Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (33 page)

“Angriest eyes I ever saw,” Ryan said quietly, sipping his drink. “That man knows how to hate.”

“He's going to make a move, sure as hell.”
Clark
had a Wild Turkey and water. “The Saudis must be a little tense about this.”

“That's putting it mildly,” Mary Pat said. “Ed's staying over for a few days, and that's what he's getting. They've increased the readiness state of their military.”

“And that's all we've got,” President Ryan summarized.

“For all practical purposes, yes. We're getting a lot of SigInt out of
Iraq
, and what we're getting is predictable. The lid is screwed down tight, but the pot's boiling underneath. It has to be. We've increased coverage with the satellites, of course—”

“Okay, Mary Pat, give me your speech,” Jack ordered. He didn't want to hear about satellite photos right now.

“I want to increase my directorate.”

“How much?” Then he watched her take a deep breath. It was unusual to see Mary Patricia Foley tense about anything.

“Triple. We have a total of six hundred fifty-seven field officers. I want to jack that number up to two thousand over the next three years.” She delivered the words in a rush, watching Ryan's face for a reaction.

“Approved, if you can figure a payroll-neutral way to bring it off.”

“That's easy, Jack,”
Clark
observed with a chuckle. “Fire two thousand desk weenies, and you still save money.”

“They're people with families, John,” the President told him.

“The Directorates of Intelligence and Administration are featherbedded all to hell and gone. You've been there. You know that. It's worth doing just to ease the parking situation. Early retirement will handle most of it.”

Ryan thought that one over for a second. “I need somebody to swing the axe. MP, can you handle being under Ed again?”

“It's the usual position, Jack,” Mrs. Foley replied with a twinkle in her fey blue eyes. “Ed's better at administration than I am, but I was always better in the street.”

“Plan Blue?”

Clark
answered that. “Yes, sir. I want us to go after cops, young detectives, regular blue-suits. You know why. They're largely pre-trained. They have street smarts.”

Ryan nodded. “Okay. Mary Pat, next week I'm going to accept with regret the resignation letter of the DCI and appoint Ed in his place. Have him present me with a plan for increasing the DO and decreasing the DI and DA. I will approve that in due course.”

“Great!” Mrs. Foley toasted her Commander-in-Chief with her wineglass.

“There's one other thing. John?”

“Yes, sir?”

“When Roger asked me to step up, I had a request for him.”

“What's that?”

“I'm going to issue a presidential pardon for a gentleman named John T. Kelly. That will be done this year. You should have told me that Dad worked your case.”

For the first time in a very long time,
Clark
went pale as a ghost. “How did you know?”

“It was in Jim Greer's personal files. They were sort of conveyed to me a few years ago. My father worked the case, I remember it well. All those women who were murdered. I remember how twisted he was about it, and how happy he was to put it behind him. He never really talked about that one, but I knew how he felt about it.” Jack looked down into his drink, swirling the ice around the glass. “If you want a good guess, I think he'd be happy about this, and I think he'd be happy to know you didn't go down with the ship.”

“Jesus, Jack . . . I mean . . . Jesus.”

“You deserve to have your name back. I can't condone the things you did. I'm not allowed to think that way now, am I? Maybe as a private citizen I could—but you deserve your name back, Mr. Kelly.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Chavez wondered what it was all about. He remembered that guy on
Saipan
, the retired Coast Guard chief, and a few words about killing people. Well, he knew Mr. C. didn't faint at the thought, but this story must be a good one.

“Anything else?” Jack asked. “I'd like to get back to my family before all the kids go to bed.”

“Plan Blue is approved, then?”

“Yes, it is, MP. As soon as Ed writes up a plan for implementing it.”

“I'll have him heading back as soon as they can light up his airplane,” MP promised.

“Fine.” Jack rose and headed for the door. His guests did the same.

“Mr. President?” It was Ding Chavez.

Ryan turned. “Yeah?”

“What's going to happen with the primaries?”

“What do you mean?”

“I stopped over at school today, and Dr. Alpher told me that all of the serious candidates in both parties were killed last week, and the filing deadlines for all the primaries have passed. Nobody new can file. We have an election year, and nobody's running. The press hasn't said much about that yet.”

Even Agent Price blinked at that, but an instant later they all knew that it was true.

“
P
ARIS
?”

“Professor Rousseau at the Pasteur Institute thinks he's developed a treatment. It's experimental, but it's the only chance she has.”

They spoke in the corridor outside Sister Jean Baptiste's room, both wearing blue-plastic “space suits” and sweating inside of them despite the environmental-control packs that hung on the belts. Their patient was dying, and while that was bad enough, the manner of her protracted death would be horrid beyond words. Benedict Mkusa had been fortunate. For some reason or other, the Ebola had attacked his heart earlier than usual; it had been a rare act of mercy, which allowed the boy to expire much more quickly than usual. This patient wasn't quite so lucky. Blood tests showed that her liver was being attacked, but slowly. Heart enzymes were actually normal. Ebola was advancing within her body at a rapid but uniform rate. Her gastrointestinal system was quite literally coming apart. The resulting bleeding, both from vomiting and diarrhea, was serious, and the pain from it was intense, but the woman's body was fighting back as best it could in a valiant but doomed effort to save itself. The only reward for that struggle would be increasing pain, and already the morphine was losing its battle to stay ahead of the agony.

“But how would we—” She didn't have to go on. Air Afrique had the only regular service to
Paris
, but neither that carrier nor any other would transport an Ebola patient, for the obvious reasons. All of this suited Dr. Moudi just fine.

“I can arrange transport. I come from a wealthy family. I can have a private jet come in and fly us to
Paris
. It's easier to take all of the necessary precautions that way.”

“I don't know. I'll have to—” Maria Magdalena hesitated.

“I will not lie to you, Sister. She will probably die in any case, but if there is any chance, it is with Professor Rousseau. I studied under him, and if he says he has something, then he does. Let me call for the aircraft,” he insisted.

“I cannot say no to that, but I must—”

“I understand.”

T
HE AIRCRAFT IN
question was a Gulfstream G-IV, and it was just landing at Rashid Airfield, located to the east of a wide meandering loop of the River Tigris, known locally as the Nahr Dulah. The registration code near the aircraft's tail denoted Swiss registry, where it was owned by a corporation that traded in various things and paid its taxes on time, which ended official interest on the part of the Swiss government. The flight in had been short and unremarkable, except perhaps for the time of day, and the routing,
Beirut
to
Tehran
to
Baghdad
.

His real name was Ali Badrayn, and while he'd lived and worked under several others names, he'd finally returned to his own because it was Iraqi in origin. His family had left
Iraq
for the supposed economic opportunity in
Jordan
, but then been caught up like everyone else in the region's turmoil, a situation not exactly helped by their son's decision to become part of the movement which would put an end to
Israel
. The threat perceived by the Jordanian king, and his subsequent expulsion of the threatening elements, had ruined Badrayn's family, not that he'd especially cared at the time.

Badrayn cared now, somewhat. The life of a terrorist paled with the accumulating years, and though he was one of the best in that line of work, especially at gathering information, he had little to show for it beyond the undying enmity of the world's most ruthless intelligence service. A little comfort and security would have been welcome. Perhaps this mission would allow that. His Iraqi identity and the activities of his life had garnered him contacts throughout the region. He'd provided information for Iraqi intelligence, and helped finger two people they had wished to eliminate, both successfully. That had given him entree, and that was why he'd come.

The aircraft finished its rollout, and the co-pilot came aft to lower the steps. A car pulled up. He entered it, and it pulled off.

“Peace be with you,” he told the other man in the back of the Mercedes.

“Peace?” The general snorted. “The whole world cries out that we have little enough of that.” Clearly the man hadn't slept since the death of his president, Badrayn saw. His hands shook from all the coffee he'd drunk, or perhaps from the alcohol he'd used to counteract it. It would not be a pleasant thing to look into the coming week and wonder if one would live to see the end of it. On the one hand one needed to stay awake. On the other, one needed to escape. This general had a family and children in addition to his mistress. Well, they probably all did. Good.

“Not a happy situation, but things are under control, yes?” The look this question generated was answer enough. About the only good thing that could be said was that had the President merely been wounded, this man would now be dead for failing to detect the assassin. It was a dangerous job, being intelligence chief for a dictator, and one which made many enemies. He'd sold his soul to the devil, and told himself that the debt would never be collected. How could a bright man be such a fool?

“Why are you here?” the general asked.

“To offer you a golden bridge.”

TO THE MANNER BORN

T
HERE WERE TANKS IN
the streets, and tanks were “sexy” things for the “overhead imagery” people to look at and count. There were three KH-11-class reconnaissance satellites in orbit. One of them, eleven years old, was dying slowly. Long since out of maneuvering fuel, and with one of its solar panels degraded to the point that it could barely power a flashlight, it could still take photos through three of its cameras and relay them to the geosynchronous communications bird over the
Indian Ocean
. Less than a second later they were downlinked and forwarded to various interpretation offices, one of them at CI A.

“That ought to cut down on pursesnatchings.” The analyst checked his watch and added eight hours. Okay, approaching ten A.M. “
Lima
,” or local time. People should have been out on the streets, working, moving around, socializing at the many sidewalk restaurants, drinking the awful local version of coffee. But not today. Not with tanks in the streets. A few individuals were moving around, mainly women by the look of them, probably shopping. A main battle tank was parked about every four blocks on the main thoroughfares—and one at every traffic circle, of which there were many—supported by lighter vehicles on the side streets. Little knots of soldiers stood at every intersection. The photos showed that all of them carried rifles, but couldn't determine rank or discern unit patches.

“Get a count,” his supervisor instructed.

“Yes, sir.” The analyst didn't grumble. Counting the tanks was something they always did. He'd even type them, mainly by checking the main gun. By doing this they'd be able to determine how many of the tanks regularly counted in their regimental laagers had turned their engines over and moved from one place to another. The information had importance to someone or other, though for the past ten years they'd been doing the same thing, generally to learn that whatever the faults and flaws of the Iraqi military, it did its maintenance well enough to keep the engines running. It was rather less diligent about its gunnery, which they'd learned in the Persian Gulf War, but as the analyst had already noted, you look at a tank and assume that it works. It was the only prudent course. He hunched down over the viewer and saw that a white car, probably a Mercedes from the shape, was driving up National Route 7. A more detailed look at the photos would have showed it heading toward the Sibaq' al Mansur racetrack, where he would have seen more automobiles of the same type, but he'd been told to count the tanks.

I
RAQ
'S CLIMATIC VARIATIONS
are more striking than in most places in the world. This February morning, with the sun high in the sky, it was barely above freezing, though in the summer 115 degrees Fahrenheit attracted little in the way of notice. The assembled officers, Badrayn saw, were in their winter wool uniforms, with high collars and voluminous gold braid; most of them were smoking, and all of them were worried. His host introduced the visitor to those who didn't know him. He didn't bother wishing peace unto them. They weren't in the mood for the traditional Islamic greeting. These men were surprisingly Western and totally secular in their outlook and demeanor. Like their departed leader, they gave mere lip service to their religion, though at the moment they all wondered if the teachings of eternal damnation for a sinful life were true or not, knowing that some of them would probably find out soon enough. That possibility worried them enough that they had left their offices and come to the racetrack to hear him speak.

The message Badrayn had to deliver was a simple one. This he did.

“How can we believe you?” the army chief asked when he'd finished.

“It is better for everyone this way, is it not?”

“You expect us to abandon our motherland to . . . him?” a corps commander demanded, disguising frustration as anger.

“What you decide to do is your concern, General. If you desire to stand and fight for what is yours, the decision is clearly yours as well. I was asked to come here and deliver a message as an honest broker. This I have done,” Badrayn replied evenly. There was no sense getting excited about things like this, after all.

“With whom are we supposed to negotiate?” This was the chief of the Iraqi air force.

“You may make your reply to me, but as I have already told you, there really is nothing to negotiate. The offer is a fair one, is it not?” Generous would be a better term. In addition to saving their own skins, and the skins of those close to them, they would all emerge from their country wealthy. Their president had salted away huge sums of money, little of which had ever actually been detected and seized. They all had access to travel documents and passports from any country in the known world. In that particular area the Iraqi intelligence service, assisted by the engraving bureau of its treasury, had long since established its expertise. “You have his word before God that you will not be harassed, wherever you may go.” And that was something they had to take seriously. Badrayn's sponsor was their enemy. He was as bitter and spiteful as any man on earth. But he was also a man of God, and not one to invoke His name lightly.

“When do you need your reply?” the army chief asked, more politely than the others.

“Tomorrow would be sufficient, or even the day after. Beyond that, I cannot say. My instructions,” Badrayn went on, “go only that far.”

“And the arrangements?”

“You may set them yourselves, within reason.” Badrayn wondered how much more they could possibly expect from him, or his sponsor.

But the decision he demanded was harder than one might imagine. The patriotism of the assembled general officers was not of the usual sort. They loved their country, largely because they controlled it. They had power, genuine life-and-death power, a far greater narcotic than money, and one of the things for which a man would risk his life and his soul. One of their number, many of them thought—hoped—just might pull it off. One of them just might assume the presidency of their country successfully, and together they just might calm things down and continue as before. They'd have to open their nation up somewhat, of course. They'd have to allow U.N. and other inspectors to see everything, but with the death of their leader they'd have the chance to start anew, even though everyone would know that nothing new at all was happening. Such were the rules of the world. A promise here or there, a few remarks about democracy and elections, and their former enemies would fall all over themselves giving them and their nation a chance. A further incentive was the sheer opportunity of it. Not one of them had felt truly secure in years. Everyone knew of colleagues who had died, either at the hands of their dead leader, or under circumstances euphemistically called “mysterious”—helicopter crashes had been a favorite ploy of their fallen and beloved President. Now they had a chance to live lives of power with much greater confidence, and against that was a life of indolence in some foreign place. Each of them already had a life of every luxury a man could imagine—plus power. Each could snap his fingers and the people who jumped were not servants but soldiers. . . .

Except for one thing. To stay would be the greatest and most dangerous gamble of their lives. Their country was now under the strictest control they could remember, and there was a reason for it. The people who'd roared their love and affection for the dead one—what did they really think? It hadn't mattered a week before, but it mattered now. The soldiers they commanded came from the same human sea. Which of them had the charisma to assume the leadership of the country? Which of them had the keys to the Ba'ath Party? Which of them could rule by the force of will? Because only then could they look into the future, if not without fear, then with a small enough quantity of it that their experience and courage could deal with the chances they would be taking. Each of them, standing at the racetrack, looked around the assembly of brother officers and wondered the same question: Which one?

That was the problem, because if there had been one of their number to do it, he would already have been dead, probably in a tragic helicopter mishap. And a dictatorship was not operated by a committee. Strong as they all felt themselves to be, each looked at the others and saw potential weakness. Private jealousies would destroy them. Jockeying and rivalries would, probably, cause such internal turmoil that the iron hand needed to control the people would weaken. And in a few months, probably, it would come apart. They had all seen it happen before, and the ultimate result was foretold in their deaths, standing before a line of their own soldiers, and a wall to their backs.

There was no ethos for these men other than power and its exercise. That sufficed for one man, but not for many. Many needed to be unified around something, whether it be the rule imposed by one superior, or a commonly held idea, but it had to be something that imposed a common outlook. No one of them' could do the former, and collectively they lacked the latter. Powerful as they each might be, they were also weak in a fundamental way, and as the officers stood there, looking around at one another, they all knew it. At base, they believed in nothing. What they enforced with weapons they could not impose with will. They could command from behind, but not lead from the front. At least most of them were intelligent enough to know it. That was why Badrayn had flown to
Baghdad
.

He watched their eyes and knew what they were thinking, however impassive their faces might have been. A bold man would have spoken up with confidence, and thus assumed leadership of the group. But the bold ones were long since dead, cut down by one bolder and more ruthless, only to be cut down by the unseen hand of someone more patient and more ruthless still—enough so that he could now make a generous offer. Badrayn knew what the answer had to be, and so did they. The dead Iraqi President had left nothing behind to replace himself, but that was the way of men who believed in nothing except themselves.

T
HE PHONE RANG
at
6:05
this time. Ryan didn't mind awakening before
7:00
. It had been his custom for years, but back then he'd had to drive in to work. Now the job was an elevator ride away, and he'd expected that the time previously spent in a car could now be spent in bed. At least he'd been able to doze in the back of his official car.

“Yes?”

“Mr. President?” Jack was surprised to hear Arnie's voice. Even so, he was tempted to demand who the hell else would pick the phone up.

“What is it?”

“Trouble.”

V
ICE
P
RESIDENT
E
DWARD
J. Kealty had not slept all night, but one would not have known it from looking at him. Shaved pink, clear of eye, and straight of back, he strode into the CNN building with his wife and his aides, there to be met by a producer who whisked him into an elevator for the trip upstairs. Only the usual pleasantries were exchanged. The career politician just stared forward, as though trying to convince the stainless-steel doors that he knew what he was about. And succeeding.

The preparatory calls had been made over the previous three hours, starting with the head of the network. An old friend, the TV executive had been thunderstruck for the first time in his career. One halfway expected airplane crashes, train wrecks, violent crimes—the routine disasters and sorrows from which the media made its living—but something like this was the occurrence of a lifetime. Two hours earlier, he'd called Arnie van Damm, another old friend, because one had to cover one's bases as a reporter; besides, there was also a love of country in him that he rarely expressed but it was there nonetheless, and the CNN president didn't have a clue where this story would go. He'd called on the network's legal correspondent, a failed trial attorney, who in turn was now on the phone with a professor friend at
Georgetown
University
Law
School
. Even now, the CNN president called into the green room.

“Are you really sure, Ed?” was all he had to ask.

“I don't have a choice. I wish I didn't have to.” Which was the expected answer.

“Your funeral. I'll be watching.” And the line went dead. At the far end there was a form of rejoicing. It would be a hell of a story, and it was CNN's job to report the news, and that was that.

“A
RNIE, IS THIS
totally crazy or am I still dreaming?” They were in an upstairs sitting room. Jack had thrown on some casual clothes. Van Damm didn't have his tie on yet, and his socks were mismatched, Ryan noticed. Worst of all, van Damm looked rattled, and he'd never seen that before.

“I guess we'll just have to wait and see.” Both men turned when the door opened.

“Mr. President?” A fiftyish man came in, properly dressed in a business suit. He was tall and harried-looking. Andrea followed him in. She, too, had been briefed, insofar as that was possible.

“This is Patrick Martin,” Arnie said.

“Criminal Division at Justice, right?” Jack rose to shake hands and waved him to the coffee tray.

“Yes, sir. I've been working with Dan Murray on the crash investigation.”

“Pat's one of our better trial lawyers. He also lectures at George Washington on constitutional law,” the chief of staff explained.

“So, what do you think of all this?” the President asked, his voice still somewhere between whimsy and outright disbelief.

“I think we need to see what he has to say.” The quintessential lawyer's reply.

“How long at Justice?” Jack asked next, returning to his seat.

“Twenty-three years. Four years in the FBI before that.” Martin poured a cup and decided to stand.

“Here we go,” van Damm observed, unmuting the TV.

“Ladies and gentlemen, with us here in our
Washington
bureau is Vice President Edward J. Kealty.” CNN's chief political correspondent also looked as though he'd been dragged from his bed and genuinely shaken. Ryan noted that, of all the people he'd seen that day, Kealty looked the most normal. “Sir, you have something unusual to say.”

“Yes, I do, Barry. I probably need to start by saying that this is the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in over thirty years of public life.” Realty's voice was quiet and restrained, speaking in the tone of an essay by Emerson, slow and clear, and painfully earnest. "As you know, President Durling asked me to resign from my post. The reason for this was a question of my conduct while a senator. Barry, it's no secret that my personal conduct has not always been as exemplary as it should have been. That's true of many people in public life, but it's no excuse, and I do not claim that it is. When Roger and I discussed the situation, we agreed that it would be best for me to resign my office, allowing him to select a new running mate for the elections later this year. It was his further intention to have John Ryan fill my post as interim Vice President.