Executive orders - Tom Clancy [209]
That's okay, Mr. President. I've heard the word before, even from other presidents.
Who do you talk to? Jack asked. Once upon a time, I'd talk to my father, my priest, to James Greer when I worked for him, or Roger, until a few weeks ago. Now they all ask me. You know, they told me at Quantico, at the Basic Officers' School, that command could be lonely. Boy, they weren't kidding. They really weren't kidding.
You have one hell of a good wife, sir, Price pointed out, envying both of them for that.
There's always supposed to be somebody smarter than you. The person you go to when you're just not sure. Now they come to me. I'm not smart enough for that. Ryan paused, just then hearing what Price had told him. You're right, but she's busy enough, and I'm not supposed to burden her with my problems.
Price decided to laugh. You are a chauvinist, Boss.
That snapped his head around. I beg your pardon, Ms. Price! Ryan said in a voice that sounded cross until a presidential laugh followed it. Please don't tell the media I said that.
Sir, I don't tell reporters where the bathroom is.
The President yawned. What's tomorrow look like?
Well, you're in the office all day. I imagine this Iraq business will wreck your morning. I'll be out early, back in the afternoon. I'm going to do a walk-around tomorrow, to check security arrangements for all the kids. We have a meeting to see if there's a way to get SURGEON to work and back without the helicopter-
That is funny, isn't it? Ryan observed.
A FLOTUS with a real job is something the system never really allowed for.
Real job, hell! She makes more money than I do, has for ten years, except for when I was back in the market. The papers haven't picked up on that, either. She's a great doc.
His words were meandering, Price saw. He was too tired to think straight. Well, that happened to Presidents, too. Which was why she was around.
Her patients love her, that's what Roy says. Anyway, I'm going to look over arrangements for all your children-routine, sir, I'm responsible for all of the arrangements for your family. Agent Raman will stand post with you for most of the day. We're moving him up. He's coming along very nicely, Special Agent Price reported.
The one who got the fire coat to disguise me back on the first night? Jack asked.
You knew? Price asked in return. The President turned to enter the White House proper. The grin was one of exhaustion, but for all that the blue eyes twinkled at his principal agent.
I'm not that dumb, Andrea.
No, she decided, it wasn't better to have a son of a bitch as POTUS.
* * *
22 - RELATIONSHIPS
PATRICK O'DAY WAS A widower whose life had changed in a particularly cruel and abrupt way after a late-life marriage. His wife, Deborah, had been a fellow agent in the Laboratory Division, an expert on forensic investigation, which had occasioned a great deal of travel out of headquarters, until one afternoon, flying into Colorado Springs, her aircraft had crashed into the ground for reasons still undetermined. It had been her first field assignment after maternity leave, and she'd left behind a daughter, Megan, aged fourteen weeks.
Megan was two and a half now, and Inspector O'Day was still wrestling with how he should introduce Megan to her mother. He had videotapes and photographs, but were he to point to dyed paper or a phosphor screen and tell his daughter, That's Mommy, might it make her think that all life was artificial? What effect would it have on her development? It was one more question in the life of a man supposed to find answers. The single fatherhood enforced on him by fate had made him all the more devoted as a father, and this on top of a professional career in which he'd worked no less than six kidnappings all the way to conclusion. Six four, two hundred wiry pounds, he had sacrificed his Zapata mustache to the requirements of Headquarters Division, but tough guy among tough guys, his attention