Chapter 34
Hits
Over the last week Ryan had come to expect bad news upon waking up, and as a result so had his family. He knew that he was taking it too seriously when his children started asking him about it over breakfast.
“What’s happening with China, Dad?” Sally asked, giving Ryan one more thing to lament. Sally didn’t say “daddy” anymore, and that was a title far more precious to Jack than “Mr. President.” You expected it from your sons, but not from your daughter. He’d discussed it with Cathy, but she’d told him that he just had to roll with the punch.
“We don’t know, Sally.”
“But you’re supposed to know everything!” And besides, her friends asked her about it at school.
“Sally, the President doesn’t know everything. At least I don’t,” he explained, looking up from the morning Early Bird. “And if you never noticed, the TVs in my office are tuned to CNN and the other news networks because they frequently tell me more than CIA does.”
“Really?” Sally observed. She watched too many movies. In Hollywood, CIA was a dangerous, lawbreaking, antidemocratic, fascist, and thoroughly evil government agency that nonetheless knew everything about everybody, and had really killed President Kennedy for its own purposes, whatever they were (Hollywood never quite got around to that). But it didn’t matter, because whoever the star was always managed to thwart the nasty old CIA before the credits, or the last commercial, depending on the format.
“Really, honey. CIA has some good people in it, but basically it’s just one more government agency.”
“What about the FBI and Secret Service?” she asked.
“They’re cops. Cops are different. My dad was a cop, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” and then she went back to the “Style” section of The Washington Post, which had both the comics and the stories that interested her, mainly ones having to do with the sort of music that her father put quotation marks around.
Then there was a discreet knock at the door, and Andrea came in. At this time of day, she also acted as his private secretary, in this case delivering a dispatch from the State Department. Ryan took it, looked at it, and managed not to pound on the table, because his children were present.
“Thanks, Andrea,” he told her.
“Yes, Mr. President.” And Special Agent Price-O’Day went back out to the corridor.
Jack saw his wife looking at him. The kids couldn’t read all his facial expressions, but his wife could. To Cathy, Ryan couldn’t lie worth a damn, which was also why she didn’t worry about his fidelity. Jack had the dissimulation ability of a two-year-old, despite all the help and training he got from Arnie. Jack caught the look and nodded. Yeah, it was China again. Ten minutes later, breakfast was fully consumed and the TV was turned off, and the Ryan family headed downstairs to work, to school, or to the day-care center at Johns Hopkins, depending on age, with the requisite contingent of Secret Service bodyguards. Jack kissed them all in their turn, except for little Jack—SHORTSTOP to the Secret Service—because John Patrick Ryan, Jr., didn’t go in for that sissy stuff. There was something to be said for having daughters, Ryan thought, as he headed for the Oval Office. Ben Goodley was there, waiting with the President’s Daily Brief.
“You have the one from SecState?” CARDSHARP asked.
“Yeah, Andrea delivered it.” Ryan fell into his swivel chair and lifted the phone, punching the proper speed-dial button.
“Good morning, Jack,” SecState said in greeting, despite a short night’s sleep gotten on the convertible sofa in his own office. Fortunately, his private bathroom also had a shower.
“Approved. Bring them all back,” SWORDSMAN told EAGLE.
“Who handles the announcement?” Secretary Adler asked.
“You do it. We’ll try to low-key it,” the President said, with forlorn hope in his voice.
“Right,” Adler thought. “Anything else?”
“That’s it for now.”
“Okay, see ya, Scott.” Ryan replaced the phone. “What about China?” he asked Goodley. “Are they doing anything unusual?”
“No. Their military is active, but it’s routine training activity only. Their most active sectors are up in their northeast and opposite Taiwan. Lesser activity in their southwest, north of India.”
“With all the good luck the Russians are having with oil and gold, are the Chinese looking north with envy?”
“It’s not bad speculation, but we have no positive indications of that from any of our sources.” Everybody envied rich neighbors, after all. That’s what had encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, despite having lots of oil under his own sand.
“Any of our sources” includes SORGE, the President reminded himself. He pondered that for a second. “Tell Ed I want a SNIE on Russia and China.”
“Quick?” Goodley asked. A Special National Intelligence Estimate could take months to prepare.
“Three or four weeks. And I want to be able to hang my hat on it.”
“I’ll tell the DCI,” Goodley promised.
“Anything else?” Ryan asked.
“That’s it for now, sir.”
Jack nodded and checked his calendar. He had a fairly routine day, but the next one would largely be spent on Air Force One flying hither and yon across America, and he was overnighting in—he flipped the page on the printout—Seattle, before flying home to Washington and another full day. It was just as easy for him to use the VC-25A as a red-eye ... oh, yeah, he had a breakfast speech in Seattle to the local Jaycees. He’d be talking about school reform. That generated a grunt. There just weren’t enough nuns to go around. The School Sisters of Notre Dame had taught him at St. Matthew’s Elementary School in northeast Baltimore back forty-plus years earlier—and taught him well, because the penalty for not learning or for misbehaving did not bear contemplation for a seven-year-old. But the truth of the matter was that he’d been a good, and fairly obedient—dull, Jack admitted to himself with a wry smile—child who’d gotten good marks because he’d had a good mom and a good dad, which was a lot more than too many contemporary American kids could say—and how the hell was he supposed to fix that? Jack asked himself. How could he bring back the ethos of his parents’ generation, the importance of religion, and a world in which engaged people went to the altar as virgins? Now they were talking about telling kids that homosexual and lesbian sex was okay. What would Sister Frances Mary have said about that? Jack wondered. A pity she wasn’t around to crack some senators and representatives over the knuckles with her ruler. It had worked on him and his classmates at St. Matthew’s ...
The desk speaker buzzed. “Senator Smithers just arrived at the West Entrance.” Ryan stood and went to his right, the door that came in from the secretaries’ anteroom. For some reason, people preferred that one to the door off the corridor opposite the Roosevelt Room. Maybe it was more businesslike. But mainly they liked to see the President standing when the door opened, his hand extended and a smile on his face, as though he really was glad to see them. Sure, Wilbur.
Mary Smithers from Iowa, matronly, three kids and seven grandkids, he thought, more talk about the Farm Bill. What the hell was he supposed to know about farms? the President wondered. On those rare occasions that he purchased food, he did it at the supermarket—because that’s where it all came from, wasn’t it? One of the things on the briefing pages for his political appearances was always the local price for bread and milk in case some local reporter tested him. And chocolate milk came from brown cows.
Accordingly, Ambassador Hitch and Assistant Secretary Rutledge will be flying back to Washington for consultations,” the spokesman told the audience.
“Does this signal a break in relations with China?” a reporter asked at once.
“Not at all. ‘Consultations’ means just that. We will discuss the recent developments with our representatives so that our relations with China can more speedily be brought back to what they ought to be,” the spokesman replied smoothly.
The assembled reporters didn’t know what to make of that and so three more questions of virtually identical content were immediately asked, and answers of virtually identical content repeated for them.
“He’s good,” Ryan said, watching the TV, which was pirating the CNN (and other) coverage off the satellites. It wasn’t going out live, oddly enough, despite the importance of the news being generated.
“Not good enough,” Arnie van Damm observed. “You’re going to get hit with this, too.”
“I figured. When?”
“The next time they catch you in front of a camera, Jack.”
And he had as much chance of ducking a camera as the leadoff hitter at opening day at Yankee Stadium, the President knew. Cameras at the White House were as numerous as shotguns during duck season, and there was no bag limit here.
Christ, Oleg!” It took a lot to make Reilly gasp, but this one crossed the threshold. ”Are you serious?”
“So it would appear, Mishka,” Provalov answered.
“And why are you telling me?” the American asked. Information like this was a state secret equivalent to the inner thoughts of President Grushavoy.
“There is no hiding it from you. I assume you tell everything we do together to Washington, and it was you who identified the Chinese diplomat, for which I and my country are in your debt.”
The amusing part of that was that Reilly had darted off to track Suvorov/Koniev without a thought, just as a cop thing, to help out a brother cop. Only afterward—about a nanosecond afterward, of course—had he thought of the political implications. And he’d thought this far ahead, but only as speculation, not quite believing that it could possibly have gone this far forward.
“Well, yes, I have to keep the Bureau informed of my operations here,” the legal attaché admitted, not that it was an earthshaking revelation.
“I know that, Mishka.”
“The Chinese wanted to kill Golovko,” Reilly whispered into his vodka. “F*ck.”
“My word exactly,” Provalov told his American friend. “The question is—”
“Two questions, Oleg. First, why? Second, now what?”
“Third, who is Suvorov, and what is he up to?”
Which was obvious, Reilly thought. Was Suvorov merely a paid agent of a foreign country? Or was he part of the KGB wing of the Russian Mafia being paid by the Chinese to do something—but what, and to what purpose?
“You know, I’ve been hunting OC guys for a long time, but it never got anywhere near this big. This is right up there with all those bullshit stories about who ‘really’ killed Kennedy.”
Provalov’s eyes looked up. “You’re not saying...”
“No, Oleg. The Mafia isn’t that crazy. You don’t go around looking to make enemies that big. You can’t predict the consequences, and it isn’t good for business. The Mafia is a business, Oleg. They try to make money for themselves. Even their political protection is aimed only at that, and that has limits, and they know what the limits are.”
“So, if Suvorov is Mafia, then he is only trying to make money?”
“Here it’s a little different,” Reilly said slowly, trying to help his brain keep up with his mouth. “Here your OC guys think more politically than they do in New York.” And the reason for that was that the KGB types had all grown up in an intensely political environment. Here politics really was power in a more direct sense than it had ever been in America, where politics and commerce had always been somewhat separate, the former protecting the latter (for a fee) but also controlled by it. Here it had always been, and still remained, the other way around. Business needed to rule politics because business was the source of prosperity, from which the citizens of a country derived their comforts. Russia had never prospered, because the cart kept trying to pull the horse. The recipient of the wealth had always tried to generate that wealth—and political figures are always pretty hopeless in that department. They are only good at squandering it. Politicians live by their political theories. Businessmen use reality and have to perform in a world defined by reality, not theory. That was why even in America they understood one another poorly, and never really trusted one another.
“What makes Golovko a target? What’s the profit in killing him?” Reilly asked aloud.
“He is the chief adviser to President Grushavoy. He’s never wanted to be an elected official, and therefore cannot be a minister per se, but he has the president’s ear because he is both intelligent and honest—and he’s a patriot in the true sense.”
Despite his background, Reilly didn’t add. Golovko was KGB, formerly a deadly enemy to the West, and an enemy to President Ryan, but somewhere along the line they’d met each other and they’d come to respect each other—even like each other, so the stories in Washington went. Reilly finished off his second vodka and waved for another. He was turning into a Russian, the FBI agent thought. It was getting to the point that he couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation without a drink or two.
“So, get him and thereby hurt your president, and thereby hurt your entire country. Still, it’s one hell of a dangerous play, Oleg Gregoriyevich.”
“A very dangerous play, Mishka,” Provalov agreed. “Who would do such a thing?”
Reilly let out a long and speculative breath. “One very ambitious motherf*cker.” He had to get back to the embassy and light up his STU-6 in one big f*cking hurry. He’d tell Director Murray, and Murray would tell President Ryan in half a New York minute. Then what? It was way the hell over his head, Mike Reilly thought.
“Okay, you’re covering this Suvorov guy.”
“We and the Federal Security Service now,” Provalov confirmed.
“They good?”
“Very,” the militia lieutenant admitted. “Suvorov can’t fart without us knowing what he had to eat.”
“And you have his communications penetrated.”
Oleg nodded. “The written kind. He has a cell phone—maybe more than one, and covering them can be troublesome.”
“Especially if he has an encryption system on it. There’s stuff commercially available now that our people have a problem with.”
“Oh?” Provalov’s head came around. He was surprised for two reasons: first, that there was a reliable encryption system available for cell phones, and second, that the Americans had trouble cracking it.
Reilly nodded. “Fortunately, the bad guys haven’t found out yet.” Contrary to popular belief, the Mafia wasn’t all that adept at using technology. Microwaving their food was about as far as they went. One Mafia don had thought his cell phone secure because of its frequency-hopping abilities, and then had entirely canceled that supposed advantage out by standing still while using it! The dunce-don had never figured that out, even after the intercept had been played aloud in Federal District Court.
“We haven’t noticed any of that yet.”
“Keep it that way,” Reilly advised. “Anyway, you have a national-security investigation.”
“It’s still murder and conspiracy to commit murder,” Provalov said, meaning it was still his case.
“Anything I can do?”
“Think it over. You have good instincts for Mafia cases, and that is probably what it is.”
Reilly tossed off his last drink. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, right here?”
Oleg nodded. “That is good.”
The FBI agent walked back outside and got into his car. Ten minutes later, he was at his desk. He took the plastic key from his desk drawer and inserted it into the STU, then dialed Washington.
All manner of people with STU phones had access to Murray’s private secure number, and so when the large system behind his desk started chirping, he just picked it up and listened to the hiss of static for thirty seconds until the robotic voice announced, “Line is secure.”
“Murray,” he said.
“Reilly in Moscow,” the other voice said.
The FBI Director checked his desk clock. It was pretty damned late there. “What’s happening, Mike?” he asked, then got the word in three fast-spoken minutes.
Yeah, Ellen?” Ryan said when the buzzer went off.
“The AG and the FBI Director want to come over, on something important, they said. You have an opening in forty minutes.”
“Fair enough.” Ryan didn’t wonder what it was about. He’d find out quickly enough. When he realized what he’d just thought, he cursed the Presidency once more. He was becoming jaded. In this job?
What the hell?” Ed Foley observed.
“Seems to be solid information, too,” Murray told the DCI.
“What else do you know?”
“The fax just came in, only two pages, and nothing much more than what I just told you, but I’ll send it over to you. I’ve told Reilly to offer total cooperation. Anything to offer from your side?” Dan asked.
“Nothing comes to mind. This is all news to us, Dan. My congrats to your man Reilly for turning it.” Foley was an information whore, after all. He’d take from anybody.
“Good kid. His father was a good agent, too.” Murray knew better than to be smug about it, and Foley didn’t deserve the abuse. Things like this were not, actually, within CIA’s purview, and not likely to be tumbled to by one of their operations.
For his part, Foley wondered if he’d have to tell Murray about SORGE. If this was for real, it had to be known at the very highest levels of the Chinese government. It wasn’t a freelance operation by their Moscow station. People got shot for f*cking around at this level, and such an operation would not even occur to communist bureaucrats, who were not the most inventive people in the world.
“Anyway, I’m taking Pat Martin over with me. He knows espionage operations from the defensive side, and I figure I’ll need the backup.”
“Okay, thanks. Let me go over the fax and I’ll be back to you later today.”
He could hear the nod at the other end. “Right, Ed. See ya.”
His secretary came in thirty seconds later with a fax in a folder. Ed Foley checked the cover sheet and called his wife in from her office.