Behind them, the mammoth ship groaned and hissed, shooting jets of spray into the air from every crack and ruptured seam as she slid deeper into the water. Kitchen could have imagined the seven hundred feet of blackness below him, the possibility of being crushed between half-submerged shipping containers that were tossed around in the mountainous waves. He could have focused on the fact that he was alone in the middle of an unforgiving sea with ten men who were about to claw one another’s eyes out in an effort to keep from drowning. But he didn’t.
He was too busy.
5
Jack Ryan awoke at four fifty-one a.m., a full thirty-nine minutes before he got up on a normal day—but then, as President of the United States, normal was a subjective term.
Cathy was out of town with the kids, performing cataract surgeries in Nepal. School wasn’t exactly in full swing, but it had already started for the year, and Ryan wasn’t too happy about Katie and Kyle missing the first few weeks. Katie had pointed out that while she fully agreed that school was important, a deep understanding of world culture was also crucial. Travel to Nepal, she reasoned, would add to that understanding in a way no classroom could. “China canceled travel visas for people that wanted to go there, just to keep the Tibetans from sneaking into India, Dad! Don’t you want me to visit someplace the ChiComs say is off-limits?” Ryan’s wife bristled at the use of “ChiComs,” and he’d had to remind Katie it wasn’t especially diplomatic for the President’s daughter to use the word in reference to the communist Chinese—no matter what she might overhear him saying in the White House.
His daughter’s logic was sound and emotional—leaving Ryan to live in mortal fear that she would decide to be an attorney. So the kids went with Cathy to Nepal—and Jack Ryan found himself alone.
He arched his back, ticking through the myriad old injuries that stitched his body. He had more than a few, and some woke up slower than others. Sitting up against his pillow, he glanced at the bedside table and the five-by-seven photograph of his wife and him on the docks at Annapolis. They were standing with his old friend and mentor, the late Admiral James Greer. The photo customarily occupied a place of honor on top of his cherrywood dresser, but it was Ryan’s favorite picture of Cathy, so he moved it to the side table whenever she went out of town.
Ryan reached for his glasses and stood, wincing when his feet hit the carpet. He cast another glance at the photograph, getting a clearer view now. Jeez, his hair was so dark back then. “That’s just like you, Cathy,” he mumbled, “going off to restore poor people’s vision when I need you here to rub my aching foot.”
With his wife performing medical miracles and no opportunity to engage in what the Secret Service euphemistically referred to as “discussing the situation in Belgrade,” Ryan was up and seated on the rowing machine in the residence gym by 5:05. An hour later found him showered and dressed in a pair of gray wool slacks and a white French-cuffed shirt that had been laid out for him while he was in the gym. He left the blood-red power tie on the bed, preferring to wait until he finished breakfast before he consigned himself to the noose.
The Navy steward, a young petty officer named Martinez, followed Ryan’s location in the residence by watching a lighted panel that indicated POTUS’s whereabouts as he moved across the pressure-sensitive pads under the carpet of the bedroom, gym, shower, and back to the bedroom. Accustomed to the President’s schedule, the steward had breakfast ready on a side table in his study by the time he was dressed.
The First Lady had given strict instructions to the White House chef that her husband’s breakfasts should consist of oatmeal, skim milk, and raisins during her absence. Ryan quickly countermanded that order, offering a presidential pardon to whatever punishments his wife might dole out if she ever discovered he was eating a buttered croissant and two poached eggs.
Ryan spread the front page of The Wall Street Journal beside his plate on the white linen tablecloth. He’d heard it said that when it came to food, the eye ate first—but he’d always preferred to let his eyes work independently of his plate. He read and hardly looked at his food but to plot the correct aim with his fork. Twenty minutes later, he carried the unfinished pages of the Journal, along with the Post and The New York Times, to a more comfortable chair. He could have gone into the office, but when he went in, others thought they had to come in, and he saw no reason to get everyone else spun up just because his wife was in Nepal.
Ahead of schedule, he allowed himself to linger a little over the papers and sip his coffee while he enjoyed some thinking time in the quiet of morning. In no time, things would speed up to their usual breakneck pace and he would have to start making decisions, “wielding his cosmic power for good,” his chief of staff would say. Ryan laughed at the thought. As a boy, growing up in the house with his policeman father, power had smelled like Hoppes No. 9 gun oil and strong coffee. Here in the White House it smelled like freshly pressed linen . . . and strong coffee.
Ryan glanced at his watch, then rationalized away six more minutes to limber his analytical mind on half the Wall Street Journal’s crossword before digging into the Presidential Daily Brief.
The PDB was a collection of highly classified executive summaries that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence deemed worthy of his review. It contained everything from hard intelligence to rumors that, while patently false, were likely to incite unrest or instability in parts of the world where the United States had strategic or humanitarian interests. Charged with the deconfliction and information sharing between the seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies, it was the responsibility of the ODNI to have a finger on the pulse of important world events—and to boil them down into the PDB.
Ryan preferred a BLUF report—Bottom Line Up Front. He wanted a simple executive summary of straight facts—even when those facts were about rumors—and would drill down on the specifics in face-to-face national security briefings. He’d cut his teeth in the intelligence community as an analyst, playing what-if games with world events, and could spend hours delving into the nuances of a single issue—and enjoying the hell out of it. But he wasn’t in the rank and file of the IC anymore. The problems facing the office of President came at near lightning speed from all points of the compass and at all hours of the day. Ryan was forced into the role of a generalist, relying on subject-matter experts to work through the in-depth analysis and strategy.