Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (74 page)

So far, Ernie Brown thought, things were going well, especially on the security side. Fertilizer was not a controlled substance. Neither was diesel fuel. Neither was lead, and every purchase had been made at more than one place, so that no single acquisition was so large as to cause comment.

It was still time-consuming menial labor, but as Pete had remarked, Jim Bridger hadn't come west by helicopter. No, he'd traveled the distance on horseback, doubtless with a packhorse or two, making maybe fifteen or twenty miles per day, then trapping his beaver one at a time, doing everything the hard way, the individual way, occasionally bumping into another of his kind and trading for jugged liquor or tobacco. So what they did was in the tradition of their kind. That was important.

The timing worked out nicely. Pete was doing the ladle work now, and from the time he poured into the first mold-set until he poured the last, the first set hardened enough that, when dipped in water and opened—the two-piece tool was like a pair of pliers—the mini-ball-type projectiles were fully formed and solid. These were tossed into an empty oil drum, and the molds replaced in their holders. Ernie collected the spilled lead and dumped it back in the pot so that none would be wasted.

The only hard part was getting the cement truck, but a search of local papers had found an auction sale for a contractor going out of business, and for a mere $21,000 they'd acquired a three-year-old vehicle with a Mack truck body, only 70,567.1 miles on the odometer, and in pretty good running shape. They'd driven that down at night, of course, and it was now parked in the barn, sitting twenty feet away, its headlights watching them like a pair of eyes.

The work was menial and repetitive, but even that helped. Hanging on the barn wall was a map of downtown
Washington
, and as Ernie stirred the lead, he turned to look at it, his brain churning over the flat paper image and his own mental picture. He knew all the distances, and distance was the prime factor. The Secret Service thought it was pretty smart. They'd closed off
Pennsylvania Avenue
for the very purpose of keeping bombs away from the President's house. Well, hell, weren't they smart. They'd overlooked only one little thing.

“B
UT
I
HAVE
TO
,” MacGregor said. “We're required to.”

“You will not,” the health department official told him. “It is not necessary. The Index Patient brought the disease with him. You have initiated proper containment procedures. The staff are doing their job—you trained them well, Ian,” he added to assuage the heat of the moment. “It would be inconvenient for my country for this word to go out. I discussed it with the foreign ministry, and word will not go out. Is that clear?”

“But—”

“If you pursue this, we will have to ask you to leave the country.”

MacGregor flushed. He had a pale, northern complexion, and his face too easily showed his emotional state. This bastard could and would make another telephone call, and he would have a policeman—so they called them here, though they were decidedly not the civilized, friendly sort he'd known in Edinburgh—come to his house to tell him to pack his things for the ride to the airport. It had happened before to a Londoner who'd lectured a government official a little too harshly about AIDS dangers. And if he left, he'd be leaving patients behind, and that was his vulnerability, as the official knew, and as MacGregor knew that he knew. Young and dedicated, he looked after his patients as a doctor should, and leaving them to another's care wasn't something he could do easily, not here, not when there were just too few really competent physicians for the patient load.

“How is Patient Saleh?”

“I doubt he will survive.”

“That is unfortunate, but it cannot be helped. Do we have any idea how this man was exposed to the disease?”

The younger man flushed again. “No, and that's the point!”

“I will speak to him myself.”

Bloody hard thing to do from three meters away
, MacGregor thought. But he had other things to think about.

Sohaila had tested positive for antibodies also. But the little girl was getting better. Her temperature was down another half a degree. She'd stopped her GI bleeding. MacGregor had rerun a number of tests, and baselined others. Patient Sohaila's liver function was nearly normal. He was certain she'd survive. Somehow she'd been exposed to Ebola, and somehow she'd defeated it—but without knowing the former, he could only guess at the reason for the latter. Part of him wondered if Sohaila and Saleh had been exposed in the same way—no, not exactly. As formidable as a child's immune defenses were, they were not all that much more powerful than a healthy adult's, and Saleh showed no underlying health problems. But the adult was surely dying while the child was going to live. Why?

What other factors had entered into the two cases? There was no Ebola outbreak in
Iraq
—there had never been such a thing, and in a populous country like that—didn't
Iraq
have a bio-war program? Could they have had an outbreak and hushed it up? But, no, the government of that country was in turmoil. So said the SkyNews service he had at his apartment, and in such circumstances secrets like this could not be kept. There would be panic.

MacGregor was a doctor, not a detective. The physicians who could do both worked for the World Health Organization, at the Pasteur Institute in
Paris
, and at CDC in
America
. Not so much brighter than he as more experienced and differently trained.

Sohaila. He had to manage her case, keep checking her blood. Could she still infect others? MacGregor had to check the literature on that. All he knew for sure was that one immune system was losing and another was winning. If he were to figure anything out, he had to stay on the case. Maybe later he could get the word out, but he had to stay here to accomplish anything.

Besides, before telling anyone, he had gotten the blood samples out to Pasteur and CDC. This strutting bureaucrat didn't know that, and the phone calls, if they came, would come to this hospital and to MacGregor. He could get some word out. He could tell them what the political problem was. He could ask some questions, and relay others. He had to submit.

“As you wish, Doctor,” he told the official. “You will, of course, follow the necessary procedures.”

RIPPLES AND WAVES

T
HE PAYOFF WAS THIS MORNING
, and again President Ryan suffered through the ordeal of makeup and hair spray.

“We should at least have a proper barber chair,” Jack observed while Mrs. Abbot did her duty. He'd just learned the day before that the presidential barber came to the Oval Office and did his job at the President's swivel chair. That must be a real treat for the Secret Service, he thought, having a man with scissors and a straight razor an inch from his carotid artery. “Okay, Arnie, what do I do with Mr. Donner?”

“Number one, he asks any question he wants. That means you have to think about the answers.”

“I do try, Arnie,” Ryan observed with a frown.

“Emphasize the fact that you're a citizen and not a politician. It might not matter to Donner, but it will matter to the people who watch the interview tonight,” van Damm advised. “Expect a hit on the court thing.”

“Who leaked that?” Ryan demanded crossly.

“We'll never know, and trying to find out only makes you look like Nixon.”

“Why is it that no matter what I do, somebody—damn,” Ryan sighed as Mary Abbot finished with his hair. “I told George Winston that, didn't I?”

“You're learning. If you help some little old lady to cross the street, some feminist will say that it was condescending. If you don't help her, the AARP will say you're insensitive to the needs of the elderly. Throw in every other interest group there is. They all have agendas, Jack, and those agendas are a lot more important to them than you are. The idea is to offend as few people as possible. That's different from offending nobody. Trying to do that offends everybody,” the chief of staff explained.

Ryan's eyes went wide. “I got it! I'll say something to piss everybody off—and then they'll all love me.”

Arnie wasn't buying: “And every joke you tell will piss somebody off. Why? Humor is always cruel to someone, and some people just don't have a sense of humor to begin with.”

“In other words, there's people out there who want to get mad at something, and I'm the highest-profile target.”

“You're learning,” the chief of staff observed with a grim nod. He was worried about this one.

“W
E HAVE MARITIME
Pre-Positioning Ships at Diego Garcia,”
Jackson
said, touching the proper point on the map.

“How much is there?” Bretano asked.

“We just reconfigured the TOE—”

“What's that?” SecDef asked.

“Table of Organization and Equipment.” General Michael Moore was the Army's chief of staff. He'd commanded a brigade of the First Armored Division in the Persian Gulf War. “The load-out is enough for a little better than a brigade, a full-sized heavy Army brigade, along with all the consumables-they need for a month's combat operations. Added to that, we have some units set in
Saudi Arabia
. The equipment is almost all new, M1A2 main battle tanks, Bradleys, MLRS. The new artillery tracks will be shipped out in three months. The Saudis,” he added, “have been helping on the funding side. Some of the equipment is technically theirs, supposedly reserve equipment for their army, but we maintain it, and all we have to do is fly our people over to roll it out of the warehouses.”

“Who would go first, if they ask for help?”

“Depends,”
Jackson
answered. “Probably the first out would be an ACR—Armored Cavalry Regiment. In a real emergency, we'd airlift the personnel from the 10th ACR in the
Negev
Desert
. That can be done in as little as a single day. For exercises, the 3rd ACR out of
Texas
or the 2nd out of
Louisiana
.”

“An ACR, Mr. Secretary, is a well-balanced brigade-sized formation. Lots of teeth, but not much tail. It can take care of itself, and people will think twice before taking it on,” Mickey Moore explained, adding, “Before they can deploy for a lengthy stay, however, they need a combat-support battalion—supply and repair troops.”

“We still have a carrier in the
Indian Ocean
—she's at Diego now with the rest of the battle group to give the crews some shore leave,”
Jackson
went on. Which just about covered that atoll with sailors, but it was something. At least they could have a beer or two, and stretch their legs and play softball. “We have an F-16 wing—well, most of one—in the
Negev
as well, as part of our commitment to Israeli security. That and the 10th Cav are pretty good. Their continuing mission is to train up the IDF, and it keeps them busy.”

“Soldiers love to train, Mr. Secretary. They'd rather do that than anything,” General Moore added.

“I need to get out and see some of this stuff,” Bretano observed. “Soon as I get the budget thing worked out— the start of it, anyway. It sounds thin, gentlemen.”

“It is, sir,”
Jackson
agreed. “Not enough to fight a war, but probably enough to deter one, if it comes to that.”

“W
ILL THERE BE
another war in the
Persian Gulf
?” Tom , Donner asked.

“I see no reason to expect it,” the President replied. The hard part was controlling his voice. The answer was wary, but his words had to sound positive and reassuring. It was yet another form of lying, though telling the truth might change the equation. That was the nature of “spin,” a game so false and artificial that it became a kind of international reality. Saying what wasn't true in order to serve the truth. Churchill had said it once: in time of war, truth was so precious as to need a bodyguard of lies. But in peacetime?

“But our relations with
Iran
and
Iraq
have not been friendly for some time.”

“The past is the past, Tom. Nobody can change it, but we can learn from it. There is no good reason for animosity between
America
and the countries in that region. Why should we be enemies?” the President asked rhetorically.

“So will we be talking to the United Islamic Republic?” Donner asked.

“We are always willing to talk to people, especially in the interest of fostering friendly relations. The
Persian Gulf
is a region of great importance to the entire world. It is in everyone's interest for that region to remain peaceful and stable. There's been enough war.
Iran
and
Iraq
fought for—what?—eight years, at enormous human cost to both countries. Then all the conflicts between
Israel
and her neighbors. Enough is enough. Now we have a new nation being born. This new country has much work to do. Its citizens have needs, and fortunately they also have the resources to address those needs. We wish them well. If we can help them, we will.
America
has always been willing to extend the hand of friendship.”

There was a brief break, which probably denoted a commercial. The interview would run this evening at
nine o'clock
. Then Donner turned to his senior colleague, John Plumber, who took the next segment.

“So, how do you like being President?”

Ryan tilted his head and smiled. “I keep telling myself that I wasn't elected, I was sentenced. Honestly? The hours are long, the work is hard, much harder than I ever appreciated, but I've been pretty lucky. Arnie van Damm is a genius at organization. The staff here at the White House is just outstanding. I've gotten tens of thousands of letters of support from the people outside the Beltway, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them, and to let them know that it really helps.”

“Mr. Ryan”—Jack supposed that his Ph.D. didn't count anymore—“what things are you going to try and change?” Plumber asked.

“John, that depends on what you mean by 'change.' My foremost task is to keep the government operating. So, not 'change,' but 'restore,' is what I'm trying to do. We still don't really have a Congress yet—not until the House of Representatives is reestablished—and so I cannot submit a budget. I've tried to pick good people to take over the major Cabinet departments. Their job is to run those departments efficiently.”

“Your Secretary of the Treasury, George Winston, has been criticized for his rather abrupt desire to change the federal tax code,” Plumber said.

“All I can say is that I support Secretary Winston fully. The tax code is unconscionably complicated, and that is fundamentally unfair. What he wants to do will be revenue-neutral. Actually, that may be overly pessimistic. The net effect will be to enhance government revenues because of administrative savings in other areas.”

“But there has been a lot of adverse comment about the regressive nature—”

Ryan held up his hand. “Wait a minute. John, one of the problems in this town is that the language used by people has been warped. Charging everyone the same is not regressive. That word means a backward step, charging the poor more than the rich. We will not be doing that. When you use that word in the incorrect way, you're misleading people.”

“But that's the way people have described the tax system for years.” Plumber hadn't had his grammar challenged in years.

“That doesn't make it right,” Jack pointed out. "In any case, as I keep saying, I am not a politician, John. I only know how to talk straight. Charging everyone the same tax rate fulfills the dictionary's definition of 'fair.' Come on, John, you know how the game is played. You and Tom make a lot of money—far more than I do—and eyery year your lawyer and accountant go over everything. You probably have investments that are designed to reduce your tax payments, right? How did those loopholes happen? Easy, lobbyists talked Congress into changing the law a little. Why? Because rich people paid them to do so. So what happens? The supposedly 'progressive' system is manipulated in such a way that the increased rates for the rich don't actually apply, because their lawyers and accountants tell them how to beat the system, and they do beat the system, for a fee. So, the increased rates they pay are a lie, aren't they? Politicians know all this when they pass the laws.

“You see where all this takes us? Nowhere, John. It takes us nowhere. It's a great big game, that's all. Just a game that wastes time, misleads the public, and makes a lot of money for people who work the system—and where does the money come from? The citizens, the people who pay for everything that happens. So George Winston wants to change the system—and we agreed on that—and what happens? The people who play the game and work the system use the same misleading words to make it look as though we're doing something unfair. These insiders are the most dangerous and pernicious special-interest group there is.”

“And you don't like that.” John smiled.

"Every job I've ever had, stock broker, history teacher, everything else, I've had to tell the truth as best I could. I'm not going to stop that now. Maybe some things do need changing, and I'll tell you what one of them is:

"Every parent in
America
sooner or later tells every child that politics is a dirty business, a rough business, a nasty business. Your dad told you. My dad told me—and we accept that as though it makes sense, as though it's normal and right and proper. But it's not, John. For years we've accepted the fact that politics—wait, let's define terms, shall we? The political system is the way we govern the country, pass the laws we all have to follow, levy taxes. These are important things, aren't they? But at the same time we accept people into that system whom we would not willingly invite into our homes, whom we would not trust to baby-sit our children. Does this strike you as just a little odd, John?

"We allow people into the political system who routinely distort facts, who twist laws in order to suit patrons who give them campaign money. Some of whom just plain lie. And we accept this. You people in the media do. You would not accept that sort of behavior in your own profession, would you? Or in medicine, or in science, or in business, or in law enforcement.

“There's something wrong here,” the President went on, leaning forward and talking passionately for the first time. “This is our country we're talking about, and the standards of behavior we demand of our representatives shouldn't be lower—they should be higher. We should demand intelligence and integrity. That's why I've been giving speeches around the country. John, I'm a registered independent. I don't have a party affiliation. I don't have an agenda except for wanting to make things work for everyone. I swore an oath to do that, and I take my oaths seriously. Well, I've learned that this upsets people, and I'm sorry about that, but I will not compromise my beliefs to accommodate every special group with an army of paid lobbyists. I'm here to serve everybody, not just to serve the people who make the most noise and offer the most money.”

Plumber didn't show his pleasure at the outburst. “Okay, Mr. President, for starters, then, what about civil rights?”

“The Constitution is color-blind as far as I am concerned. Discrimination against people because of how they look, how they sound, what church they go to, or the country their ancestors came from is against the laws of our country. Those laws will be enforced. We are all supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, whether we obey them or break them. In the latter case, those people will have the Department of Justice to worry about.”

“Isn't that idealistic?”

“What's wrong with idealism?” Ryan asked in return. “At the same time, what about a little common sense once in a while? Instead of a lot of people chiseling for advantages for themselves or whatever small group they represent, why can't we all work together? Aren't we all Americans before we're anything else? Why can't we all try a little harder to work together and find reasonable solutions to problems? This country wasn't set up to have every group at the throat of every other group.”

“Some would say that's the way we fight things out to make sure that everyone gets a fair share,” Plumber observed.

“And along the way, we corrupt the political system.”

They had to stop for the crew to change tapes on their cameras. Jack looked longingly at the door to the secretaries' office, wishing for a smoke. He rubbed his hands together, trying to look relaxed, but though he'd been given the chance to say things he'd wanted to say for years, the opportunity to do so only made him more tense.

“The cameras are off,” Tom Donner said, settling back in his seat a little. “Do you really think you can bring any of this off?”