Executive orders - Tom Clancy [91]
Thank you for that, Prime Minister. Perhaps your Ambassador here could discuss things with Scott?
I'll be sure to speak to him on the matter. She shook Ryan's hand again and walked away. Jack waited for several seconds before looking at the Prince.
Your Highness, what do you call it when a high-ranking person lies right in your face? the President asked with a wry smile.
Diplomacy.
* * *
10 - DISTANT HOWLS
GOLOVKO READ OVER Ambassador Lermonsov's report without sympathy for its subject. Ryan looked harried and uncomfortable, somewhat overwhelmed, and physically tired. Well, that was to be expected. His speech at President Durling's funeral, the diplomatic community agreed-along with the American media, which was straining its capacity for politeness-was not presidential. Well, anyone who knew Ryan knew him to be sentimental, especially when it came to the welfare of children. Golovko could easily forgive that. Russians were much the same. He ought to have done otherwise-Golovko had read over the official, undelivered oration; it was a good one, full of assurances for all listeners-but Ryan had always been what the Americans called a maverick (he'd had to look up the word, discovering that it denoted a wild, untamed horse, which was not far off the mark). That made Ryan both easy and impossible for the Russian to analyze. Ryan was an American, and Americans were and had always been devilishly unpredictable from Golovko's perspective. He'd spent a professional lifetime, first as a field intelligence officer, then as a rapidly climbing staff officer in Moscow, trying to predict what America would do in all manner of situations, and only avoiding failure because he'd never failed to present three possible courses of action in his reports to his superiors.
But at least Ivan Emmetovich Ryan was predictably unpredictable, and Golovko flattered himself to think of Ryan as a friend-perhaps that was going a bit far, but the two men had played the game, most of the time from opposite sides of the field, and for the most part both had played it skillfully and well, Golovko the more experienced professional, Ryan the gifted amateur, blessed by a system more tolerant of mavericks. There was respect between them.
What are you thinking now, Jack? Sergey whispered to himself. Right now the new American President was sleeping, of course, fully eight hours behind Moscow, where the sun was only beginning to rise for a short winter day.
Ambassador Lermonsov had not been overly impressed, and Golovko would have to append his own notes to the report lest his government give that evaluation too much credence. Ryan had been far too skilled an enemy to the USSR to be taken lightly under any circumstances. The problem was that Lermonsov had expected Ryan to fit into one mold, and Ivan Emmetovich was not so easily classified. It wasn't so much complexity as a different variety of complexity. Russia didn't have a Ryan-it was not likely that he could have survived in the Soviet environment which still pervaded the Russian Republic, especially in its official bureaucracies. He was easily bored, and his temper, though kept under tight control at most times, was always there. Golovko had seen it bubbling more than once, but only heard of times when it had broken loose. Those stories had percolated out of CIA to ears which reported to Dzerzhinskiy Square. God help him as a head of government.
But that wasn't Golovko's problem.
He had enough of his own. He hadn't entirely relinquished control of the Foreign Intelligence Service-President Grushavoy had little reason to trust the agency which had once been the Sword and Shield of the Party, and wanted someone he could rely upon to keep an eye on that tethered predator; Golovko, of course-and at the same time, Sergey was the principal foreign-policy adviser to the beleaguered Russian President. Russia's internal problems were so manifest as to deny the President the ability to evaluate foreign problems, and that meant that for all practical purposes the former spy