Executive orders - Tom Clancy [361]
Holtzman snorted. So, what's the angle if there isn't an angle?
Bob, I just try to control the media, remember? Damned if I know how you report this, except to state the facts-you know, like you're supposed to do.
That was a lot for the journalist to take. He'd been in Washington for all of his professional life. And every politician is supposed to be like Ryan. But they're not.
This one is, Arnie shot back.
How am I supposed to tell my readers that? Who'll believe it?
Ain't that the problem? he breathed. I've been in politics all my life, and I thought I knew it all. Hell, I do know it all. I'm one of the best operators ever was, everybody knows that, and all of a sudden this yahoo comes into the Oval Office and says the emperor's naked, and he's right, and nobody knows what to do about it except to say that he isn't. The system isn't ready for this. The system is only ready for itself.
And the system will destroy anybody who says different. Holtzman snorted with the thought: If Hans Christian Andersen had written The Emperor's Clothes about Washington, then the kid who'd spoken the truth out loud would have been killed on the spot by the assembled crowd of insiders.
It'll try, Arnie agreed.
And what are we supposed to do about it?
You're the one who said that you don't want to officiate at the hanging of an innocent man, remember?
Where's that leave us?
Maybe to talk about the unruly mob, Arnie suggested, or the emperor's corrupt court.
NEXT TO GO was Austrian Airlines 774. It was down to a routine now, and the arrangements were well within the technical parameters. The cans of shaving cream had been filled a bare forty minutes before departure. The proximity of the Monkey House to the airport helped, as did the time of day, and having people race the last few hundred meters to the gate was not unusual anywhere in the world, particularly for flights like this one. The soup was sprayed into the bottom of the can, by a plastic valve that was invisible to X-ray examination. The nitrogen went in the top to a separate insulated container located in the center of the cans. The process was clean and safe-for extra but really unnecessary safety, the cans were sprayed and wiped; that was just to make the travelers happy. The cans were quite cold, of course, though not dangerously so. As the liquid nitrogen boiled off, it would vent through a pressure valve into the ambient atmosphere, where it merely joined the air. Though nitrogen is an important element in explosives, by itself it is totally inert, clear, and odorless. Nor would it react chemically with the contents of the cans, and so the pressure-relief valve retained a precise quantity of the warming gas to act as a safe propellant for the soup when the time came.
The filling was done by the medical corpsmen in their protective suits-they refused to work without them, and ordering them otherwise would only have made them nervous and sloppy, and so the director indulged their fears.
Two groups of five remained to be done. The cans could really all have been prepared at the same time, Moudi knew, but no unnecessary chances were being taken, a thought that made him stop cold. No unnecessary chances? Sure.
DARYAEI DIDN'T SLEEP that night, which was unusual for him. Though with increasing years he found that he needed less of it, getting off to sleep had never been difficult for him. On a really quiet night, if the winds were right, he could hear the airliners bring their engines to the roar of takeoff power-a distant sound, rather like a waterfall, he sometimes thought, or perhaps an earthquake. Some fundamental sound of nature, distant and foreboding. And now he found himself listening for it, and with his imagination, wondering if he heard it or not.
Had