Executive orders - Tom Clancy [119]
One change? he said after a moment.
What's that? Weston asked suspiciously.
We have a new SecTreas. George Winston.
The zillionaire?
Ryan flipped the first page. Well, I could have picked a bum off a park bench, but I thought somebody with knowledge of the financial markets might be a good idea.
We call them 'homeless people,' Jack, Arnie pointed out.
Or I could have chosen an academic, but Buzz Fiedler would have been the only one I'd trust, Jack went on soberly, remembering again. A rare academic, Fiedler, a man who knew what he didn't know. Damn. This is good, Ms. Weston.
Van Damm got to page three. Callie
Arnie, baby, you don't write Olivier for George C. Scott. You write Olivier for Olivier, and Scott for Scott. In her heart, Callie Weston knew that she could hop a flight from Dulles to LAX, rent a car, go to Paramount, and in six months she'd have a house in the Hollywood Hills, a Porsche to drive to her reserved parking place off Melrose Boulevard, and that gold-plated computer. But no. All the world might be a stage, but the part she wrote for was the biggest and the brightest. The public might not know who she was, but she knew that her words changed the world.
So, what am I, exactly? the President asked, looking up.
You're different. I told you that.
* * *
13 - PRESENTATION
THERE WERE FEW ASPECTS of life more predictable, Ryan thought. He'd had a light dinner so that his stomach flutters would not be too painful, and largely ignored his family as he read and reread the speech. He'd made a few penciled changes, almost all of them minor linguistic things to which Callie had not objected, and which she herself modified further. The speech had been transmitted electronically to the secretaries' room off the Oval Office. Callie was a writer, not a typist, and the presidential secretaries could type at a speed that made Ryan gasp to watch. When the final draft was complete, it was printed on paper for the President to hold, while another version was electronically uploaded onto the TelePrompter. Callie Weston was there to be sure that both versions were exactly the same. It was not unknown for someone to change one from the other at the last minute, but Weston knew about that and guarded her work like a lioness over newborn cubs.
But the predictably awful part came from van Damm: Jack, this is the most important speech you will ever give. Just relax and do it.
Gee, thanks, Arnie. The chief of staff was a coach who'd never really played the game, and expert as he was, he just didn't know what it was like to go out on the mound and face the batters.
The cameras were being set up: a primary and a backup, the latter almost never used, both of them with TelePrompters. The blazing TV lights were in place, and for the period of the speech the President would be silhouetted in his office windows like a deer on a ridgeline, one more thing for the Secret Service to worry about, though they had confidence in the windows, which were spec'd to stop a.50-caliber machine-gun round. The TV crews were all known to the Detail, who checked them out anyway, along with the equipment. Everyone knew it was coming. The evening TV shows had made the necessary announcements, then moved on to other news items. It was all a routine exercise, except to the President, of course, for whom it was all new and vaguely horrifying.
HE'D EXPECTED THE phone to ring, but not at this hour. Only a few had the number of his cellular. It was too dangerous to have a real number for a real, hard-wired phone. The Mossad was still in the business of making people disappear. The newly found peace in the Middle East hadn't changed that, and truly they had reason to dislike him. They'd been particularly clever in killing a colleague through his cellular phone, first disabling it via electronic signal, and then arranging for him to get a substitute with ten grams of high explosive tucked into the plastic. The man's last phone message,