The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [283]
"There," Mrs. Abbot said, as she finished touching up his hair. Ryan stood, looked in the mirror, and grimaced as usual.
"Thank you, Mary," he managed to say.
"You're welcome, Mr. President."
And Ryan walked out, crossing the hall from the Roosevelt Room to the Oval Office, where the TV equipment was set up. The reporters stood when he entered, as the kids at St. Matthew's had stood when the priest came into class. But in third grade, the kids asked easier questions. Jack sat down in a rocking swivel chair. Kennedy had done something similar to that, and Arnie thought it a good idea for Jack as well. The gentle rocking that a man did unconsciously in the chair gave him a homey look, the spin experts all thought—Jack didn't know that, and knowing it would have caused him to toss the chair out the window, but Arnie did and he'd eased the President into it merely by saying it looked good, and getting Cathy Ryan to agree. In any case, SWORDSMAN sat down, and relaxed in the comfortable chair, which was the other reason Arnie had foisted it on him, and the real reason why Ryan had agreed. It was comfortable.
"We ready?" Jack asked. When the President asked that, it usually meant Let's get this fucking show on the road! But Ryan thought it was just a question.
Krystin Matthews was there to represent NBC. There were also reporters from ABC and Fox, plus a print reporter from the Chicago Tribune. Ryan had come to prefer these more intimate press conferences, and the media went along with it because the reporters were assigned by lot, which made it fair, and everyone had access to the questions and answers. The other good thing from Ryan's perspective was that a reporter was less likely to be confrontational in the Oval Office than in the raucous locker-room atmosphere of the pressroom, where the reporters tended to bunch together in a mob and adopt a mob mentality.
"Mr. President," Krystin Matthews began. "You've recalled both the trade delegation and our ambassador from Beijing. Why was that necessary?"
Ryan rocked a little in the chair. "Krystin, we all saw the events in Beijing that so grabbed the conscience of the world, the murder of the cardinal and the minister, followed by the roughing-up—to use a charitable term for it—of the minister's widow and some members of the congregation."
He went on to repeat the points he'd made in his previous press conference, making particular note of the Chinese government's indifference to what had happened.
"One can only conclude that the Chinese government doesn't care. Well, we care. The American people care. And this administration cares. You cannot take the life of a human being as casually as though you are swatting an insect. The response we received was unsatisfactory, and so, I recalled our ambassador for consultations."
"But the trade negotiations, Mr. President," the Chicago Tribune broke in.
"It is difficult for a country like the United States of America to do business with a nation which does not recognize human rights. You've seen for yourself what our citizens think of all this. I believe you will find that they find those murders as repellent as I do, and, I would imagine, as you do yourself."
"And so you will not recommend to Congress that we normalize trading relations with China?"
Ryan shook his head. "No, I will not so recommend, and even if I did, Congress would rightly reject such a recommendation."
"At what time might you change your position on this issue?"
"At such time as China enters the world of civilized nations and recognizes the rights of its common people, as all other great nations do."
"So you are saying that China today is not a civilized country?"
Ryan felt as though he'd been slapped across the face with a cold, wet fish, but he smiled and went on. "Killing diplomats is not a civilized act, is it?"
"What will the Chinese