Executive orders - Tom Clancy [447]
Any others, Sarah? he asked.
No, none at all.
How confident are you on this one? one of the counterintelligence people asked, looking at the photos himself now and, like Avi, seeing nothing.
One hundred percent, Benny. I said 'definite,' didn't I? Sarah was often testy, especially with unbelieving men at four in the morning.
How far do we go on this? another staff member asked.
Ryan is a friend of our country, and President of the United States. We go as far as we can. I want inquiries to go out. All contacts, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, everywhere.
SWINE. BONDARENKO RAN a hand through his hair. His tie was long since gone. His watch told him it was Saturday, but he didn't know what that day was anymore.
Yes, Golovko agreed.
A black operation-a 'wet' one, you used to call it? the general asked.
Wet and incompetent, the RVS chairman said crossly. But Ivan Emmetovich was lucky, Comrade General. This time.
Perhaps, Gennady Iosefovich allowed.
You disagree?
The terrorists underestimated their opponents. You will recall that I recently spent time with the American army. Their training is like nothing else in the world, and the training of their presidential guard must be equally as expert. Why is it that people so often underestimate the Americans? he wondered.
That was a good question, Sergey Nikolay'ch recognized, nodding for the chief of operations to go on.
America often suffers from a lack of political direction. That is not the same as incompetence. You know what they are like? A vicious dog held on a short leash-and because he cannot break the leash, people delude themselves that they need not fear him, but within the arc of that leash he is invincible, and a leash, Comrade Chairman, is a temporary thing. You know this Ryan fellow.
I know him well, Golovko agreed.
And? The stories in their press, are they true?
All of them.
I tell you what I think, Sergey Nikolay'ch. If you regard him as a formidable adversary, and he has that vicious dog on the leash, I would not go far out of my way to offend him. An attack on a child? His child? The general shook his head.
That was it, Golovko realized. They were both tired, but here was a moment of clarity. He'd spent too much time reading over the political reports from Washington, from his own embassy, and directly from the American media. They all said that Ivan Emmetovich was that the key? From the beginning he'd called Ryan that, thinking to honor the man with the Russian version of his name and the Russian patronymic. And an honor it was in Golovko's context
You are thinking what I am thinking, da? the general asked, seeing the man's face and gesturing for him to speak.
Someone has made a calculation
And it is not an accurate one. I think we need to find out who has done so. I think a systematic attack on American interests, an attempt to weaken America, Comrade Chairman, is really an attack against our interests. Why is China doing what she is doing, eh? Why did they force America to change her naval dispositions? And now this? American forces are being stretched, and at the same time a strike at the very heart of the American leader. This is no coincidence. Now we can stand aside and do nothing more than observe, or-
There is nothing we can do, and with the revelations in the American press-
Comrade Chairman, Bondarenko interrupted. For seventy years, our country has confused political theory with objective fact, and that was almost our undoing as a nation. There are objective conditions here, he went on, using a phrase beloved of the Soviet military-a reaction, perhaps, to their three generations of political oversight. I see the patterns of a clever operation, a coordinated operation, but one which has a fatal flaw, and that flaw is a mis-estimation of the American President. Do you disagree?
Golovko gave that a few seconds of thought, noting also that Bondarenko might just be seeing something real-but did the Americans? It was so much harder to see something from the inside than the outside. A coordinated operation?