Jack Ryan 11 - Bear And The Dragon (13 page)

“Thank you, Mr. President. Pat is a very good man, even for a Bureau puke.”

“What's he doing now?”

“He's up in Philadelphia right now. Director Murray sent him off on a bank robbery, two local cops got killed in that one.”

“Caught that one on TV last week. Bad.”

The Secret Service agent nodded. “The way the subjects killed the cops, both in the back of the head, that was pretty ruthless, but there's people out there like that. Anyway, Director Murray decided to handle that one with a Roving Inspector out of Headquarters Division, and that usually means Pat gets to go do it.”

“Tell him to be careful,” Ryan said. Inspector Pat O'Day had saved his daughter's life less than a year before, and that act had earned him undying Presidential solicitude.

“Every day, sir,” Special Agent Price-O'Day made clear.

“Okay, what's the schedule look like?” His “business” appointments were on his desk already. Andrea Price-O'Day filled him in every morning, after his national-security briefing from Ben Goodley.

“Nothing unusual until after lunch. National Chamber of Commerce delegation at one-thirty, and then at three the Detroit Red Wings, they won the Stanley Cup this year. Photo op, TV pukes and stuff, take about twenty minutes or so.”

“I ought to let Ed Foley do that one. He's the hockey fanatic -- ”

“He's a Caps fan, sir, and the Red Wings swept the Caps four straight in the finals. Director Foley might take it personally,” Price-O'Day observed with half a smile.

“True. Well, last year we got the jerseys and stuff for his son, didn't we?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good game, hockey. Maybe I ought to catch a game or two. Trouble to arrange that?”

“No, sir. We have standing agreements with all the local sports facilities. Camden Yards even has that special box for us -- they let us help design it, the protective stuff, that is.”

Ryan grunted. “Yeah, I have to remember all the people who'd like to see me dead.”

“My job to think about that, sir, not yours,” Price-O'Day told him.

“Except when you won't let me go shopping or to a movie.” Neither Ryan nor his family was entirely used to the restrictions imposed on the life of the President of the United States or his immediate family members. It was getting especially tough on Sally, who'd started dating (which was hard on her father), and dating was difficult with a lead car and a chase car (when the young gentleman drove himself) or an official car with a driver and a second armed agent up front (when he did not), and guns all over the place. It tended to restrain the young gentlemen in question -- and Ryan hadn't told his daughter that this was just fine with him, lest she stop speaking to him for a week or so. Sally's Principal Agent, Wendy Merritt, had proven to be both a good Secret Service agent and a superb big sister of sorts. They spent at least two Saturdays per month shopping with a reduced detail -- actually it wasn't reduced at all, but it appeared so to Sally Ryan when they went out to Tyson's Corner or the Annapolis Mall for the purpose of spending money, something for which all women seemed to have a genetic predisposition. That these shopping expeditions had been planned days in advance, with every site scouted by the Secret Service, and a supplementary detail of young agents selected for their relative invisibility who showed up there an hour before SHADOW's arrival, had never occurred to Sally Ryan. That was just as well, as the dating problems grated on her badly enough, along with being followed around St. Mary's School in Annapolis by the rifle squad, as she sometimes termed it. Little Jack, on the other hand, thought it was pretty neat, and had recently learned to shoot at the Secret Service Academy in Beltsville, Maryland, with his father's permission (and something he'd not allowed the press to learn, lest he get hammered on the front page of The New York Times for the social indiscretion of encouraging his own son to touch, much less actually to fire, something so inherently evil as a pistol!). Little Jack's Principal Agent was a kid named Mike Brennan, a South Boston Irishman, a third-generation Secret Service agent with fiery red hair and a ready laugh, who'd played baseball at Holy Cross and frequently played catch and pepper with the President's son on the South Lawn of the White House.

“Sir, we never don't let you do anything,” Price said.

“No, you're pretty subtle about it,” Ryan allowed. “You know that I'm too considerate of other people, and when you tell me about all the crap you people have to go through so that I can buy a burger at Wendy's, I usually back off...like a damned wimp.” The President shook his head. Nothing frightened him more than the prospect that he'd somehow get used to all this panoply of “specialness,” as he thought of it. As though he'd only recently discovered royal parentage, and was now to be treated like a king, hardly allowed to wipe his own ass after taking a dump. Doubtless some people who'd lived in this house had gotten used to it, but that was something John Patrick Ryan, Sr., wanted to avoid. He knew that he was not all that special, and not deserving of all this folderol...and besides, like every other man in the world, when he woke up in the morning the first thing he did was head to the bathroom. Chief Executive he might be, but he still had a working-class bladder. And thank God for that, the President of the United States reflected.

“Where's Robby today?”

“Sir, the Vice President is in California today, the Navy base at Long Beach, giving a speech at the shipyard.”

Ryan grinned a little sideways. “I work him pretty hard, don't I?”

“That's the Vice President's job,” Arnie van Damm said from the door. “And Robby's a big boy about it,” added the President's Chief of Staff.

“Your vacation was good for you,” Ryan observed. He had a very nice tan. “What did you do?”

“Mainly I laid on the beach and read all the books I haven't had time for. Thought I'd die of boredom,” van Damm added.

“You actually thrive on this crap, don't you?” Jack asked, a little incredulous at the thought.

“It's what I do, Mr. President. Hey, Andrea,” he added with a slight turn of the head.

“Good morning, Mr. van Damm.” She turned to Jack. “That's all I have for you this morning. If you need me, I'll be in the usual place.” Her office was in the Old Executive Office Building, just across the street, and upstairs from the new Secret Service command post, called JOC, for Joint Operations Center.

“Okay, Andrea, thanks.” Ryan nodded, as she withdrew into the secretaries' room, from which she'd head down to the Secret Service Command Post. “Arnie, get some coffee?”

“Not a bad idea, boss.” The Chief of Staff took his usual seat and poured a cup. The coffee in the White House was especially good, a rich blend, about half Colombian and half Jamaica Blue Mountain, the sort of thing that Ryan could get used to as President. There had to be some place he could buy this after escaping from his current job, he hoped.

“Okay, I've had my national security brief and my Secret Service brief. Now tell me about politics for the day.”

“Hell, Jack, I've been trying to do that for over a year now, and you still aren't getting it very well.”

Ryan allowed his eyes to flare at the simulated insult. “That's a cheap shot, Arnie. I've been studying this crap pretty hard, and even the damned newspapers say I'm doing fairly well.”

"The Federal Reserve is doing a brilliant job of handling the economy, Mr. President, and that has damned little to do with you. But since you are the President, you get credit for all the good things that happen, and that's nice, but do remember, you will also get the blame for all the bad things that are going to happen -- and some will, remember that -- because you just happen to be here, and the citizens out there think you can make the rain fall on their flowers and the sun come out for their picnics just by wishing it so.

“You know, Jack,” the Chief of Staff said after sipping his coffee. “We really haven't got past the idea of kings and queens. A lot of people really do think you have that sort of personal power -- ”

“But I don't, Arnie, how can that be?”

“It just is the truth, Jack. It doesn't have to make sense. It just is. Deal with it.”

I do so love these lessons, Ryan thought to himself. “Okay, today is...?”

“Social Security.”

Ryan's eyes relaxed. “I've been reading up on that. The third rail of American political life. Touch it and die.”

For the next half hour, they discussed what was wrong and why, and the irresponsibility of the Congress, until Jack sat back with a sigh.

“Why don't they learn, Arnie?”

“What do they need to learn?” Arnie asked, with the grin of a Washington insider, one of the anointed of God. “They've been elected. They must know it all already! How else do you think they got here?”

“Why the hell did I allow myself to stay in this damned place?” the President asked rhetorically.

“Because you had a conscience attack and decided to do the right thing for your country, you dumbass, that's why.”

“Why is it you're the only person who can talk to me like that?”

“Besides the Vice President? Because I'm your teacher. Back to today's lesson. We could leave Social Security alone this year. It's in decent enough fiscal shape to last another seven to nine years without intervention, and that means you could leave it to your successor to handle -- ”

“That's not ethical, Arnie,” Ryan snapped.

“True,” the Chief of Staff agreed, “but it's good politics, and fairly Presidential. It's called letting sleeping dogs lie.”

“You don't do that in the knowledge that as soon as it wakes up, it's going to rip the baby's throat out.”

“Jack, you really ought to be a king. You'd be a good one,” van Damm said, with what appeared to be genuine admiration.

“Nobody can handle that kind of power.”

“I know: 'Power corrupts, and absolute power is actually pretty neat.' So said a staffer for one of your predecessors.”

“And the bastard wasn't hanged for saying it?”

“We need to work on that sense of humor, Mr. President. That was meant as a joke.”

“The scariest part of this job is that I do see the humor of it. Anyway, I told George Winston to start a quiet project to see what we can do with Social Security. Quiet project, I mean classified -- black, this project doesn't exist.”

“Jack, if you have one weakness as President, that's it. You're into this secrecy thing too much.”

“But if you do something like this in the open, you get clobbered by ill-informed criticism before you manage to produce anything, and the press crawls up your ass demanding information you don't have yet, and so then they go make up stuff on their own, or they go to some yahoo who just makes up bullshit, and then we have to answer it.”

“You are learning,” Arnie judged. “That's exactly how it works in this town.”

“That does not constitute 'working' by any definition I know of.”

“This is Washington, a government town. Nothing is really supposed to function efficiently here. It would scare the hell out of the average citizen if the government started to function properly.”

“How about I just fucking resign?” Jack asked the ceiling. “If I can't get this damned mess to start working, then why the hell am I here?”

“You're here because some Japanese 747 pilot decided to crash the party at the House Chamber fifteen months ago.”

“I suppose, Arnie, but I still feel like a damned fraud.”

“Well, by my old standards, you are a fraud, Jack.”

Ryan looked up. “Old standards?”

“Even when Bob Fowler took over the statehouse in Ohio, Jack, even he didn't try as hard as you to play a fair game, and Bob got captured by the system, too. You haven't yet, and that's what I like about you. More to the point, that's what Joe Citizen likes about you. They may not like your positions, but everybody knows you try damned hard, and they're sure you're not corrupt. And you're not. Now: Back to Social Security.”

“I told George to get a small group together, swear them to secrecy, and make recommendations -- more than one -- and at least one of them has to be completely outside the box.”

“Who's running this?”

“Mark Gant, George's technical guy.”

The Chief of Staff thought that one over for a moment. “Just as well you keep it quiet. The Hill doesn't like him. Too much of a smart-ass.”

“And they're not?” SWORDSMAN asked.

“You were naïve with that, Jack. The people you tried to get elected, non-politicians, well, you semi-succeeded. A lot of them were regular people, but what you didn't allow for was the seductive nature of life in elected government service. The money isn't all that great, but the perks are, and a lot of people like being treated like a medieval prince. A lot of people like being able to enforce their will on the world. The people who used to be there, the ones that pilot fried in their seats, they started off as pretty good people, too, but the nature of the job is to seduce and capture. Actually, the mistake you made was to allow them to keep their staffs. Honestly, I think the problem down there is in the staffers, not the bosses. You have ten or more people around you all the time telling you how great you are, sooner or later you start believing that crap.”

“Just so you don't do that to me.”

“Not in this lifetime,” Arnie assured him, as he stood to leave. “Make sure Secretary Winston keeps me in the loop on the Social Security project.”

“No leaks,” Ryan told his Chief of Staff forcefully.

“Me? Leak something? Me?” van Damm replied with open hands and an innocent face.

“Yeah, Arnie, you.” As the door closed, the President wondered how fine a spook Arnie might have made. He lied with the plausibility one might associate with a trusted member of the clergy, and he could hold all manner of contradictory thoughts in his head at the same time, like the best of circus jugglers...and somehow they never quite crashed to earth. Ryan was the current president, but the one member of the administration who could not be replaced was the chief of staff he'd inherited from Bob Fowler, by way of Roger Durling...

And yet, Jack wondered, how much was he being manipulated by this staff employee? The truthful answer was that he couldn't tell, and that was somewhat troubling. He trusted Arnie, but he trusted Arnie, because he had to trust him. Jack would not know what to do without him...but was that a good thing?