Command Authority (8 page)

T
he White House might have been referred to as the People’s House, but for the last decade no family had lived within its walls more than the Ryans.

President Jack Ryan may have been well into the second year of his final term in office, but he still felt like an outsider here. His real home was up in Maryland. The White House was a temporary address for him, and though he had to admit he enjoyed much of the work of being the President of the United States, he would also enjoy retiring back to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, once and for all.

An hour before heading to bed, Ryan strolled into the main residence of the White House after putting in a full evening of work in the Oval Office. He and Cathy went into Jack’s private study, and together they called George Washington University Hospital to check on the condition of Sergey Golovko. They learned nothing new; a barrage of tests were being run and the Russian remained weak, with low blood pressure and a litany of gastrointestinal and endocrinal complaints. He had been moved to the ICU while they diagnosed his condition, but he was conscious and alert, if very uncomfortable.

Jack and Cathy thanked the doctors for their efforts, then Jack forced himself to brighten his mood so he could accompany Cathy on their nightly rounds of tucking in the kids for bed.

Evenings at the White House were not very different from bedtime in most homes with children in America. Just as everywhere, the nightly ordeal of getting the kids to brush their teeth and ready to go to sleep happened more smoothly some nights than others.

They first dropped in to say good night to Kyle Daniel. His room was the West Bedroom, and it looked in many ways like most American boys’ bedrooms; there were toy chests brimming with train tracks, action figures, puzzles, and board games, and the bedspread and curtains had a NASA motif, with planets and satellites and astronauts on a sea of black sky and stars.

The room wasn’t huge, but it was admittedly larger and statelier than the average eight-year-old boy’s room. This had been the bedroom of John F. Kennedy, Jr., when he was a toddler, and Ronald Reagan used the room as a gym.

Kyle’s room wasn’t terribly neat, which derived chiefly from Cathy and Jack’s instructions to both children to pick up after themselves. Jack constantly reminded the kids they wouldn’t have attendants at their beck and call for their entire lives, so there was no sense in becoming overly accustomed and dependent on them.

Kyle seemed to be genetically predisposed to removing Legos, trains, Matchbox cars, and other small, sharp objects from his toy box and leaving them all over the floor.

Although the Ryans gave firm instructions to the residence staff to leave enough of the daily straightening to the kids that they could develop a respect for responsibility, more than once Jack passed Kyle’s room and caught one of the Secret Service agents scooping up toys and putting them back on a shelf or in a toy box. Each time, the President would lean in the doorway with a long gaze at the offending agent, and each time, the agent would sheepishly make some excuse, usually saying the cleanup was only for operational reasons, since she might need to cross the room quickly to get to Kyle, and having an eight-inch-long Lego fire truck in the way might somehow compromise her ability to accomplish her mission.

Jack would invariably raise an eyebrow, give a tiny smile, and shake his head before moving on.

—

O
nce Kyle was tucked in for the night, Jack and Cathy stepped down the hall to check on Katie. Katie’s room was the East Bedroom; it had been Nancy Reagan’s study and Caroline Kennedy’s bedroom, as well as the bedrooms of “First Kids” Tricia Nixon, Susan Ford, and Amy Carter. It was noticeably neater than Kyle’s room, due chiefly to the fact that she was ten years old to Kyle’s eight. On the far wall stood a tall detailed playhouse, a replica of the White House itself, and this, along with a canopied bed in lavender, dominated the room. On a table was a photo of a beaming Katie with a smiling Marcella Hilton, a Secret Service agent who died while saving Katie’s life during a kidnapping attempt. Katie did not remember her anymore, but both her parents wanted to honor Marcella’s memory by keeping her picture in the White House residence, and they hoped future Presidents and First Ladies would reflect on the importance of the work of the Secret Service.

Once the kids were tucked in, Jack and Cathy went back to their bedroom. Here they both climbed into bed and grabbed reading material. She picked up this month’s copy of the
American Journal of Ophthalmology
. Jack opened up a new book about the London Naval Conference of 1930.

They read in silence for half an hour before flipping off the lights and kissing good night.

—

J
ack and Cathy had been asleep for no more than a few minutes when Jack awoke to the sound of the bedroom door opening.

Jack sat up quickly; as President of the United States, he had grown so accustomed to these late-night rousings he was no longer surprised to be brought out of a dead sleep by doors opening or men standing over him. Normally he liked to follow the night watch officer back to the West Sitting Hall so they could talk without disturbing Cathy. But as Jack put his feet on the floor and reached for his glasses, the overhead light in the bedroom came on.

This had never happened before.

Surprised and immediately on guard, Jack put on his glasses and saw Secret Service agent Joe O’Hearn moving quickly toward the bed.

“What is it?” Jack asked, no small amount of concern in his voice.

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, there is a situation. We need to move you and your family into the West Wing.”

“The West Wing?”
That didn’t make sense to Jack, but he was up and moving before he questioned O’Hearn any further about the danger. Jack had enormous respect for the work of the Secret Service, and he knew the last thing they needed was for him to act like a belligerent jackass in a moment of crisis.

He did ask one more question, though. “The kids?”

“We’ve got them,” O’Hearn assured the President.

Jack grabbed his robe and turned to Cathy, who was up and pulling on her own robe, and, though still pushing out the cobwebs from her sleepy brain, she rushed out the door with O’Hearn and her husband.

The kids were in the hallway with their lead agents. Together, the Ryan family and their four protectors moved quickly but calmly enough down the stairs.

O’Hearn spoke into his headset. “Heading down with S
WORDSMAN
, S
URGEON
, S
PRITE
, and S
ANDBOX
. ETA three minutes.”

Ryan’s Secret Service code name was S
WORDSMAN
; Cathy was code-named S
URGEON
, quite understandably; and Katie and Kyle went by S
ANDBOX
and S
PRITE
, respectively.

A minute later, the four members of the Ryan family were ushered outside and through the West Colonnade. The kids walked sleepily with their parents, but Jack knew it would be less than a minute before Katie began a virtual inquisition about what was going on. He hoped he’d get some answers before she started peppering him with interrogatories.

There were six Secret Service agents around them now in a phalanx; Ryan saw no guns out, and no one was shouting or rushing the entourage along, but the entire detail was acting like there was some sort of threat out there from which the President and his family needed to be secured.

O’Hearn conferred with someone through his earpiece as he kept everyone moving quickly. He said to Ryan, “We’re going to put you in the Oval Office for a moment.”

Jack looked at O’Hearn as they walked. “I don’t understand, Joe. What the hell kind of threat is present in the White House bedroom but not twenty-five yards away in the West Wing?”

“I’m not sure, sir, but I am told I need to get you out of the residence.”

“What about Sally and Junior?” Ryan, not understanding the nature of the threat, quite reasonably wondered if his other children were in similar danger.

O’Hearn didn’t seem to know. He was clearly operating on information just a few seconds removed from what the President was getting from him. He didn’t have a clue what was going on; he was merely getting his principals out of the residence as ordered.

As soon as Jack entered the Oval Office he walked straight to his desk and grabbed his phone. He started to dial Arnie Van Damm, but the chief of staff came through the door that led to his office. Jack could tell Arnie had been working late. His tie was off and his sleeves were rolled up.

He motioned for Jack and O’Hearn to follow him back into the corridor, away from the children, and then he said, “Cathy, why don’t you come, too?”

This surprised Jack and Cathy both, but Cathy told Kyle and Katie to wait with the Secret Service team, and the three adults left the room.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

Arnie said, “The Secret Service station here in the White House just took a call from GW. Tests came back on Sergey Golovko. He is suffering from radiation exposure.”

“Radiation?”

“Yes. They see it as very unlikely that the White House has been seriously compromised by dangerous levels of the material, but just to be on the safe side, they wanted you and your family out.”

Jack turned white. “My God! Cathy, you held the man in your arms.”

Dr. Cathy Ryan seemed upset about what she had just heard about Sergey but oddly unconcerned about herself. She dismissed her husband’s concerns with a quick wave. “It doesn’t work like that. They’ll have to check me out, I’m sure. But I’ll be fine.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Because this wasn’t something he had all over his body. The way he looked this afternoon. It makes sense now. That’s not a guy who ate a bad meal. And it’s not a guy who absorbed too many X-rays. He was exhibiting the classic signs of ingesting a large amount of a radioactive isotope. He was poisoned.”

She turned to Arnie. “Polonium?”

“I . . . I have no idea. The hospital is still running tests.”

Cathy seemed certain. “They’ll find polonium in him.” She looked at Jack. “Sorry, Jack. If it is bad enough to make him as sick as he was today, it’s lethal. There is no antidote.”

Ryan turned to O’Hearn. “I want
everybody
out of the residence. Every last cook, steward, security man, and janitor.”

Joe O’Hearn said, “Under way as we speak, sir.”

Cathy added, “No one should be allowed in the White House residence without level-three hazmat gear while they sweep and clean. It’s just a precaution. They’ll turn up high levels of the isotope, maybe they will have to decontaminate the cutlery he used and the glass he drank from, but nothing more than that.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe the bathroom will need to be decontaminated, too.”

Jack wasn’t so sure, but it was his job to also consider the political ramifications of this. To Arnie he said, “We’ll let them do what they have to do in the residence, but this will not affect the work of the Executive Branch. Business as usual here, okay?”

“Jack,” Arnie said. “We need to understand what we’re dealing with here. Maybe Golovko wasn’t the target. Maybe he was the weapon.”

“What do you mean?”

“This could have been an assassination attempt on you and your family. An attempt to decapitate the U.S. government.”

Cathy said, “I don’t think so, Arnie.” She turned to Agent O’Hearn. “We need to get Jack checked out just to be sure, but I feel certain anyone who had access to polonium and the ability to poison Sergey will have done their homework. The level of contact Sergey had with Jack was too incidental to be any threat.”

She added, “I don’t believe for a second that Jack was the target.”

President Ryan trusted his wife on this, so he was thinking of the larger picture. “There is no way in hell this can stay under wraps. Especially if I have to go to the hospital to get tests run. We need to get out in front of this as much as possible.”

Van Damm said, “A high-profile Russian dissident getting poisoned, presumably while in the U.S., and exposing the White House to contamination? This isn’t going to look good, Jack.”

“No shit.” Ryan sighed. “Sorry, Arnie. You are doing what you have to do. But we’ll deal with it head-on. It’s the only way.”

Jack walked back with Cathy into the Oval Office, and they spent a few minutes with the children, letting them know that everything was fine. Cathy explained that a visitor had become sick, and they needed to clean up the places he visited very carefully, but there was nothing at all to worry about.

Kyle was sold on the explanation as soon as he learned his father would let him sleep on the couch in his office. Katie was old enough and clever enough to raise her eyebrows in doubt, but Cathy managed to convince her that they were safe after a little more frank explanation.

Within minutes Cathy was seated at the desk in the Oval Office, getting in touch with doctors on the case at George Washington, probing for details about Golovko’s condition that could not be relayed by Van Damm, who might have been one hell of a chief of staff, but he was clearly no doctor. She then woke up colleagues at Johns Hopkins, experts in nuclear medicine and radiation sickness, obtained their confidentiality, and asked them for their take on the situation.

Ryan let his wife take charge; he knew he was lucky to have her expertise on hand in the first moments of this crisis so he could focus on what he needed to do. He headed over to Arnie’s office and they concentrated on the political fallout, which, he was afraid, would be every bit as radioactive. The two of them called in the national security team, asking them to get in as soon as possible. The West Wing was all but closed for the evening, but they ordered coffee to be sent to the Cabinet Room in advance of the middle-of-the-night meeting.

—

J
ack headed into the dimly lit Cabinet Room, and Cathy met him there moments later. They sat down at the long table. “What did you hear from GW?” he asked.