he hated all variety of criminals, but terrorists were the worst of the lot, and he chafed at his government’s off-again/on-again interest in running the murderous bastards out of his ancient and noble country. Currently the interest was on-again. A week earlier there had been a possible sighting report of someone from the PFLP near the Parthenon. Four men from his squad were at the airport. A few others were checking the cruise docks, but Papanicolaou liked to check the hotels. They had to stay somewhere. Never the best—they were too flashy. Never the worst—these bastards liked a modest degree of comfort. The middle sort, the comfortable family places on the secondary streets, with lots of college-age travelers whose rapid shuffling in and out made for difficulty in spotting one particular face. But Papanicolaou had his father’s eyes. He could recognize a face from half a second’s exposure at seventy meters.
And the driver of that blue Fiat was a “face.” He couldn’t remember if it had a name attached to it, but he remembered seeing the face somewhere. The “Unknown” file, probably, one of the hundreds of photographs in the files that came in from Interpol and the military-intelligence people whose lust for the blood of terrorists was even more
frustrated by their government’s policy. This was the country of Leonidas and Xenophon, Odysseus and Achilles. Greece—Hellas to the sergeant—was the home of epic warriors and the very birthplace of freedom and democracy, not a place for foreign scum to kill with impunity ...
Who’s the other one? Papanicolaou wondered. Dresses like an American ... odd features, though. He raised the camera in one smooth motion, zoomed the lens to full magnification, and got off three rapid frames before putting it back down. The Fiat was moving ... well, he’d see where it was going. The sergeant switched off his on-call light and headed out of the cab rank.
Russell settled back in the seat. He didn’t bother with the seat belt. If he had to escape the car, he didn’t want to be bothered. The driver was a good one, maneuvering in and out of traffic, which was lively here. He didn’t say a word. That was fine with Russell, too. The American moved his head to the side and scanned forward, looking for a trap. His eyes flickered around the inside of the car. No obvious places to hide a weapon. No visible microphones or radio equipment. That didn’t mean anything, but he looked anyway. Finally he pretended to relax and cocked his head in a direction from which he could look ahead and also behind by eyeing the right-side mirror. His hunter’s instincts were taut and alert this morning. There was potential danger everywhere.
The driver took what seemed to be an aimless path. It was hard for Russell to be sure, of course. The streets of this city had predated chariots, much less automobiles, and later concessions made to wheeled vehicles had fallen short of making Athens a Los Angeles. Though the autos on the street were tiny ones, traffic seemed to be a constant, moving, anarchic logjam. He wanted to know where they were going, but there was no sense in asking. He would be unable to distinguish between a truthful answer and a lie—and even if he got a straight answer, it probably would not have meant anything to him. He was for better or worse committed to this course of action, Russell knew. It didn’t make him feel any more comfortable, but to deny the truth of it was to lie to himself, and Russell was not that sort. The best he could do was to stay alert. That he did.
