Executive orders - Tom Clancy [11]
I'm open to ideas, Ryan said at last.
Special Agent Andrea Price took a deep breath and fulfilled the fantasy of every special agent of the United States Secret Service all the way back to Pinkerton: Mr. President, you really need to get your, er, stuff-she couldn't go that far-together. Some things you can do and some things you can't. You have people working for you. For starters, sir, figure out who they are and let them do their jobs. Then, maybe, you can start doing yours.
Back to the House?
That's where the phones are, Mr. President.
Who's head of the Detail?
It was Andy Walker. Price didn't have to say where he was now. Ryan looked down at her and made his first presidential decision.
You just got promoted.
Price nodded. Follow me, sir. It pleased the agent to see that this President, like all the others, could learn to follow orders. Some of the time, anyway. They'd made it all of ten feet before Ryan slipped on a patch of ice and went down, to be picked back up by two agents. It only made him look all the more vulnerable. A still photographer captured the moment, giving Newsweek its cover photo for the following week.
AS YOU SEE, President Ryan is now leaving the Hill in what looks like a military vehicle instead of a Secret Service car. What do you suppose he's up to? the anchor asked.
In all fairness to the man, John the commentator said, it's unlikely that he knows at the moment.
That opinion rang across the globe a third of a second later, to the general agreement of all manner of persons, friends and enemies alike.
SOME THINGS HAVE to be done fast. He didn't know if they were the right things-well, he did, and they weren't-but at a certain level of importance the rules got a little muddled, didn't they? The scion of a political family whose public service went back a couple of generations, he'd been in public life practically since leaving law school, which was another way of saying that he hadn't held a real job in his entire life. Perhaps he had little practical experience in the economy except as its beneficiary-his family's financial managers ran the various trusts and portfolios with sufficient skill that he almost never bothered meeting with them except at tax time. Perhaps he had never practiced law-though he'd had a hand in passing literally thousands of them. Perhaps he had never served his country in uniform-though he deemed himself an expert in national security. Perhaps a lot of things militated against doing anything. But he knew government, for that had been his profession for all of his active-not to say working-life, and at a time like this, the country needed someone who really knew government. The country needed healing, Ed Kealty thought, and he knew about that.
So, he lifted his phone and made a call. Cliff, this is Ed
* * *
1 - STARTING NOW
THE FBI'S EMERGENCY command center on the fifth floor of the Hoover building is an odd-shaped room, roughly triangular and surprisingly small, with room for only fifteen or so people to bump shoulders. Number sixteen to arrive, tieless and wearing casual clothes, was Deputy Assistant Director Daniel E. Murray. The senior watch officer was his old friend, Inspector Pat O'Day. A large-framed, rugged man who raised beef cattle as a hobby at his northern Virginia home-this cowboy had been born and educated in New Hampshire, but his boots were custom-made-O'Day had a phone to his ear, and the room was surprisingly quiet for a crisis room during a real crisis. A curt nod and raised hand acknowledged Murray's entry. The senior agent waited for O'Day to conclude the call.
What's going on,