Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [54]
"It's time, honey."
An oddly feminine grumble. "Yeah. I know."
"Want me to get Little Jack?"
"Let him sleep," Cathy advised. The little guy hadn't felt like sleeping the previous evening. So now, of course, he wouldn't feel like waking up.
"'Kay." Jack headed to the kitchen. The coffee machine only needed its button punched, and Ryan was able to handle that task. Just before flying over, he'd seen a new American company IPO. It sold premium coffee, and since Jack had always been something of a coffee snob, he'd invested $100,000 and gotten himself some of their product—as fine a country as England might be, it was not a place you visited for the coffee. At least he could get Maxwell House from the Air Force, and perhaps he'd get this new Starbucks outfit to ship him some of their brew. One more mental note to make. Next he wondered what Cathy might make for breakfast. Surgeon or not, she regarded the kitchen as her domain. Her husband was allowed to make sandwiches and fix drinks, but that was about it. That suited Jack, for whom a stove was terra incognita. The stove here was gas, like his mom had used, but with a different trademark. He stumbled to the front door, hoping to find a newspaper.
It was there. Ryan had signed up for the Times, to go with the International Herald Tribune he picked up at the train station in London. Finally, he switched on the TV. Remarkably, there was a start-up version of cable TV in this subdivision, and, mirabile dictu, it had the new American CNN news service—just in time for baseball scores. So England was civilized after all. The Orioles had knocked off Cleveland the previous night, 5—4, in eleven innings. The ballplayers were doubtless in bed right now, sleeping off the postgame beers they'd quaffed at their hotel bar. What a pleasant thought that was. They had a good eight hours of sack time ahead of them. At the turn of the hour, the CNN night crew in Atlanta summarized the previous day's events. Nothing overly remarkable. The economy was still a little fluky. The Dow Jones had snapped back nicely, but the unemployment rate always lagged behind, and so did working-class voters. Well, that was democracy for you. Ryan had to remind himself that his view of the economy was probably different from that of the guys who made the steel and assembled the Chevys. His dad had been a union member, albeit a police lieutenant and part of management rather than labor, and his dad had voted Democrat most of the time. Ryan hadn't registered in either party, opting instead to be an independent. It limited the junk mail you got, and who cared about primaries, anyway?
"Morning, Jack," Cathy said, entering the kitchen in her pink housecoat.
It was shabby, which was surprising, since his wife was always a fastidious dresser. He hadn't asked, but supposed it had sentimental significance.
"Hey, babe." Jack rose to give his wife the first kiss of the day, accompanied by a rather limp hug. "Paper?"
"No. I'll save it for the train." She pulled open the refrigerator door and pulled some things out. Jack didn't look.
"Having coffee this morning?"
"Sure. I don't have any procedures scheduled." If she had a surgery scheduled, Cathy kept off the coffee, lest the caffeine give her hands a minor tremor. You couldn't have that when you were screwing an eyeball back together. No, today was get-acquainted day with Professor Byrd. Bernie Katz knew him and called him a friend, which boded well, and besides, Cathy was about as good as eye surgeons got, and