Executive orders - Tom Clancy [289]
Ryan has a lively history in CIA. He's killed people.
James fucking Bond, Kealty's chief of staff said on cue. The Post reporter then had to defend his publication's honor:
Holtzman doesn't say that. If you mean the time the terrorists came to-
No, not that. Holtzman's going to write about the Moscow thing. Ryan didn't even set that up. It was Judge Arthur Moore, when he was DCI. Ryan was the front man. It's bad enough anyway. It interfered with the inner workings of the old Soviet Union, and it never occurred to anyone that maybe that wasn't such a great idea-I mean, what the hell, right, screwing around with the government of a country with ten thousand warheads pointed at us-you know, people, that's called an act of war, like? And why? To rescue their head thug from a purge for stepping over the line so that we could crack a spy ring inside CIA. I bet he didn't tell Holtzman that, did he?
I haven't seen the story, the Post reporter admitted. I've only heard a few things. It was almost worthy of a smile. Kealty's sources inside the paper were better than those of the senior political reporter. Okay, you say Ryan has killed people like James Bond. Support that, he said in a flat voice.
Four years ago, remember the bombs in Colombia, took out some cartel members? Kealty waited for the nod. That was a CIA operation. Ryan went to Colombia-and that was another act of war, people. That's two that I know about.
It was amusing to Kealty that Ryan was so skillfully conniving at his own destruction. The PLAN BLUE move within CIA was already rippling through the Directorate of Intelligence, many of whose senior people faced either early retirement or the diminution of their bureaucratic empires, and many of those enjoyed walking the corridors of power. It was easy for them to think that they were vital to the security of their country, and thinking that, they had to do something, didn't they? More than that, Ryan had stepped on a lot of bureaucratic toes at Langley, and now it was payback time, all the better that he was a higher target than ever before, that the sources were, after all, merely talking to the former Vice President of the United States-maybe even the real President, they could say-and not to the media, which was, after all, against the law, as opposed to a legitimate discussion of vital national policy.
How sure of that are you? the Globe asked.
I have dates. Remember when Admiral James Greer died? He was Ryan's mentor. He probably set up the operation from his deathbed. Ryan didn't attend the funeral. He was in Colombia then. That's a fact, and you can check it, Kealty insisted. Probably that's why James Cutter committed suicide-
I thought that was an accident, the Times said. He was out jogging, and-
And he just happened to step in front of a transit bus? Look, I'm not saying that Cutter was murdered. I am saying that he was implicated in the illegal operation that Ryan was running, and he didn't want to face the music. That gave Jack Ryan the chance to cover his tracks. You know, Kealty concluded, I've underestimated this Ryan fellow. He's as slick an operator as this town has seen since Alien Dulles, maybe Bill Donovan-but the time for that is past. We don't need a CIA with three times as many spies. We don't need to pile more dollars into defense. We don't need to redraft the tax code to protect the millionaires Ryan hangs out with. For sure we don't need a President who thinks the 1950s were just great. He's doing things to our country which we cannot allow to happen. I don't know-another gesture of frustration-maybe I have to go it all alone on this. I'm-I know I risk ruining my reputation for all history, standing up like this but, damn it, once I swore an oath to the Constitution of our country first time, he went on in a quiet, reflective voice, when I won my first House seat then into the Senate and then when Roger asked me to step up and be his Vice President. You know, you don't forget that sort of thing an', an', an' maybe I'm not the right