Executive orders - Tom Clancy [360]
Lufthansa 601 was a European-made Airbus 310 twin-jet, roughly the same as the KLM Boeing in size and capacity. This one, too, had five travelers aboard, and left its gate at 2:55 for the nonstop flight to Frankfurt. The departure was routine in all details.
THAT'S SOME STORY, Arnie.
Oh, yeah. I didn't know the important parts until this week.
How sure are you of this? Holtzman asked.
The pieces all fit. He shrugged again. I can't say I liked hearing it. I think we would have won the election anyway, but, Jesus, the guy threw it. He tanked on a presidential election, but you know, van Damm said wistfully, that might have been the most courageous and generous political act of the century. I didn't think he had it in him.
Does Fowler know?
I haven't told him. Maybe I should.
Wait a minute. Remember how Liz Elliot planted a story on me about Ryan and how-
Yes, that all folds into this. Jack went down personally to get those soldiers out. The guy next to him in the chopper was killed, and he's looked after the family ever since. Liz paid for it. She came apart the night the bomb went off in Denver.
And Jack really did you know that's one story that never came out all the way. Fowler lost it and almost launched a missile at Iran-it was Ryan, wasn't it? He's the one who stopped it. Holtzman looked down at his drink and decided on another sip. How?
He got onto the Hot Line, Arnie replied. He cut the President off and talked directly with Narmonov, and persuaded him to back things off some. Fowler flipped out and told the Secret Service to go arrest him, but by the time they got to the Pentagon, things were calmed down. It worked, thank God.
It took Holtzman a minute or so to absorb that, but again, the story fit with the fragments he knew. Fowler had resigned two days later, a broken man, but an honorable one who knew that his moral right to govern his country had died with his order to launch a nuclear weapon at an innocent city. And Ryan had also been shaken by the event, badly enough to leave government service at once, until Roger Durling had brought him back in.
Ryan's broken every rule there is. Almost as if he likes it. But that wasn't fair, was it?
If he hadn't, we might not be here. The chief of staff poured himself another. Holtzman waved him off. You see what I mean about the story, Bob? If you tell it all, the country gets hurt.
But then why did Fowler recommend Ryan to Roger Durling? the reporter asked. He couldn't stand the guy and-
Whatever his faults, and he has them, Bob Fowler is an honest politician, that's why. No, he doesn't like Ryan personally, maybe it's chemistry, I don't know, but Ryan saved him and he told Roger-what was it? 'Good man in a storm.' That's it, Arnie remembered.
Shame he doesn't know politics.
He learns pretty fast. Might surprise you.
He's going to gut the government if he gets the chance. I can't-I mean, I do like the guy personally, but his policies
Every time I think I have him figured out, he swerves on me, and then I have to remind myself that he doesn't have an agenda, van Damm said. He just does the job. I give him papers to read, and he acts on them. He listens to what people tell him-asks good questions, and always listens to the answers-but he makes his own decisions, as though he knows what's right and what's wrong-but the hell of it is, mostly he does. Bob, he's rolled me! But that's not it, either. Sometimes I'm not sure what it is with him, you know?
A total outsider, Holtzman observed quietly. But-
The chief of staff nodded. Yeah, but. But he's being analyzed as though he's an insider with a hidden agenda, and they're playing the insider games as if they apply to him, but they don't.
So the key to the guy is there's nothing to figure out son of a bitch, Bob concluded. He hates the job, doesn't he?
Most of the time. You should have been there