Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (59 page)

“Getting his feet wet,” John agreed. “You have a team working the other segment for tonight, right?”

Donner checked his watch and nodded. “Should be there now.”

“S
O,
D
R.
R
YAN
, how do you like being First Lady?” Krystin Matthews asked, with a warm smile.

“I'm still figuring it out.” They were talking in Cathy's cubbyhole office overlooking central
Baltimore
. It had barely enough room for a desk and three chairs (a good one for the doctor, one for the patient, and the other for the spouse or mother of the patient), and with all the cameras and lights in the room, she felt trapped. “You know, I miss cooking for my family.”

“You're a surgeon—and your husband expects you to cook, too?” the NEC co-anchor asked, in surprise bordering on outrage.

“I've always loved cooking. It's a good way for me to relax when I get home.” Instead of watching TV, Professor Caroline Ryan didn't add. She was wearing a new starched lab coat. She'd had to take fifteen minutes with her hair and makeup, and she had patients waiting. “Besides, I'm pretty good at it.”

Ah, well, that was different. A cloying smile: “What's the President's favorite meal?”

A smile returned. “That's easy. Steak, baked potato, fresh corn on the cob, and my spinach salad—and I know, the physician in me tells him that it's a little heavy on the cholesterol. Jack's pretty good with a grill. In fact, he's a pretty handy man to have around the house. He doesn't even mind cutting the grass.”

“Let me take you back to the night your son was born, that awful night when the terrorists—”

“I haven't forgotten,” Cathy said in a quieter voice.

“Your husband has killed people. You're a doctor. How does that make you feel?”

“Jack and Robby—he's Admiral Jackson now— Robby and Sissy are our closest friends,” Cathy explained. “Anyway, they did what they had to do, or we would not have survived that night. I don't like violence. I'm a surgeon. Last week I had a trauma case, a man lost his eye as a result of a fistfight in a bar a few blocks from here. But what Jack did is different from what they did. My husband fought to protect me and Sally, and Little Jack, who wasn't even born yet.”

“You like being a doctor?”

“I love my work. I wouldn't leave it for anything.”

“But usually a First Lady—”

“I know what you want to say. I'm not a political wife. I practice medicine. I'm a research scientist, and I work in the best eye institute in the world. I have patients waiting for me now. They need me—and you know, I need them, too. My job is who I am. I'm also a wife and a mother, and I like nearly everything about my life.”

“Except this?” Krystin asked, with a smile.

Cathy's blue eyes twinkled. “I really don't have to answer that, do I?” And Matthews knew she had the tagline for the interview.

“What sort of man is your husband?”

“Well, I can't be totally objective, can I? I love him. He's risked his life for me and my children. Whenever I've needed him, he was there. And I do the same for him. That's what love and marriage mean. Jack is smart. He's honest. I guess he's something of a worrier. Sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night—at home, I mean—and spend half an hour looking out the windows at the water. I don't think he knows that I know that.”

“Does he still do that?”

“Not lately. He's pretty tired when he gets to bed. These are the worst hours he's ever worked.”

“His other government posts, at CIA, for example, there are reports that he—”

Cathy stopped that one with a raised hand. “I do not have a security clearance. I don't know, and probably I don't want to know. It's the same with me. I am not allowed to discuss confidential patient information with Jack, or anyone else outside the faculty here.”

“We'd like to see you with patients and—” FLOTUS shook her head, stopping the question dead.

“No, this is a hospital, not a TV studio. It's not so much my privacy as that of my patients. To them, I am not the First Lady. To them, I am Dr. Ryan. I'm not a celebrity. I'm a physician and a surgeon. To my students, I'm a professor and teacher.”

“And reportedly one of the best in the world at what you do,” Matthews added, just to see the reaction.

A smile resulted. “Yes, I've won the Lasker prize, and the respect of my colleagues is a gift that's worth more than money—but you know, that isn't it, either. Sometimes—not very often—but sometimes after a major procedure, I'm the one who takes the-bandages off in a darkened room, and we turn the lights up slowly, and I see it. I can see it on the patient's face. I fixed the eyes, and they work again, and the look you see on his or her face— well, nobody's in medicine for the money, at least not here at
Hopkins
. We're here to make sick people well, and for me to preserve and restore sight, and the look you see when that job is done is like having God tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Nice job.' That's why I'll never, never leave medicine,” Cathy Ryan said, almost lyrically, knowing that they'd use this on TV tonight, and hoping that maybe some bright young high-school kid would see her face and hear the words and decide to think about medicine. If she had to put up with this waste of her time, perhaps she could use it to serve her art.

It was a pretty good sequence, Krystin Matthews thought, but with only two minutes and thirty seconds of air time, they would not be able to use it. Better the part about how she hated being First Lady. Everybody was used to hearing doctors talk.

ON THE  FLY

T
HE RETURN TO THE AIRPLANE WAS
quick and efficient. The governor went his way. The people who'd lined the sidewalks were mainly back to their jobs, and those who turned and looked were shoppers who probably wondered what the sirens were all about—or if they knew, were annoyed with the noise. Ryan was able to lean back in the plush leather seats, deflated by the fatigue that comes after a stressful moment.

“So, how'd I do?” he asked, looking out the window as
Indiana
passed by at seventy miles per hour. He smiled inwardly at the thought of driving this fast in the outskirts of a city without getting a ticket.

“Very well, actually,” Callie Weston said first. “You talked like a teacher.”

“I was a teacher once,” the President said. And with luck, I may be again someday.

“That's okay for a speech like this, but for others you'll need a little fire,” Arnie observed.

“One thing at a time,” Callie advised the chief of staff. “You crawl before you walk.”

“Same speech in
Oklahoma
, right?” POTUS asked.

“A few changes, but no big deal. Just remember you're not in
Indiana
anymore.
Sooner
State
, not
Hoosier
State
. Same line about tornadoes, but football instead of basketball.”

“They also lost both senators, but they still have a congressman left, and he'll be on the dais with you,” van Damm advised.

“How'd he make it?” Jack asked idly.

“Probably getting laid that night,” was the curt answer. “You'll announce a new contract for Tinker Air Force Base. It means about five hundred new jobs, consolidating a few operations at the new location. That'll make the local papers happy.”

B
EN
G
OODLEY DIDN'T
know if he was the new National Security Advisor or not. If so, he was rather young for the job, but at least the President he served was well grounded in foreign affairs. That made him more a high-class secretary than an adviser. It was a function he didn't mind. He'd learned much in his brief time at Langley, and bad advanced rapidly, becoming one of the youngest men ever to win the coveted NIO card because he knew how to organize information, and because he had the political savvy to grade the important stuff. He especially liked working directly for President Ryan. Goodley knew that he could play it straight with the Boss, and that Jack—he still thought of him by that name, though he could no longer use it—would always let him know what he was thinking. It would be another learning experience for Dr. Goodley, and a priceless one for someone whose new life dream was someday becoming DCI on merit and not through politics.

On the wall opposite his desk was the sort of clock that shows the sun position for the entire world. He'd ordered it the very day he'd arrived—and to his surprise it had appeared literally overnight, instead of perking its way through five levels of procurement bureaucracy. He'd heard stories that the White House was one portion of the government that actually did work, and had not believed them—the Harvard graduate had been in government service about four years now, and figured he knew what worked and what didn't. The surprise was welcome, and the clock, he'd found from his work in the CIA Operations Center, was an instant reference, better than the array of regular clocks that some places had. Your eye instantly saw where
noon
was and could automatically grasp what time it was anywhere in the world. More to the point, you instantly knew if something was happening at an unusual hour, and that told you as much as the Signals Intelligence—S
IG
I
NT
—bulletin. Such as the one that had just come in over his personal fax machine that was connected to his STU-4 secure phone.

The National Security Agency was in the habit of posting periodic summaries of activity across the world. Its own watch center was staffed by senior military people, and while their outlook was more technical and less political than his own, they were not fools. Ben had gotten to know many of them by name in addition to reputation, and had also learned their individual strengths. The USAF colonel who had command of the
NSA
Watch
Center
on weekday afternoons didn't bother people with trivia. That was left to lower-level people and lower-level signals. When the colonel put his name on something, it was usually worth reading. And so it was just after
noon
,
Washington
time.

Goodley saw that the F
LASH
concerned
Iraq
. That was another thing about the colonel. He didn't go using C
RITIC
headers for the fun of it, as some did. Ben looked up to check the wall clock. After sundown, local time, a time of relaxation for some, and action for others. The action would be the sort to last all night, the better to get things accomplished without interference, so that the next day would be genuinely new, and genuinely different.

“Oh, boy,” Goodley breathed. He read down the page again, then turned his swivel chair and picked up the phone, touching the #3 speed-dial button.

“Director's office,” a fiftyish female voice answered.

“Goodley for Foley.”

“Please hold, Dr. Goodley.” Then: “Hi, Ben.”

“Hello, Director.” He felt it improper to first-name the DCI. He'd probably go back to work at
Langley
within the year, and not as a seventh-floor-rank official. “You have what I have?” The page was still warm in his hand from the printer.

“
Iraq
?”

“Right.”

“You must have read it twice, Ben. I just told Bert Vasco to get his ass up here.” CIA's own
Iraq
desk was weak, both thought, while this State guy was very good indeed.

“Looks pretty hot to me.”

“Agreed,” Ed Foley replied, with an unseen nod. “Jesus, but they're moving fast over there. Give me an hour, maybe ninety minutes.”

“I think the President needs to know,” Goodley said, with a voice that concealed the urgency he felt. Or so he thought.

“He needs to know more than we can tell him now. Ben?” the DCI added.

“Yes, Director?”

“Jack won't kill you for patience, and we can't do any more than watch it develop anyway. Remember, we can't overload him with information. He doesn't have the time to see it all anymore. What he sees has to be concise. That's your job,” Ed Foley explained. “It'll take you a few weeks to figure it out. I'll help,” the DCI went on, reminding Goodley how junior he was.

“Okay. I'll be waiting.” The line clicked off.

Goodley had about a minute during which he reread the NSA bulletin, and then the phone rang again.

“Dr. Goodley.”

“Doctor, this is the President's office,” one of the senior secretaries said. “I have a Mr. Golovko on the President's private line. Can you take the call?”

“Yes,” he replied, thinking, Oh, shit.

“Go ahead, please,” she said, clicking off the line.

“This is Ben Goodley.”

“This is Golovko. Who are you?”

“I am acting National Security Advisor to the President.” And I know who you are.

“Goodley?” Ben could hear the voice searching his memory. “Ah, yes, you are national intelligence officer who just learned to shave. My congratulations on your promotion.”

The gamesmanship was impressive, though Goodley figured that there was a file on the Russian's desk with everything down to his shoe size. Even Golovko's memory couldn't be that good, and Goodley had been in the White House long enough that the word would have gotten out, and the RVS/KGB would have done its homework.

“Well, somebody has to answer the phones, Minister.” Gamesmanship could go two ways. Golovko wasn't really a minister, though he acted as such, and that was technically a secret. It was a weak reply, but it was something. “What can I do for you?”

“You know the arrangement I have with Ivan Emmetovich?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Very well, tell him that a new country is about to be born. It will be called the United Islamic Republic. It will include, for the moment,
Iran
and
Iraq
. I rather suspect that it will wish to grow further.”

“How reliable is that information, sir?” Better to be polite. It would make the Russian feel bigger.

“Young man, I would not make a report to your President unless I felt it to be reliable, but,” he added generously, “I understand you must ask the question. The point of origin for the report does not concern you. The reliability of the source is sufficient for me to pass the information along with my own confidence. There will be more to follow. Do you have similar indications?”

The question froze Goodley's eyeballs in place, staring down at a blank spot on his desk. He had no guidance on this. Yes, he'd learned that President Ryan had discussed cooperation with Golovko, that he'd also discussed the matter with Ed Foley, and that both had decided to go forward with it. But nobody had told him the parameters for giving information back to
Moscow
, and he didn't have time to call
Langley
for instructions, else he would appear weak to the Russians, and the Russians didn't want
America
to appear weak at the moment, and he was the man on the spot, and he had to make a decision. That entire thought process required about a third of a second.

“Yes, Minister, we do. Your timing is excellent. Director Foley and I were just discussing the development.”

“Ah, yes, Dr. Goodley, I see that your signals people are as efficient as ever. What a pity that your human sources do not match their performance.”

Ben didn't dare to respond at all to the observation, though its accuracy caused his stomach to contract. Goodley had more respect for Jack Ryan than he did for any man, and now he remembered the admiration Jack had often expressed for the man on the other end of the phone.

Welcome to the bigs, kid. Don't hang any curveballs. He ought to have said that Foley had called him.

“Minister, I will be speaking to President Ryan within the hour, and I will pass your information along. Thank you for your timely call, sir.”

“Good day, Dr. Goodley.”

United Islamic Republic
, Ben read on his desk pad. There had once been a
United Arab Republic
, an unlikely alliance between
Syria
and
Egypt
doomed to failure in two respects. The separated countries had been fundamentally incompatible, and the alliance had been made only to destroy
Israel
, which had objected to the goal, and done so effectively. More to the point, a United Islamic Republic was a religious statement as much as a political one, because
Iran
was not an Arab nation—as
Iraq
was—but rather an Aryan one with different ethnic and linguistic roots. Islam was the world's only major religion to condemn in its scripture all forms of racism and proclaim the equality of all men before God, regardless of color—a fact often overlooked by the West. So, Islam was overtly designed to be a unifying force, and this new notional country would play on that fact with its very name. That said a lot, enough that Golovko didn't even need to explain it, and it also said that Golovko felt that he and Ryan were on the same wavelength. Goodley checked the wall clock again. It was nighttime in
Moscow
, too. Golovko was working late— well, not all that late for a senior official. Ben lifted the phone and hit #3 again. It took him less than a minute to summarize the call from
Moscow
.

“We can believe anything he says—on this issue, anyway. Sergey Nikolay'ch is a pro from way back. I imagine he twisted your tail just a little, right?” the DCI asked.

“Ruffled the fur some,” Goodley admitted.

“It's a carryover from old days. They do like their status games. Don't let it bother you, and don't shoot back. Better just to ignore it,” Foley explained. “Okay, what's he worried about?”

“A lot of republics with '-stan' at the end,” Goodley blurted out, without thinking.

“Concur.” This came from another voice.

“Vasco?”

“Yeah, just walked in.” And then Goodley had to repeat what he'd told Ed Foley. Probably Mary Pat was there, too. Individually, both were good at what they did. In the same room, thinking together, they were a deadly weapon. It was something you had to see to understand, Ben knew.

“This looks to me like a big deal,” Goodley observed.

“Looks that way to me, too,” Vasco said over the speakerphone. “Let us kick a few things around. Be back to you in fifteen or twenty.”

“Would you believe Avi ben Jakob is checking in with us?” Ed reported, after a background noise on the line. “They must be having a really tough day.”

For the moment it was just irony that the Russians were both the first to check in with America (and that they were doing so at all), and that they were the only ones calling straight into the White House, beating the Israelis on both scores. But the amusement wouldn't last, and all the players knew that.
Israel
was probably having the worst day of all.
Russia
was merely having a very bad one. And
America
was getting to share the experience.

I
T WOULD HAVE
been uncivilized to deny them a chance at prayer. Cruel though they were, and criminals though they had been, they had to have their chance at prayer, albeit a brief one. Each was in the presence of a learned mullah, who, with firm but not unkind voice, told them of their fates, and cited scripture, and spoke to them of their chance to reconcile with Allah before meeting Him face to face. Every one did—whether they believed in what they did was another issue, and one left for Allah to judge, but the mullahs had done their duty—and then every one was led out into the prison yard.

It was a sort of assembly-line process, carefully timed so that the three clergymen gave each condemned criminal exactly three times the interval required to take each out in his turn, tie him to the post, shoot him, remove the body, and restart the process. It worked out to five minutes per execution and fifteen minutes for prayer.

The commanding general of the 41st Armored Division was typical, except that his religion was something more than vestigial. His hands were bound in his cell before his imam—the general preferred the Arabic term to the Farsi one—and he was led out by soldiers who a week before would have saluted and trembled at his passage. He'd reconciled himself to his fate, and he would not give the Persian bastards he'd fought in the border swamps the least bit of satisfaction, though inwardly he cursed to God the cowardly superiors who had skipped the country and left him behind. Perhaps he might have killed the President himself and taken over, he thought as his handcuffs were looped to the post. The general took a moment to look back at the wall to gauge how good was the marksmanship of the firing squad. He found strange humor in the fact that it might take him a few extra seconds to die, and he snorted in disgust. Russian-trained and competent, he'd tried to be an honest soldier—nonpolitical, following his orders faithfully and without question, whatever they might be—and therefore had never been fully trusted by his country's political leadership, and this was his reward for it. A captain came up with a blindfold.