by Tom Clancy
They were a disaster. Money management was another thing that failed to interest Dr. Caroline Ryan, and Jack assumed the duties more or less by default, just as cooking fell into her domain. She didn’t even know the filing system, and was certain that Jack never expected her to wade into this colossal mess of documents. Along the way, she learned that the blind trust that managed their stock portfolio was doing rather well at the moment. Ordinarily, she just saw the year-end earnings statements. Money didn’t interest her very much. The house was paid off. The kids’ education funds were already set up. The Ryan family actually lived off the combined income of the two Doctors Ryan, which allowed their investments to grow, while complicating their annual taxes, which was also something that Jack—CPA certification or not—took care of, with the aid of the family’s attorney. The most recent statement of net worth drew a gasp. Cathy decided to add the money managers to the Christmas-card list. But that was not what she was after. She found it at two-thirty in the afternoon. The file was simply marked “Zimmer,” and was naturally enough in the last drawer she got to.
The Zimmer file was several inches thick. She sat cross-legged on the floor before opening it, her head already aching from eyestrain and the Tylenol which she should have taken but hadn’t. The first document was a letter from Jack to an attorney—not their regular attorney, the one who did their wills and taxes and other routine work—instructing him to set up an educational trust fund for seven children, a number which had been changed to eight several months later, Cathy saw. The trust fund had been set up with an initial investment of over half a million dollars, and managed as a stock portfolio through the same managers who did part of the Ryan family account. Cathy was surprised to see that Jack did actually make recommendations for this account, something that he did not do for his own. He hadn’t lost his touch, either. The yield from the Zimmer portfolio was twenty-three percent. Another hundred thousand dollars had been invested in a business—a Sub-Chapter-S corporation, she saw, whatever that was—with Southland Corporation as—oh, she realized, a 7-Eleven. It was a Maryland corporation, with the address given as ...
That’s only a few miles from here! It was, in fact, right off of Route 50, and that meant that Jack passed it twice a day on his way to and from work.
How convenient!
So who the hell was Carol Zimmer?
Medical bills? Obstetrics?
Dr. Marsha Rosen! I know her! Had Cathy not been on the faculty at Hopkins, she would have used Marsha Rosen for her own pregnancies; Rosen was a Yale graduate with a very fine reputation.
A baby? Jacqueline Zimmer? Jacqueline? Cathy thought, her face flushed scarlet. Then the tears began streaming down her cheeks.
You bastard! You can’t give me a baby, but you gave one to her, didn’t you!
She checked the date, then searched her memory. Jack hadn’t been home that day until very late. She remembered, because she’d had to cancel out on a dinner party over at ...
He was there! He was there for the delivery, wasn’t he! What more proof do I need? The triumph of the discovery changed at once into black despair.
The world could end so easily, Cathy thought. Just a slip of paper could do it, and that was it. It was over.
Is it over?
How could it not be? Even if he still wanted—did she want him?
What about the kids? Cathy asked herself. She closed the file and replaced it without rising. “You’re a doctor,” she said to herself. “You’re supposed to think before you act.”
The kids needed a father. But what sort of father was he? Gone thirteen or fourteen hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. He managed to take his son to one—just one!—baseball game despite constant pleas. He was lucky to make half of Little Jack’s T-Ball games. He missed every school affair, the Christmas plays, all the other things. Cathy had been half surprised that he’d been home Christmas morning. The night before, assembling the toys, he’d gotten drunk again, and she hadn’t even bothered trying to attract him. What was the point? His present to her ... well, it was nice enough, but the sort of thing a man could get in a few minutes of shopping, no big deal—
Shopping.
Cathy rose and checked through the mail on Jack’s desk. His credit card bills were sitting in the pile. She opened one and found a bunch of entries from ... Hamleys, in London. Six hundred dollars? But he’d only gotten one thing for Little Jack, and two small items for Sally. Six hundred dollars!
Christmas shopping for two families, Jack?
“Just how much more evidence do you need, Cathy girl?” she asked herself aloud again. “Oh God oh God oh God...”
She didn’t move for a very long time, nor did she see or hear anything outside of her own misery. Only the mother in her kept subconscious track of the sound of the kids in the play-room.
Jack got home just before seven that evening, actually rather pleased with himself to be an hour early, and further pleased that he had the Mexico operation set in concrete now. All he had to do was take it to the White House, and then after he got it approved—Fowler would go for this; risks and all, distaste for covert operations and all, this was too juicy for the politician in him to turn down—and after Clark and Chavez brought it off, his stock would go up. And things would change. Things would get better. He would get things straightened out. For starters, he’d plan a vacation. It was time for one. A week off, maybe two, and if some CIA puke showed up with daily briefing documents, Ryan would kill the son of a bitch. He wanted freedom from the job, and he’d get it. Two good weeks. Take the kids out of school and go see Mickey, just as Clark had suggested. He’d make the reservations tomorrow.
“I’m home!” Jack announced. Silence. That was odd. He went downstairs and found the kids in front of the TV. They were doing too damned much of that, but that was their father’s fault. He’d change that, too. He’d cut back on his hours. It was time Marcus held up his end instead of working banker’s hours and leaving Jack with all the goddamned work.
“Where’s Mommy?”
“I don’t know,” Sally said without turning away from the green slime and orange guck.
Ryan walked back upstairs and into the bedroom to change. Still no sign of his wife. He found her carrying a basket of wash. Jack stood in her path, leaning forward to kiss her, but she leaned back and shook her head. Okay, that was no big thing.
“What’s for dinner, babe?” he inquired lightly.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you fix something?” It was her tone, the snappy way she fired back without provocation.
“What did I do?” Jack asked. He was already surprised, but he hadn’t had time enough to grasp her demeanor. The look in her eyes was an alien thing, and when she answered to this question, her voice made him shrivel.
“Nothing, Jack, you haven’t done anything at all.” She pushed past him with the basket and disappeared around the corner.
He just stood there, flat against the wall, his mouth open, not knowing what to say, and not understanding why his wife had suddenly decided to despise him.
It took only a day and a half from Latakia to Piraeus. Bock had found a ship heading to the right port, eliminating the need to transship at Rotterdam. Qati disliked deviation from the plan, but a careful check of shipping schedules showed that the five days saved might be important, and he agreed to it. He and Ghosn watched the gantry crane lift up the cargo container and move it onto the deck of the Carmen Vita, a Greek-flag container ship on the Mediterranean run. She would sail on the evening tide, and arrive in the United States in eleven days. They could have chartered a jet aircraft and done this, Qati thought, but it would have been too dangerous. Eleven days. He’d be able to see his physician again, and still have time to fly to America and make certain that all the arrangements were satisfactory. The workers secured the container box in place. It would be well protected, in the center of the ship, with other boxes atop it, and well aft so that winter storms would not buffet it directly. The two men ret
ired to a waterfront bar and waited for the ship to sail, then flew to Damascus and drove from there to their headquarters. The bomb shop was already gone—mothballed would have been a more accurate term. The power cables had been cut, and dirt pushed over all the entrances. If someone ever drove a heavy truck over the concealed roof there would be a major surprise, but that was unlikely. It was possible that they might use the facility again, and against that slim possibility was the inconvenience of removing the machines to another burial place. Simply covering the facility over was the most logical alternative.
Russell flew to Chicago to catch the first round of playoff games. He took with him a camera, an expensive Nikon F4, and burned up two rolls of ASA-100 color prints photographing the ABC trucks—the Monday Night Football team was doing this particular wild-card game—before catching a cab back to the airport. He was lucky enough on the flight that he caught part of the game on the radio during the drive from Stapleton International to his new house off Interstate 76. The Bears pulled it out in overtime, 23-20. That meant that Chicago would have the honor of losing the following week to the Vikings in the Metrodome. Minnesota had a bye during the first week of wild-card games. Tony Wills’ pulled groin would be fully healed, and that rookie, the announcer pointed out, had barely missed making two thousand rushing yards in his first NFL season, plus eight hundred yards as a receiver. Russell managed to catch nearly all of the AFC game because it was played on the West Coast. There were no surprises, but it was still football.
USS Maine left the shed without incident. Tugs turned her around, pointing the submarine down the channel, and continued to stand by if assistance were required. Captain Ricks stood atop the sail, actually aft of the cockpit, leaning against rails set in the very top of the structure. Lieutenant Commander Claggett stood his watch in the control room. The navigator actually did the work, using the periscope to mark positions, which a quartermaster dutifully checked off on the chart, ensuring that the submarine was in the center of the channel and headed in the proper direction. The trip to sea was a fairly lengthy one. Throughout the boat, men continued to stow gear. Those not actually on watch settled into their bunks and tried to nap. Soon Maine would be on her regular six-hour watch cycle. The sailors all made the conscious effort to get their minds from land-mode into at-sea-mode. Families and friends might as well have been on another planet. For the next two months their entire world was contained within the steel hull of their submarine.
Mancuso watched the sailing as he always did for each of his boats. It was a shame, he decided, that there was no way to get Ricks off the boat. But there was no such way. He’d meet with Group in a few days to go over routine business. At that meeting he’d express his misgivings about Ricks. He would not be able to go too far this first time, just to let Group know that he had his doubts about the “Gold” CO. The quasi-political nature of the exercise grated on Mancuso, who liked things in the open and aboveboard, the Navy Way. But the Navy Way had its own rules of behavior, and in the absence of substantive cause for action, all he could do now was express concern with Ricks and his way of running things. Besides, Group was headed by yet another hyper-engineering type who would probably have a little too much sympathy with Harry.
Mancuso tried to find an emotion for the moment, but failed. The slate-gray shape diminished in the distance, gliding across the oily-calm waters of the harbor, heading out for her fifth deterrence patrol, as U.S. Navy submarines had been doing for over thirty years. Business as usual, world changes and all, that’s all it was. Maine sailed out to keep the peace through the threat of the most inhuman force known to man. The Commodore shook his head. What a hell of a way to run a railroad. That was why he’d always been a fast-attack man. But it worked, had worked, probably would continue to work for a lot more years, Bart told himself, and while not every boomer skipper was another Mush Morton, they’d all brought their boats back. He got into his navy-blue official car and told the driver to take him back to the office. Paperwork beckoned.
At least the kids didn’t notice. Jack took some comfort in that. Kids lived as spectators in a highly complex world which required years of schooling to appreciate, as a result of which they took note mainly of the parts that they understood, and that did not include a mom and dad who simply didn’t talk. It wouldn’t last forever, of course, but it might last long enough for things to be smoothed over. Probably would, Jack thought. Sure it would.
He didn’t know what was wrong, nor did he know what to do about it. What he ought to have done, of course, was get home at a decent hour, maybe take her out to dinner at a nice place and—but that was not possible with two kids in school. Getting a sitter in the middle of the week and this far out of town was impractical. Another option was simply to get home and pay closer attention to his wife, leading to a—
But he couldn’t depend on his ability to do that, and one more failure could only make things worse.
He looked up from his desk, out at the pines that lay beyond the CIA boundary fence. The symmetry was perfect. His work was messing up his family life, and now his family life was messing up his work. So now he had nothing at all that he could do properly. Wasn’t that nice? Ryan got up from his desk and left the office, wandering to the nearest kiosk. Once there he purchased his first pack of cigarettes in ... five years? Six? Whatever, he stripped off the cellophane top and tapped one out. One luxury of having a private office was that he could smoke without interference—CIA had become just like all government offices in that respect; for the most part, people could smoke only in the rest rooms. He pretended not to see the disapproving look on Nancy’s face on his way back in, then went rooting in his desk for an ashtray before lighting up.
It was, he decided a minute later—just as the initial dizziness hit him—one of the dependable pleasures of life. Alcohol was another. You ingested these substances and you got the desired result, which explained their popularity in spite of the dangers to health that everyone knew about. Alcohol and nicotine, the two things that make intolerable life into something else. While they shortened it.
Wasn’t that just great? Ryan almost laughed at his incredible stupidity. Just what else of himself would he destroy? But did it matter?
His work mattered. That he was sure of. That was what had landed him in this mess, one way or another. That was the prime destructive factor in his life, but he could no more leave that than he could change anything else.
“Nancy, please ask Mr. Clark to come in.”
John appeared two minutes later. “Aw, hell, doc!” he observed almost immediately. “Now, what’s the wife gonna say?”
“Not a thing.”
“Bet you’re wrong on that.” Clark turned to open a window for ventilation. He’d quit a long time before. It was the one vice that he feared. It had killed his father. “What do you want?”
“How’s the hardware?”
“Waiting for your go-ahead to build it.”
“Go,” Jack said simply.
“You got a go-mission order?”
“No, but I don’t need it. We’ll call it part of the feasibility study. How long to slap things together?”
“Three days, they say. We’ll need some cooperation from the Air Force.”
“What about the computer side?”
“That program has already been validated. They’ve taken tapes from six different aircraft and smoothed out the noise. It’s never taken them more than two or three hours to do an hour of tape.”
“Mexico City to D.C. is ...”
“Depending on weather, just under four hours, max. Doing the full tape will be an overnighter,” Clark estimated. “The President’s schedule is what?”
“Arrival ceremony is Monday afternoon. The first business session is the following morning. State dinner Tuesday night.”
“You going?”
Ryan shook his head. “No, we’re going to the one a week earlier—geez, that’s not too far off, is it? I’ll call the 89th Wing at Andrews. T
hey do training hops all the time. Getting your team aboard won’t be hard.”
“I have three capture teams selected. They’re all ex-Air Force and -Navy elint spooks,” Clark said. “They know the business.”
“Okay, run with it.”
“You got it, doc.”
Jack watched him leave and lit up another.
29
CROSSROADS
MV Carmen Vita cleared the Strait of Gibraltar right on schedule, her Pielstick diesels driving her at a constant nineteen knots. The crew of forty officers and men (this ship did not have any women in the crew, though three of the officers had their wives with them) settled down for the normal sailing routine of watch-keeping and maintenance. They were seven days out from the Virginia Capes. On her deck and stowed below were a goodly number of standard-sized container boxes. These actually came in two sizes, and they were all loaded with various types of cargo which the captain and crew neither knew nor cared very much about. The whole point of containerization was that the ship was used exclusively as a contract-hauler, much as a trucker was used by various businesses. All the ship’s crew needed to worry about was the weight of the containers, and that always seemed to work out rather uniformly, since the containers themselves were always loaded to reflect what a commercial truck could legally pull along a public highway.
The ship’s southerly routing also made for a fairly sedate and uneventful passage. The really bitter winter storms followed a more northerly track, and the ship’s master, a native of India, was happy for it. A youngish man for such a substantial command—he was only thirty-seven-he knew that good weather made for a fast and fuel-efficient voyage. He aspired to a larger and more sumptuous ship, and by keeping Carmen Vita on schedule and under budget, he’d get that in due course.
