Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (70 page)

Facing such a thing was so different from one side to the other. On the side of the guns, one saw it as a quick, efficient, and final way of settling things in one's favor. From the other side, it had the abrupt injustice of a helicopter crash—just enough time for your spirit to scream No! before the racing earth blotted everything out, the disbelief and outrage of it. Except that in this case, they actually had a choice of sorts. Certain death now, or the chance of death later. The senior surviving officers of the Iraqi military shared furtive looks. They were not in control of their country's military. The military, the soldiers, were with the people, or with their company officers. The former was pleased to have a surplus of food to eat for the first time in almost a full decade. The latter was pleased as well to see a new day for their country. The break from the old regime was complete. It was just a bad memory now, and there was no return to it. The men in this room could reestablish control only through the good offices of the former enemies who stood at the end of the table with the serene smiles that went along with winning, that went along with holding the gift of life in their hands like pocket change, easily given and just as easily put away. They offered no choice, really.

The titular leader of the council nodded his submission, followed in seconds by all the others, and with the gesture, the identity of their country faded into history.

From that point on, it was just a matter of making some telephone calls.

T
HE ONLY SURPRISE
was that it didn't happen on television. For once, the listening posts at S
TORM
T
RACK
and P
ALM
B
OWL
were beaten by analysts elsewhere. The TV cameras were in place, as would later be seen, but first there was business to be done, and that was recorded on satellite.

The first Iranians across the border were in motorized units which speeded down the highways under radio silence, but it was daylight, and overhead came two KH-11 satellites which cross-linked their signals to communications birds, and from there down to the reception points. The nearest to
Washington
were at
Fort
Belvoir
.

“Yes,” Ryan said, lifting the phone to his ear.

“It's Ben Goodley, Mr. President. It's happening now. Iranian troops are crossing the border without any opposition we can see.”

“Announcement?”

“Nothing as yet. It looks like they want to be in control first.”

Jack checked the clock on the night table. “Okay, we'll handle it at the morning brief.” There was no sense in ruining his sleep. He had people who would work through the night for him, Ryan told himself. He'd done it often enough himself.

“Yes, sir.”

Ryan replaced the phone, and was able to go back to sleep. It was one presidential skill he was learning to master. Maybe, he thought, as he faded out again, maybe he'd learn to play golf during a crisis . . . wouldn't that be. . .

F
ITTINGLY, IT WAS
one of the pederasts. He'd been looking after a fellow criminal—this one was a murderer—and doing a proper job of it, judging by the videotapes, which had accelerated the process.

Moudi had been careful to tell the medical orderlies to supervise the new caregivers closely. The latter had taken the ordinary precautions, wearing their gloves, washing up carefully, keeping the room clean, mopping up all the fluids. This last task had become increasingly difficult with the advancing disease process in the first group of exposed subjects. Their collective moans came through the sound pickup with enough clarity for him to know what they were going through, especially with the absence of pain medications—a violation of the Muslim rules of mercy, which Moudi set aside. The second group of subjects were doing what they'd been told, but they'd not been issued masks, and that was for a reason.

The pederast was a young man, perhaps early twenties, and he'd been surprisingly attentive to his charge. Whether out of an appreciation for the murderer's pain or just to appear to be worthy of mercy himself, it didn't matter. Moudi zoomed the camera in. The man's skin was flushed and dry, his movements slow and achy. The doctor lifted the phone. A minute later, one of the army medics came into the picture. He spoke briefly with the pederast, then poked the thermometer into his ear before leaving the room and lifting a corridor phone.

“Subject Eight has a temperature of thirty-nine-point-two and reports fatigue and aches in his extremities. His eyes are red and puffy,” the medic reported brusquely. It was to be expected that the medics would not feel the same degree of empathy for any of the test subjects that they'd felt for Sister Jean Baptiste. Even though the latter had been an infidel, at least she'd been a woman of virtue. That was manifestly not true of the men in the room, and it made things easier for everyone.

“Thank you.”

So, it was true, Moudi told himself. The Mayinga strain was indeed airborne. Now it only remained to be seen if it had fully transmitted itself, that this new victim would die from it. When half of the second group showed symptoms, they would be moved across the hall to a treatment room of their own, and the first group—they were all fatally afflicted with the Ebola—would be medically terminated.

The director would be pleased, Moudi knew. The latest step in the experiment had been as successful as those before. It was now increasingly certain that they had a weapon in their hands such as no man had ever wielded. Isn't that wonderful, the physician observed to himself.

T
HE FLIGHT OUT
was always easier on the disposition. Movie Star walked through the metal detector, stopped, had the magic wand waved over him, resulting in the usual embarrassment over his gold Cross pen, and then he walked to the first-class lounge, without even looking around for the policemen who, if they were about, would stop him here and now. But they weren't, and they didn't. His carry-on bag had a leather-bound clipboard in it, but he wouldn't take that out quite yet. The flight was called in due course, and he walked to the jetway, and quickly found his seat in the front of the 747. The flight was only half full, and that made things very convenient. No sooner had the aircraft lifted off than he took out his pad and started recording all the things he'd not wished to commit to paper just yet. As usual, his photographic memory helped, and he worked for three solid hours until, over mid-Atlantic, he succumbed to the need for sleep. He suspected, correctly, that he'd need it.

FULL COURT

I
T MIGHT BE HIS LAST SHOT
, Kealty knew, again using in his own mind a metaphor denoting firearms. The irony of it never registered. He had more important things to do. The previous evening he had been summoning his remaining press contacts—the reliable ones. Others had, if not exactly backed away, at least maintained a discreet distance in their uncertainty, but for most, it wasn't all that hard to get their attention, and his two-hour midnight meeting had been called on the basis of a few key words and phrases known to excite their professional sensibilities. After that all he had to do was set the rules. This was all on background, not for attribution, not to be quoted. The reporters agreed, of course.

“It's pretty disturbing. The FBI subjected the whole top floor of the State Department to lie-detector tests,” he told them. It was something they'd heard about but not yet confirmed. This would count as confirmation. "But more disturbingly, look at the policies we're seeing now. Build up defense under this Bretano guy—a guy who's grown up within the military-industrial complex. He says he wants to eliminate all the safeguards within the procurement system, wants to slash congressional oversight. And George Winston, what does he want to do? Wreck the tax system, make it more regressive, do away with capital-gains entirely—and why? To lay the country's whole tax burden on the middle and working classes and give the big shots a free ride, that's why.

“I never figured Ryan for a professional, for a competent sort of man to occupy the presidency, but I have to tell you, this is not what I expected. He's a reactionary, a radical conservative—I'm not sure what you'd call him.”

“Are you sure about the thing at State?” the New York Times asked.

Kealty nodded. “Positive, hundred percent. You mean you people haven't—come on, are you doing your job?” he asked tiredly. “In the middle of a
Mideast
crisis, he has the FBI harassing the most senior people we have, trying to accuse them of stealing a letter that was never there.”

“And now,” Realty's chief of staff added, seeming to speak out of turn, “we have the Washington Post about to run a canonization piece on Ryan.”

“Wait a minute,” the Post reporter said, straightening his back, “that's Bob Holtzman, not my doing. I told my AME that it wasn't a good idea.”

“Who's the leak?” Kealty asked.

“I don't have a clue. Bob never lets that out. You know that.”

“So what is Ryan doing at CIA? He wants to triple the Directorate of Operations—the spies. Just what the country needs, right? What is Ryan doing?” Kealty asked rhetorically. “Beefing up defense. Rewriting the tax code to benefit the fat cats. And taking CIA back to the days of the Cold War. We're going back to the 1950s—why?” Kealty demanded. “Why is he doing all this? What is he thinking about? Am I the only one in this city asking questions? When are you people going to do your job? He's trying to bully Congress, and succeeding, and where is the media? Who's protecting the people out there?”

“What are you saying, Ed?” the Times asked.

The gesture of frustration was done with consummate skill. “I'm standing in my own political grave here. I have nothing to gain by this, but I can't just stand by and do nothing. Even if Ryan has the entire power of our government behind him, I can't just let him and his cronies try to concentrate all of the power of our government in a few hands, increase their own ability to spy on us, load the tax system in such a way as to further enrich people who've never paid their fair share, reward the defense industry—what's next, trashing the civil rights laws? He's flying his wife to work every day, and you people haven't even remarked that that's never happened before. This is an imperial presidency like Lyndon Johnson never dreamed of, without a Congress to do anything about it. You know what we have here now?” Kealty gave them a moment. “King Jack the First. Somebody's supposed to care about that. Why is it that you people don't?”

“What do you know about the Holtzman piece?” the Boston Globe wanted to know.

“Ryan has a lively history in CIA. He's killed people.”

“James fucking Bond,” Kealty's chief of staff said on cue. The Post reporter then had to defend his publication's honor:

“Holtzman doesn't say that. If you mean the time the terrorists came to—”

“No, not that. Holtzman's going to write about the
Moscow
thing. Ryan didn't even set that up. It was Judge Arthur Moore, when he was DCI. Ryan was the front man. It's bad enough anyway. It interfered with the inner workings of the old Soviet Union, and it never occurred to anyone that maybe that wasn't such a great idea—I mean, what the hell, right, screwing around with the government of a country with ten thousand warheads pointed at us—you know, people, that's called an act of war, like? And why? To rescue their head thug from a purge for stepping over the line so that we could crack a spy ring inside CIA. I bet he didn't tell Holtzman that, did he?”

“I haven't seen the story,” the Post reporter admitted. “I've only heard a few things.” It was almost worthy of a smile. Kealty's sources inside the paper were better than those of the senior political reporter. “Okay, you say Ryan has killed people like James Bond. Support that,” he said in a flat voice.

“Four years ago, remember the bombs in
Colombia
, took out some cartel members?” Kealty waited for the nod. “That was a CIA operation. Ryan went to
Colombia
—and that was another act of war, people. That's two that I know about.”

It was amusing to Kealty that Ryan was so skillfully conniving at his own destruction. The P
LAN
B
LUE
move within CIA was already rippling through the Directorate of Intelligence, many of whose senior people faced either early retirement or the diminution of their bureaucratic empires, and many of those enjoyed walking the corridors of power. It was easy for them to think that they were vital to the security of their country, and thinking that, they had to do something, didn't they? More than that, Ryan had stepped on a lot of bureaucratic toes at Langley, and now it was payback time, all the better that he was a higher target than ever before, that the sources were, after all, merely talking to the former Vice President of the United States— maybe even the real President, they could say—and not to the media, which was, after all, against the law, as opposed to a legitimate discussion of vital national policy.

“How sure of that are you?” the Globe asked.

“I have dates. Remember when Admiral James Greer died? He was Ryan's mentor. He probably set up the operation from his deathbed. Ryan didn't attend the funeral. He was in
Colombia
then. That's a fact, and you can check it,” Kealty insisted. “Probably that's why James Cutter committed suicide—”

“I thought that was an accident,” the Times said. “He was out jogging, and—”

“And he just happened to step in front of a transit bus? Look, I'm not saying that Cutter was murdered. I am saying that he was implicated in the illegal operation that Ryan was running, and he didn't want to face the music. That gave Jack Ryan the chance to cover his tracks. You know,” Kealty concluded, “I've underestimated this Ryan fellow. He's as slick an operator as this town has seen since Alien Dulles, maybe Bill Donovan—but the time for that is past. We don't need a CIA with three times as many spies. We don't need to pile more dollars into defense. We don't need to redraft the tax code to protect the millionaires Ryan hangs out with. For sure we don't need a President who thinks the 1950s were just great. He's doing things to our country which we cannot allow to happen. I don't know”—another gesture of frustration— “maybe I have to go it all alone on this. I'm—I know I risk ruining my reputation for all history, standing up like this . . . but, damn it, once I swore an oath to the Constitution of our country . . . first time,” he went on in a quiet, reflective voice, “when I won my first House seat . . . then into the Senate . . . and then when Roger asked me to step up and be his Vice President. You know, you don't forget that sort of thing . . . an', an', an' maybe I'm not the right guy for this, okay? Yes, I've done some pretty awful things, betrayed my wife, lived in a bottle for so many years. The American people probably deserve somebody better than me to stand up and do what's right . . . but I'm all there is, and I can't—I can't break faith with the people who sent me to this town, no matter what it costs. Ryan is not the President of the
United States
. He knows that. Why else is he trying to change so many things so fast? Why is he trying to bully the senior people at State into lying? Why is he playing with abortion rights? Why is he playing with the tax code through this plutocrat Winston? He's trying to buy it. He's going to continue to bully Congress until the fat cats try to have him elected king or something. I mean, who represents the people right now?”

“I just don't see him that way, Ed,” the Globe responded, after a few seconds. “His politics are pretty far to the right, but he comes across as sincere as hell.”

“What's the first rule of politics?” the Times asked with a chuckle. Then he continued: “I tell you, if this stuff about
Russia
and
Colombia
is true . . . whoa! It is the '50s, fucking around with other governments that way. We're not supposed to do that anymore, sure as hell not at that level.”

“You never got this from us, and you can't reveal the source at
Langley
.” The chief of staff handed out tape cassettes. “But there are enough verifiable facts here to back up everything we've told you.”

“It's going to take a couple of days,” the San Francisco Examiner said, fingering the cassette and looking at his colleagues. The race started now. Every reporter in the room would want to be the first to break the story. That process would start with them playing their tapes in their cars during the drive to their homes, and the one with the shortest drive had the advantage.

“Gentlemen, all I can say is, this is an important story, and you have to apply your best professional conduct to it. It's not for me,” Kealty said. “I wish I could pick someone else to do this, someone with a better record—but I can't. Not for me. It's for the country, and that means you have to play it as straight as you can.”

“We will, Ed,” the Times promised. He checked his watch. Almost three in the morning. He'd work all day to make the ten P.M. deadline. In that time he'd have to verify, re-verify, and conference in with his assistant managing editor to make sure that he got the front page, above the fold. The West Coast papers had the advantage— three more hours because of time zones—but he knew how to beat them to the punch. The coffee cups went down on the table, and the journalists rose, tucking their personal mini-tape machines in their jacket pockets, and each holding his personal cassette in the left hand while the right fished for the car keys.

“
TALK TO ME
, B
EN
,” Jack commanded barely four hours later.

“Still nothing on the local TV, but we've caught microwave stuff transmitted for later broadcast.” Goodley paused as Ryan took his seat behind the desk. “Quality is too poor to show you, but we have the audio tracks. Anyway, they spent all day consolidating power. Tomorrow, they go public. Probably the word's out on the street, and the official stuff will be for the rest of the world.”

“Smart,” the President observed.

“Agreed.” Goodley nodded. “New wild card. The Premier of Turkmenistan bit the big one, supposedly an automobile accident. Golovko called me about—just after five, I think—to let us know. He ain't a real happy camper at the moment. He thinks that
Iraq
and Turko-land are part of the same play—”

“Do we have anything to support that?” Ryan asked, tying his necktie. It was a dumb question.

“You kidding, boss? We don't have crap, not even overheads in this case.”

Jack looked down at his desktop for a second. “You know, for all the things people say about how powerful CIA is—”

“Hey, I work there, remember? Thank God for CNN. Yeah, I know. Good news, the Russians are telling us at least some of what they know.”

“Scared,” the President observed.

“Very,” the national intelligence officer agreed.

“Okay, we have
Iran
taking over
Iraq
. We have a dead leader in
Turkmenistan
. Analysis?” Jack asked.

“I won't contradict Golovko on this one. He doubtless does have agents in place, and it sounds like he's in the same situation we're in. He can watch and worry, but he doesn't have any real operational possibilities. Maybe it's a coincidence, but spooks aren't supposed to believe in such things. Damned sure Sergey doesn't. He thinks it's all one play. I think that's a definite possibility. I'll be talking to Vasco about that, too. What he says is shaping up is starting to look a little scary. We'll be hearing from the Saudis today.” And
Israel
could not be far behind, Ryan knew.

“
China
?” the President asked next. Maybe the other side of the world was a little better. It wasn't.

“Major exercise. Surface and sub-surface combatants, no air yet, but the overheads show the fighter bases are tooling up—”

“Wait a minute—”

“Yes, sir. If it's a planned exercise, why weren't they ready for it? I'll be talking to the Pentagon about that one at eight-thirty. The ambassador had a little talk with a foreign ministry type. Feedback is, no big deal, the ministry didn't even know about it, routine training.”

“Bullshit.”

“Maybe.
Taiwan
is still low-keying it, but they'll be sending some ships out today—well, tonight over there. We have assets heading to the area. The Taiwanese are playing ball, full cooperation with our observers in their listening posts. Soon they will ask us what we will do if 'A' or 'B' happens. We need to think about that. The Pentagon says that the PRC doesn't have the assets to launch an invasion, same as back in '96. The ROC air force is stronger now than it was. So, I don't see that this is likely to lead anywhere. Maybe it really is just an exercise. Maybe they want to see how we—you, that is—will react.”

“What's Adler think?”

“He says to ignore it. I think he's right.
Taiwan
is playing low-key. I think we do the same. We move ships, especially subs, but we keep them out of sight. C
IN
CP
AC
seems to have a handle on it. We let him run it for the time being?”