Executive orders - Tom Clancy [381]
What's a brownie without some walnuts? Holbrook asked.
You bastard! Brown laughed so hard he nearly came out of the chair. Oh, Jesus, my head hurts!
APPROVAL FOR FRENCH cooperation on the meeting came from the Quai d'Orsay with remarkable speed.
France had diplomatic interests with every country bordering on the Gulf that connected to all manner of commercial relationships, from tanks to pharmaceuticals. French troops had deployed in the Persian Gulf War to find themselves fighting against French products, but that sort of thing wasn't all that unusual. It made for lots of markets. Approval of the mission was phoned to the American Ambassador at nine in the morning, who telexed Foggy Bottom in less than five minutes, where it was relayed to Secretary Adler while he was still in his bed. Action officers made other notifications, first of all to the 89th Military Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base.
Getting the Secretary of State out of town quietly was never the easiest of tasks. People tended to notice empty offices of that magnitude, and so an easy cover story was laid on. Adler was going to consult with European allies on several issues. The French were far better able to control their media, a task which was more than anything else a matter of timing.
Yeah? Clark said, lifting the phone at the Marriott closest to Langley.
It's on for today, the voice said.
A blink. A shake of the head. Super. Okay, I'm packed. Then he rolled back over for some more sleep. At least there didn't have to be a mission brief for this one. Keep an eye on Adler, take a walk, and come home. There wasn't any real worry about security. If the Iranians-UIR-ians was a phrase he hadn't come to terms with yet-wanted to do something, two men with pistols wouldn't be able to do much about it except hand their weapons over unused, and either locals or Iranian security would keep the hostile peons away. He was going to be there for show, because it was something you did, for some reason or other.
We goin'? Chavez asked from the other bed.
Yep.
Bueno.
DARYAEI CHECKED HIS desk clock, subtracting eight, nine, ten, and eleven hours, and wondering if anything had gone wrong. Second thoughts were the bane of people in his position. You made your decisions and took the action, and only then did you really worry, despite all the planning and thought that might have gone into what you did. There was no royal road to success. You had to take risks, a fact never appreciated by those who merely thought about being a chief of state.
No, nothing had gone wrong. He'd received the French Ambassador, a very pleasant unbeliever who spoke the local language so beautifully that Daryaei wondered what it might be like to have him read some of his country's poetry. And a courtly man, ever polite and deferential, he'd posed his secondhand request like a man arranging a marriage of family alliance, his hopeful smile also conveying the wishes of his government. The Americans would not have made the request if they'd had any pre-warning of Badrayn's people and their mission. No, in a case like that, the meeting would have been on neutral ground-Switzerland was always a possibility-for informal but direct contact. In this case, they would send their own Foreign Minister into what they had to consider to be enemy country-and a Jew at that! Friendly contact, friendly exchange of views, friendly offers of friendly relations, the Frenchman had said, pitching the meeting, doubtless hoping that if it went well, then France would be remembered as the country that fostered a new friendship-well, maybe a working relationship-and if the meeting went badly, then all that would be remembered was that France had tried to be an honest broker. Had Daryaei known about ballet, he would have used it as a visual image for the exchange.
Damn the French, anyway, he thought. Had their warrior chief Martel not stopped Abd-ar-Rahman in 732 at Poitiers,