Executive orders - Tom Clancy [145]
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16 - DELIVERIES
SO? PRESIDENT RYAN asked, after dismissing his latest set of guests.
The letter, if there ever was one, is missing, sir, Inspector O'Day replied. The most important bit of information developed to the moment is that Secretary Hanson wasn't all that scrupulous in his document-security procedures. That comes from the State's security chief. He says he counseled the Secretary on several occasions. The people I took over with me are interviewing various people to determine who went in and out of the office. It will go on from there.
Who's running it? Ryan remembered that Hanson, good diplomatic technician though he might have been, had never listened all that well to anybody.
Mr. Murray had designated OPR to continue the investigation independently of his office. That means I'm out, too, because I have reported directly to you in the past. This will be my last direct involvement with the case.
Strictly by the book?
Mr. President, it has to be that way, the inspector said with a nod. They'll have additional help from the Legal Counsel Division. Those are agents with law degrees who act as in-house legal beagles. They're good troops. O'Day thought for a moment. Who's been in and out of the Vice President's office?
Here, you mean?
Yes, sir.
Andrea Price answered that one: Nobody lately. It's been unused since he left. His secretary went with him and-
You might want to have someone check the typewriter. If it uses a carbon-tape ribbon-
Right! She almost moved right out of the Oval Office. Wait. Have your people-
I'll make the call, O'Day assured her. Sorry, Mr. President. I should have thought of that sooner. Please seal the office for us?
Done, Price assured him.
THE NOISE WAS unbearable. The monkeys were social animals, who customarily lived in troops of up to eighty individuals that populated mainly the margins of forests on the edge of the broad savannas, the easier to come down from their trees and raid the surrounding open land for food. They had learned in the past hundred years to raid farms, which was easier and safer than what Nature had programmed into their behavior, because the humans who operated the farms typically controlled the predators which ate the monkeys. An African green was a tasty morsel for a leopard or hyena, but so was a calf, and farmers had to protect those. What resulted was a curious bit of ecological chaos. To protect livestock, the farmers, legally or not, eliminated the predators. That allowed the monkey population to expand rapidly, and the hungry African greens would then attack the cereal and other crops which fed both the farmers and their livestock. As a complication, the monkeys also ate insects which preyed on the crops as well, leading local ecologists to suggest that eliminating the monkeys was bad for the ecology. For the farmers it was much simpler. If it ate their livestock, it was killed. If it ate their crops, it was killed also. Bugs might not be large enough to see, but monkeys were, and so few farmers objected when the trappers came.
Of the family cercopithecus, the African green has yellow whiskers and a gold-green back. It can live to thirty years of age-more likely in comfortable captivity than in the predator-infested wild-and has a lively social life. The troops are made of female families, with male monkeys joining the troops individually for periods of a few weeks or months before moving on. An abundance of females in mating season allows a number of males cooperatively to enjoy the situation, but that was not the case in the aircraft. Rather, the cages were stacked like a truck-load of chicken coops on the way to market. Some females were in season but totally inaccessible, frustrating the would-be suitors. Males stacked next to the cages of other males hissed, clawed, and spat at their unwilling neighbors, all the more unhappy that their captors had not noted the simple