Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [37]
“What did you tell him?” Jack asked Arnie.
“I told him I’d ask, but you’d probably say not just no but hell, no.”
“Arnie, I do like the guy, but a former President can’t trash his successor. …”
“Even if he’s a worthless piece of shit?”
“Even then,” Jack confirmed sourly. “Maybe especially then. Hold on. I thought you liked him. What happened?”
“Maybe I hung around you too much. Now I have this crazy notion that character counts for something. It’s not all political maneuvering.”
“He’s damned good at that, Arnie. Even I have to grant him that. Arnie, you want to come down for a talk?” Ryan asked. Why else would he call on a Friday morning?
“Yeah, okay, so I’m not exactly subtle.”
“Fly on down. You’re always welcome in my house, you know that.”
Cathy asked sotto voce, “What about Tuesday? Dinner.”
“How about Tuesday for dinner?” Jack asked Arnie. “You can stay the night. I’ll tell Andrea to expect you.”
“Do that. I’m always half worried that woman’s going to shoot me, and as good as she is, I doubt it’d be a flesh wound. See you around ten.”
“Great, Arnie, see ya.” Jack set the phone back down and stood up to walk Cathy to the garage. Cathy had moved up in class. Now she drove a two-seat Mercedes, though she’d recently admitted she missed the helicopter into Hopkins. On the upside, now she got to play race-car driver, with her Secret Service agent, Roy Altman, former captain in the 82nd Airborne, holding on for dear life in the passenger seat. A serious guy. He was standing by the car, jacket unbuttoned, paddle holster visible.
“Morning, Dr. Ryan,” he greeted.
“Hi, Roy. How are the kids?”
“Just fine, thank you, ma’am.” He opened the car door.
“Have a productive day, Jack.” And the usual morning kiss.
Cathy settled in, buckled her seat belt, and started up the twelve-cylinder beast that lived under the hood. She waved and backed out. Jack watched her disappear down the driveway, out to where the lead and chase cars were waiting, then turned back to the kitchen door.
“Good morning, Mrs. O’Day,” he said in greeting.
“And to you, Mr. President,” said Special Agent Andrea Price-O’Day, Jack’s principal agent. She had a two-plus-year-old boy of her own, named Conor, and a handful he was, Jack knew. Conor’s dad was Patrick O’Day, Major Case Inspector for FBI Director Dan Murray, another of Jack’s government appointments that Kealty couldn’t mess with, because the FBI wasn’t allowed to be a political football—or least it wasn’t supposed to be.
“How’s the little one?”
“Just fine. Not quite sure about the potty yet, though. He cries when he sees it.”
Jack laughed. “Jack was the same way. Arnie is coming down Tuesday, about ten in the morning,” he told her. “Dinner, then overnight.”
“Well, we don’t have to check him out very thoroughly,” Andrea replied. But they’d still run his Social Security number through the National Crime Information Computer, just to be sure. The Secret Service trusted few—even in its own ranks, since Aref Raman had gone bad. That had caused a major bellyache for the Service. But her own husband had helped to settle that one down, and Raman would be in the Florence, Colorado, federal prison for a long, long time. The grimmest of all federal penitentiaries, Florence was as max as a maximum-security prison got, dug as it was into hard bedrock and entirely belowground. The guests of Florence mostly saw sunlight on black-and-white TV.
Ryan walked back into the kitchen. He could have asked more. The Service kept