Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [36]
The transition period had been even worse, if that was possible. The funeral, held at Jackson’s father’s Baptist church in Mississippi, was one of Jack’s worst-ever memories. The media had sneered at his display of emotion. Presidents were supposed to be robots, after all, but Ryan had never been one of those.
And with good damned reason, Ryan thought.
Right here, right here in this very room, Robby had saved his life, and his wife’s, and his daughter’s, and his as yet unborn son’s. Jack had rarely known rage in his life, but this was one subject that caused it to erupt like Mount Vesuvius on a particularly bad day. Even Robby’s father had preached forgiveness on the subject, proof positive that the Reverend Hosiah Jackson was a better man than he would ever be. So what fate suited Robby’s killer? A pistol round in the liver, perhaps … might take five or ten minutes for the bastard to bleed out, screaming all the way to hell …
Worse still, rumor had it the current President was contemplating a blanket commutation of every death sentence in America. His political allies were already lobbying for him in the media, planning a public mercy demonstration on the Washington Mall. Mercy for the victims of the killers and kidnappers was something they never quite addressed, of course, but for all that it was for them a deeply held principle, and Ryan actually respected it.
The former President took a calming breath. He had his work to do. He was two years into his memoirs and in the home stretch. The work had gone quicker than he’d expected, so much so that he’d also written a confidential annex to his autobiography that would not see the light of day until twenty years after his death.
“Where are you?” Cathy asked, thinking of her schedule for the day. She had four laser procedures scheduled. Her Secret Service detail had already checked out the patients, lest one come into the OR with a pistol or knife, an event so unlikely to happen that Cathy had long ago stopped thinking about it. Or maybe she had stopped thinking about it because she knew her detail was worrying about it.
“Huh?”
“In the book,” his wife clarified.
“The last few months.” His tax and fiscal policy, which had actually worked until Kealty had applied a flamethrower to it.
And now the United States of America was muddling along under the presidency—or reign—of Edward Jonathan Kealty, a silver-spooned member of the aristocracy. In time it would be fixed one way or another, the people would see to that. But the difference between a mob and a herd was that a mob had a leader. The people didn’t really need that. The people could do without it—because a leader usually came along somehow or other. But who chose the leader? The people did. But the people chose a leader from a list of candidates, and they had to be self-selected.
The phone rang. Jack got it.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jack.” The voice was familiar enough. Ryan’s eyes lit up.
“Hi, Arnie. How’s life in academia?”
“As you might expect. See the news this morning?”
“The Marines?”
“What do you think?” Arnie van Damm asked.
“Doesn’t look very good.”
“I think it’s worse than it looks. The reporters aren’t telling the whole story.”
“Do they ever?” Jack wondered sourly.
“No, not when they don’t like it, but some of them have integrity. Bob Holtzman at the Post is having a conscience attack. He called me. Wants to talk to you about your views—off the record, of course.”
Robert Holtzman of The Washington Post was one of the few reporters Ryan almost