Jack Ryan 8 - Debt of Honor (37 page)

You're telling me that you believe he had this young girl killed, and will use his police to cover it up? And you already knew he likes that sort of thing?“ Durling flushed. ”You wanted me to extend this bastard an olive branch? What the hell's the matter with you?"

Jack took a deep breath. “Okay, yes, Mr. President, I had that coming. The question is, now what do we do?”

Durling's face changed. “You didn't deserve that, sorry.”

“Actually I do deserve it, Mr. President. I could have told Mary Pat to get her out some time ago—but I didn't,” Ryan observed bleakly. “I didn't see this one coming.”

“We never do, Jack. Now what?”

“We can't tell the legal attache at the embassy because we don't 'know' about this yet, but I think we prep the FBI to check things out after we're officially notified. I can call Dan Murray about that.”

“Shaw's designated hitter?”

Ryan nodded. “Dan and I go back a ways. For the political side, I'm not sure. The transcript of his TV speech just came in. Before you read it, well, you need to know what sort of fellow we're dealing with.”

“Tell me, how many common bastards like that run countries?”

“You know that better than I do, sir.” Jack thought about that for a moment. “It's not entirely a bad thing. People like that are weak, Mr. President. Cowards, when you get down to it. If you have to have enemies, better that they have weaknesses.”

He might make a state visit, Durling thought. We might have to put him up at Blair House, right across the street. Throw a state dinner: we'll walk out into the East Room and make pretty speeches, and toast each other, and shake hands as though we're bosom buddies. Be damned to that! He lifted the folder with Goto's speech and skimmed through it.

“That son of a bitch! '
America
will have to understand
', my ass!”

“Anger, Mr. President, isn't an effective way of dealing with problems.”

“You're right,” Durling admitted. He was silent for a moment, then he smiled in a crooked way. “You're the one with the hot temper, as I recall.”

Ryan nodded. “I've been accused of that, yes, sir.”

“Well, that's two big ones we have to deal with when we get back from
Moscow
.”

“Three, Mr. President. We need to decide what to do about
India
and
Sri Lanka
.” Jack could see from the look on Durling's face that the President had allowed himself to forget about that one.

Durling had allowed himself to semi-forget another problem as well.

“How much longer will I have to wait?” Ms. Linders demanded.

Murray
could see her pain even more clearly than he heard it. How did you explain this to people? Already the victim of a vile crime, she'd gotten it out in the open, baring her soul for all manner of strangers. The process hadn't been fun for anyone, but least of all for her.
Murray
was a skilled and experienced investigator. He knew how to console, encourage, chivvy information out of people. He'd been the first FBI agent to listen to her story, in the process becoming as much a part of her mental-health team as Dr. Golden. After that had come another pair of agents, a man and a woman who specialized more closely in cases of this type. After them had come two separate psychiatrists, whose questioning had necessarily been somewhat adversarial, both to establish finally that her story was true in all details and to give her a taste of the hostility she would encounter.

Along the way,
Murray
realized, Barbara Linders had become even more of a victim than she'd been before. She'd built her self up, first, to reveal herself to Clarice, then again to do the same with
Murray
, then again, and yet once more still. Now she looked forward to the worst ordeal of all, for some of the members of the Judiciary Committee were allies of Ed Kealty, and some would take it upon themselves to hammer the witness hard either to curry favor with the cameras or to demonstrate their impartiality and professionalism as lawyers. Barbara knew that.
Murray
had himself walked her through the expected ordeal, even hitting her with the most awful of questions—always preceded with as gentle a preamble as possible, like, “One of the things you can expect to be asked is—”

It took its toll, and a heavy toll at that. Barbara—they were too close now for him to think of her as Ms. Linders—had shown all the courage one could expect of a crime victim and more besides. But courage was not something one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could withdraw only so much before it was necessary to stop, to take the time to make new deposits. Just the waiting, the not knowing when she would have to take her seat in the committee room and make her opening statement in front of bright TV lights, the certainty that she would have to bare her soul for the entire world…it was like a robber coming into the bank night after night to steal from her hard-won accumulation of inner resolve.

It was hard enough for
Murray
. He had built his case, had the prosecutor lined up, but he was the one close to her. It was his mission,
Murray
told himself, to show this lady that men were not like Ed Kealty, that a man was as repulsed by such acts as women were. He was her knight-errant. The disgrace and ultimate imprisonment of that criminal was now his mission in life even more than it was hers.

“Barb, you have to hang in there, kid. We're going to get this bastard, but we can't do it the right way unless…” He mouthed the words, putting conviction he didn't feel into them. Since when did politics enter into a criminal case? The law had been violated. They had their witnesses, the their physical evidence, but now they were stuck in a holding pattern that was as damaging to this victim as any defense lawyer might be.

“It's taking too long!”

“Two more weeks, maybe three, and we go to bat, Barb.”

“Look, I know something is happening, okay? You think I'm dumb? He's not out making speeches and opening bridges and stuff now, is he? Somebody told him and he's building up his case, isn't he?”

“I think what's happening is that the President is deliberately holding him in close so that when this does break, he won't be able to fall back on a high public profile as a defense. The President is on our side, Barb. I've briefed him in on this case myself, and he said, 'A criminal is a criminal,' and that's exactly what he should have said.”

Her eyes came up to meet his. They were moist and desperate. “I'm coming apart, Dan.”

“No, Barb, you're not,”
Murray
lied. “You're one tough, smart, brave lady. You're going to come through this. He's the one who's going to come apart.” Daniel E. Murray, Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reached his hand across the table. Barbara Linders took it, squeezing it as a child might with her father, forcing herself to believe and to trust, and it shamed him that she was paying such a price because the President of the
United States
had to subordinate a criminal case to a question of politics. Perhaps it made sense in the great scheme of things, but for a cop the great scheme of things usually came down to one crime and one victim.

Payloads

The final step in arming the H-11/SS-19 missiles necessarily had to await official word from the nation's Prime Minister. In some ways the final payoff was something of a disappointment. They had originally hoped to affix a full complement of warheads, at least six each, to the nose of each bird, but to do that would have meant actually testing the trans-stage bus in flight, and that was just a little too dangerous. The covert nature of the project was far more important than the actual number of warheads, those in authority had decided. And they could always correct it at a later date. They'd deliberately left the top end of the Russian design intact for that very reason, and for the moment a total of 10 one-megaton warheads would have to do.

One by one, the individual silos were opened by the support crew, and one by one the oversized RVs were lifted off the flatcar, set in place, then covered with their aerodynamic shrouds. Again the Russian design served their purposes very well indeed. Each such operation took just over an hour, which allowed the entire procedure to be accomplished in a single night by the crew of twenty. The silos were resealed, and it was done; their country was now a nuclear power.

“Amazing,” Goto observed.

“Actually very simple,” Yamata replied. “The government funded the fabrication and testing of the 'boosters' as part of our space program. The plutonium came from the Monju reactor complex. Designing and building the warheads was child's play. If some Arabs can do a crude warhead in a cave in
Lebanon
, how hard can it be for our technicians?” In fact, everything but the warhead-fabrication process had been government funded in one way or another, and Yamata was sure that the informal consortium that had done the latter would be compensated as well. Had they not done it all for their country? “We will immediately commence training for the Self-Defense Force personnel to take over from our own people—once you assign them to us for that purpose, Goto-san.”

“But the Americans and the Russians…?”

Yamata snorted. “They are down to one missile each, and those will be officially blown up this week, as we will all see on television. As you know, their missile submarines have been deactivated. Their Trident missiles are already all gone, and the submarines are lined up awaiting dismantlement. A mere ten working ICBMs give us a marked strategic advantage.”

“But what if they try to build more?”

“They can't—not very easily,” Yamata corrected himself. “The production lines have been closed down, and in accordance with the treaty, the tooling has all been destroyed under international inspection. To start over would take months, and we would find out very quickly. Our next important step is to launch a major naval-construction program”—for which Yamata's yards were ready—“so that our supremacy in the Western Pacific will be unassailable. For the moment, with luck and the help of our friends, we will have enough to see us through. Before they will be able to challenge us, our strategic position will have improved to the point where they will have to accept our position and then treat with us as equals.”

“So I must now give the order?”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” Yamata replied, again explaining to the man his job function.

Goto rubbed his hands together for a moment and looked down at the ornate desk so newly his. Ever the weak man, he temporized. “It is true, my Kimba was a drug addict?”

Yamata nodded soberly, inwardly enraged at the remark. “Very sad, is it not? My own chief of security, Kaneda, found her dead and called the police. It seems that she was very careful about it, but not careful enough.”

Goto sighed quietly. “Foolish child. Her father is a policeman, you know. A very stern man, she said. He didn't understand her. I did,” Goto said. “She was a kind, gentle spirit. She would have made a fine geisha.”

It was amazing how people transformed in death, Yamata thought coldly. That foolish, shameless girl had defied her parents and tried to make her own way in the world, only to find that the world was not tolerant of the unprepared. But because she'd had the ability to give Goto the illusion that he was a man, now she was a kind and gentle spirit.

“Goto-san, can we allow the fate of our nation to be decided by people like that?”

“No.” The new Prime Minister lifted his phone. He had to consult a sheet on his desk for the proper number. “Climb
Mount
Niitaka
,” he said when the connection was made, repeating an order that had been given more than fifty years earlier.

In many ways the plane was singular, but in others quite ordinary. The VC-25B was in fact the Air Force's version of the venerable Boeing 747 airliner. A craft with fully thirty years of history in its design, and still in serial production at the plant outside
Seattle
, it was painted in colors that had been chosen by a politically selected decorator to give the proper impression to foreign countries, whatever that was. Sitting alone on the concrete ramp, it was surrounded by uniformed security personnel “with authorization,” in the dry Pentagonese, to use their M-16 rifles far more readily than uniformed guards at most other federal installations. It was a more polite way of saying, “Shoot first and ask questions later.”

There was no jetway. People had to climb stairs into the aircraft, just as in the 1950's, but there was still a metal detector, and you still had to check your baggage—this time to Air Force and Secret Service personnel who X-rayed everything and opened much of it for visual inspection.

“I hope you left your
Victoria
's Secret stuff at home,” Jack observed with a chuckle as he hoisted the last bag on the counter.

“You'll find out when we get to
Moscow
,” Professor Ryan replied with an impish wink. It was her first state trip, and everything at Andrews Air Force Base was new for her.

“Hello, Dr. Ryan! We finally meet.” Helen D'Agustino came over and extended her hand.

“Cathy, this is the world's prettiest bodyguard,” Jack said, introducing the Secret Service agent to his wife.

“I couldn't make the last state dinner,” Cathy explained. “There was a seminar up at Harvard.”

“Well, this trip ought to be pretty exciting,” the Secret Service agent said, taking her leave smoothly to continue her duties.

Not as exciting as my last one, Jack thought, remembering another story that he couldn't relate to anyone.

“Where's she keep her gun?” Cathy asked.

“I've never searched her for it, honey,” Jack said with a wink of his own. “Do we go aboard now?”

“I can go aboard whenever I want,” her husband replied. “Color me important.” So much the better to board early and show her around, he decided, heading her toward the door. Designed to carry upwards of three hundred passengers in its civilian incarnation, the President's personal 747 (there was another backup aircraft, of course) was outfitted to hold a third of that number in stately comfort. Jack first showed his wife where they would be sitting, explaining that the pecking order was very clear. The closer you were to the front of the aircraft, the more important you were. The President's accommodations were in the nose, where two couches could convert into beds. The Ryans and the van Damms would be in the next area, twenty feet or so aft in a space that could seat eight, but only five in this case. Joining them would be the President's Director of Communications, a harried and usually frantic former TV executive named Tish Brown, recently divorced. Lesser staff members were sorted aft in diminishing importance until you got to the media, deemed less important still.

“This is the kitchen?” Cathy asked.

“Galley,” Jack corrected. It was impressive, as were the meals prepared here, actually cooked from fresh ingredients and not reheated as was the way on airliners.

“It's bigger than ours!” she observed, to the amused pleasure of the chief cook, an Air Force master sergeant.

“Not quite, but the chef's better, aren't you, Sarge?”

“I'll turn my back now. You can slug him, ma'am. I won't tell.”

Cathy merely laughed at the jibe. “Why isn't he upstairs in the lounge?”

“That's almost all communications gear. The President likes to wander up there to talk to the crew, but the guys who live there are mainly cryppies.”

“Cryppies?”

“Communications guys,” Jack explained, leading his wife back to their seats. The seats were beige leather, extra wide and extra soft, with recently added swing-up TV screens, personal phones, and other features which Cathy started to catalog, down to the presidential seal on the belt-buckles.   “Now I know what first-class really means.”

“It's still an eleven-hour flight, babe,” Jack observed, settling in while others boarded. With luck he'd be able to sleep most of the way.

The President's televised departure statement followed its own pattern. The microphone was always set up so that Air Force One loomed in the background, to remind everyone of who he was and to prove it by showing his personal plane. Roy Newton watched more for timing than anything else. Statements like this never amounted to much, and only C-SPAN carried them at all, though the network newsies were always there with cameras in case the airplane blew up on takeoff. Concluding his remarks, Durling took his wife, Anne, by the arm and walked to the stairs, where a sergeant saluted. At the door of the aircraft, the President and the First Lady turned to give a final wave as though already on the campaign trail—in a very real way this trip was part of that almost-continuous process—then went inside. C-SPAN switched back to the floor of the House, where various junior members were giving brief speeches under special orders. The President would be in the air for eleven hours,
Newton
knew, more time than he needed.

It was time to go to work.

The ancient adage was true enough, he thought, arranging his notes. If more than one person knew it, it wasn't a secret at all. Even less so if you both knew part of it and also knew who knew the rest, because then you could sit down over dinner and let on that you knew, and the other person would think that you knew it all, and would then tell you the parts you hadn't learned quite yet. The right smiles, nods, grunts, and a few carefully selected words would keep your source going until it was all there in plain sight.
Newton
supposed it was not terribly different for spies. Perhaps he would have been a good one, but it didn't pay any better than his stint in Congress—not even as well, in fact—and he'd long since decided to apply his talent to something that could make him a decent living.

The rest of the game was a lot easier. You had to select the right person to give the information to, and that choice was made merely by reading the local papers carefully. Every reporter had a hot-button item, something for which he or she had a genuinely passionate interest, and for that reason reporters were no different from anyone else. If you knew what buttons to push, you could manipulate anyone. What a pity it hadn't quite worked with the people in his district,
Newton
thought, lifting the phone and punching the buttons.

“Libby Holtzman.”

“Hi, Libby, this is
Roy
. How are things?”

“A little slow,” she allowed, wondering if her husband, Bob, would get anything good on the
Moscow
trip with the presidential party.

“How about dinner?” He knew that her husband was away.

“What about?” she asked. She knew it wasn't a tryst or something similarly foolish.
Newton
was a player, and usually had something interesting to tell.

“It'll be worth your time,” he promised. “Jockey Club, seven-thirty?”

“I'll be there.”

Newton
smiled. It was all fair play, wasn't it? He'd lost his congressional seat on the strength of an accusation about influence-peddling. It hadn't been strong enough to have merited prosecution (someone else had influenced that), but it had been enough, barely, to persuade 50.7 percent of the voters in that off-year election that someone else should have the chance to represent them. In a presidential-election year,
Newton
thought, he would almost certainly have eked out a win, but congressional seats once lost are almost never regained.

It could have been much worse. This life wasn't so bad, was it? He'd kept the same house, kept his kids in the same school, then moved them on to good colleges, kept his membership in the same country club. He just had a different constituency now, no ethics laws to trouble his mind about—not that they ever had, really—and it sure as hell paid a lot better, didn't it?

•     •     •

D
ATELINE
P
ARTNERS
was being run out via computer—satellite relay three of them, in fact. The Japanese Navy was linking all of its data to its fleet-operations center in
Yokohama
. The U.S. Navy did the same into Fleet-Ops at
Pearl Harbor
. Both headquarters offices used a third link to swap their own pictures. The umpires who scored the exercise in both locations thus had access to everything, but the individual fleet commanders did not. The purpose of the game was to give both sides realistic battle training, for which reason cheating was not encouraged—“cheating” was a concept by turns foreign and integral with the fighting of wars, of course.

Pacific Fleet's type commanders, the admirals in charge of the surface, air, submarine, and service forces, respectively, watched from their chairs as the game unfolded, each wondering how his underlings would perform.

“Sato's no dummy, is he?” Commander Chambers noted.

“The boy's got some beautiful moves,” Dr. Jones opined, A senior contractor with his own “special-access” clearance, he'd been allowed into the center on Mancuso's parole. “But it isn't going to help him up north.”

“Oh?” SubPac turned and smiled. “You know something I don't?”

“The sonar departments on
Charlotte
and
Asheville
are damned good, Skipper. My people worked with them to set up the new tracking software, remember?”

“The CO's aren't bad either,” Mancuso pointed out.

Jones nodded agreement. “You bet, sir. They know how to listen, just like you did.”