Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (55 page)

“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.

“M
R.
P
RESIDENT
, 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.

TIME ZONES

T
HE 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 S
TORM
T
RACK
and P
ALM
B
OWL
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 P
ALM
B
OWL
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.

“Tomorrow we will see pictures of bread being distributed for free from mosques,” Major Sabah predicted. He could have added the passages from the Koran which would accompany the event, but his American colleagues were not Islamic scholars and would not have grasped the irony terribly well.

“Your estimate, sir?” the senior American officer asked.

“The two countries will unite,”
Sabah
replied soberly. “And soon.”

There was no particular need to ask why the surviving Iraqi weapons plants were being exposed.
Iran
had all it needed.

T
HERE IS NO
such thing as magic. That was merely the word people used to explain something so cleverly done that there was no ready explanation for it, and the simplest technique employed by its practitioners was to distract the audience with one moving and obvious hand (usually in a white glove) while the other was doing something else. So it was with nations as well. While the trucks rolled, and the ships were loaded, and the diplomats were summoned, and
America
was waking up to figure out what was going on, it was, after all, evening in
Tehran
.

Badrayn's contacts were as useful as ever, and what he could not do, Daryaei could. The civilian-marked business jet lifted off from Mehrabad and turned east, heading first over
Afghanistan
, then
Pakistan
, in a two-hour flight that ended at the obscure city of
Rutog
near the Pakistani-Indian-Kashmiri border. The city was in the former country's
Kunlun
Mountains
, and home to some of
China
's Muslim population. The border town had an air force base with some locally manufactured MiG fighters, and a single landing strip, all separate from the city's small regional airport. The location was ideal for everyone's purpose, as it was a bare 600 miles from
New Delhi
, though perversely the longest flight came from
Beijing
, nearly two thousand miles away, even though the real estate was Chinese-owned. The three aircraft landed a few minutes apart, soon after local sunset, taxied to the far end of the ramp, and parked. Military vehicles took their occupants to the ready room for the local MiG contingent. The Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei was accustomed to cleaner accommodations and, worse, he could smell the odor of cooked pork, always a part of the Chinese diet but quite nauseating to him. This he put aside. He wasn't the first of the faithful who'd had to treat with pagans and unbelievers.

The Indian Prime Minister was cordial. She'd met Daryaei before at a regional trade conference and found him withdrawn and misanthropic. That, she saw, had not changed very much.

Last to arrive was Zhang Han San, whom the Indian had met as well. He was a rotund, seemingly jolly man— until one watched his eyes closely. Even his jokes were told with an aim to learn something of his companions. Of the three, he was the only one whose job was not really known to the others. It was clear, however, that he spoke with authority, and since his country was the most powerful of the three, it was not regarded as an insult that a mere minister-without-portfolio was treating with chiefs of state. The meeting was conducted in English, except for Zhang's dismissal of the general officer who'd handled the greetings.

“Please forgive me for not being here when you arrived. The . . . irregularity in protocol is sincerely regretted.” Tea was served, along with some light snacks. There hadn't been time to prepare a proper meal, either.

“Not at all,” Daryaei responded. “Speed makes for inconvenience. For myself, I am most grateful for your willingness to meet under such special circumstances.” He turned. “And to you, Madam Prime Minister, for joining us. God's blessing on this meeting,” he concluded.

“My congratulations on developments in Iraq,” Zhang said, wondering if the agenda was now entirely in Daryaei's hands, so skillfully had he posed the fact that he'd convened the assembly. “It must be very satisfying after so many years of discord between your two nations.”

Yes
,
India
thought, sipping her tea. So clever of you to murder the man in such a timely fashion. “So how may we be of service?” she asked, thus giving Daryaei and
Iran
the floor, to the impassive annoyance of
China
.

“You've met this Ryan recently. I am interested in your impressions.”

“A small man in a large job,” she replied at once. “The speech he gave at the funeral, for example. It would have been better suited to a private family ceremony. For a President, bigger things are expected. At the reception later, he seemed nervous and uneasy, and his wife is arrogant—a physician, you see. They often are.”

“I found him the same when we met, some years ago,” Daryaei agreed.

“And yet he controls a great country,” Zhang observed.

“Does he?”
Iran
asked. “Is
America
still great? For where comes the greatness of a nation, except in the strengths of its leaders?” And that, the other two knew at once, was the agenda.

“J
ESUS,
” R
YAN WHISPERED
to himself, “this is a lonely place.” The thought kept returning to him, all the more so when alone in this office with its curving walls and molded three-inch doors. He was using his reading glasses all the time now—Cathy's recommendation—but that merely slowed down the headaches. It wasn't as though he were a stranger to reading. Every job he'd held in the past fifteen years had required it, but the continual headaches were something new. Maybe he should talk to Cathy or another doc about it? No. Ryan shook his head. It was just job stress, and he just had to learn to deal with it.

Sure, it's just stress. And cancer is just a disease.

The current task was politics. He was reading over a position paper prepared by the political staffers across the street in the OEOB. It was a source of amusement, if not consolation, that they didn't know what to advise him. Ryan had never belonged to a political party. He'd always registered himself as an independent, and that had managed to keep him from getting solicitation letters from the organized parties, though he and Cathy had always ticked the box on their tax returns to contribute their one dollar to the government slush fund. But the President was not only supposed to be a member of a party—but also the leader of that party. The parties were even more thoroughly decapitated than the three branches of government were. Each of them still had a chairman, neither of whom knew what to do at the moment. For a few days, it had been assumed that Ryan was a member of the same party as Roger Durling, and the truth had only been discovered by the press a few days before, to the collective oh, shit! of the
Washington
establishment. For the ideological mavens of the federal city, it was rather like asking what 2 + 2 equaled, and finding out that the answer was, “Chartreuse.” His position paper was predictably chaotic, the product of four or so professional political analysts, and you could tell who had written the different paragraphs, which resolved into a multi-path tug of war. Even his intelligence staff did better than this, Jack told himself, tossing the paper into the out basket and wishing, again, for a cigarette. That was stress talking, too, he knew.

But he still had to go out to the hustings, a word whose meaning he'd never learned, and campaign for people, or at least give speeches. Or something. The position paper's guidance hadn't exactly been clear on that. Having already shot himself in the foot on the issue of abortion— higher up and more to the centerline, Arnie van Damm had remarked acidly the previous day, to reinforce his earlier lesson—now Ryan would have to make his political stance clear on a multitude of issues: affirmative action at one end of the alphabet, and welfare at the other, with taxes, the environment, and God only knew what else in between. Once he'd decided where he stood on such things, Callie Weston would write a series of speeches for him to deliver from
Seattle
to
Miami
and God only knew where else in between.
Hawaii
and
Alaska
were left out because they were small states in terms of political importance, and poles apart ideologically, anyway. They would only confuse matters, or so the position paper told him.

“Why can't I just stay here and work, Arnie?” Ryan asked his arriving chief of staff.

“Because out there is work, Mr. President.” Van Damm took his seat to commence the latest class in Presidency 101. “Because, as you put it, 'It's a leadership function'—did 1 get that right?” Arnie asked with a sardonic growl. “And leading means getting out with the troops, or, in this case, the citizens. Are we clear on that, Mr. President?”

“Are you enjoying this?” Jack closed his eyes and rubbed them under the glasses. He hated the goddamned glasses, too.

“About as much as you are.” Which was an altogether fair comment.

“Sorry.”

“Most people who come here genuinely like escaping from this museum and meeting real people. Of course, it makes people like Andrea nervous. They'd probably agree with keeping you here all the time. But it already feels like a prison, doesn't it?” Arnie asked.

“Only when I'm awake.”

“So get out. Meet people. Tell them what you think, tell them what you want. Hell, they might even listen. They might even tell you what they think, and maybe you will learn something from it. In any case, you can't be President and not do it.”

Jack lifted the position paper he'd just finished. “Did you read this thing?”

Arnie nodded. “Yep.”

“It's confusing garbage,” Ryan said, quite surprised.

“It's a political document. Since when is politics consistent or sensible?” He paused. “The people I've worked with for the last twenty years got this sort of thing with their mother's milk—well, they were probably all bottle babies.”