The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [160]
It was doing it again soon after the close of regular business hours, and the eleven-hour differential pretty much guaranteed that it arrived on the desks of American officials soon after their breakfasts. In the case of Mary Patricia Foley, mornings were far less hectic than theyd once been. Her youngest was not yet in college, but preferred to fix her own oatmeal from the Quaker envelopes, and now drove herself to school, which allowed her mother an extra twenty-five minutes or so of additional sleep every morning. Twenty years of being a field spook and mother should have been enough to drive her to distracted insanity, but it was, actually, a life shed enjoyed, especially her years in Moscow, doing her business right there in the belly of the beast, and giving the bastard quite an ulcer at the time, she remembered with a smile.
Her husband could say much the same. The first husband-wife team to rise so high at Langley, they drove together to work every morning—in their own car rather than the "company" one to which they were entitled, but with lead and chase cars full of people with guns, because any terrorist with half a brain would regard them as targets more valuable than rubies. This way they could talk on the way in—and the car was swept for bugs on a weekly basis.
They took their usual reserved and oversized place in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building, then rode up in the executive elevator, which somehow was always waiting for them, to their seventh-floor offices.
Mrs. Foleys desk was always arrayed just so. The overnight crew had all her important papers arranged just so, also. But today, as she had for the last week, instead of looking over the striped-border folders full of Top SECRET CODEWORDED material, she first of all flipped on her desktop computer and checked her special e-mail. This morning was no disappointment. She copied the file electronically to her hard drive, printed up a hard copy, and when that was off her printer, deleted the e-mail from her system, effectively erasing it from electronic existence. Then she reread the paper copy and lifted the phone for her husbands office.
"Yeah, baby?"
"Some egg-drop soup," she told the Director of Central Intelligence. It was a Chinese dish he found especially vile, and she enjoyed teasing her husband.
"Okay, honey. Come on in." It had to be pretty good if she was trying to turn his stomach over this early in the friggin morning, the DCI knew.
"More SORGE?" the President asked, seventy-five minutes later.
"Yes, sir," Ben Goodley replied, handing the sheet over. It wasnt long, but it was interesting.
Ryan skimmed through it. "Analysis?"
"Mrs. Foley wants to go over it with you this afternoon. You have a slot at two-fifteen."
"Okay. Who else?"
"The Vice President, since hes around." Goodley knew that Ryan liked to have Robby Jackson in for strategically interesting material. "Hes fairly free this afternoon as well."
"Good. Set it up," POTUS ordered.
Six blocks away, Dan Murray was just arriving at his capacious office (considerably larger than the Presidents, as a matter of fact) with his own security detail, because he, as the countrys principal counterintelligence and counter-terrorist officer, had all manner of information that others were interested in. This morning only brought in some more.
"Morning, Director," one of the staff said—she was a sworn agent carrying a side arm, not just a secretary.
"Hey, Toni," Murray responded. This agent had very nice wheels, but the FBI Director realized that hed just proven to himself that his wife, Liz, was right: He was turning into a dirty old man.