The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [20]
This boy is holding his cards pretty close, Hendley thought. "Well, it's not a bad subject for one. So, what can I do for you?"
"I'm curious."
"About what?" the former senator asked.
"What you do here," his visitor said.
"Mainly currency arbitrage." Hendley stretched to show his weary relaxation at the end of a working day.
"Uh-huh," the kid said, just a slight bit dubiously.
"There's really money to be made there, if you have good information, and if you have the nerves to act on it."
"You know, Dad likes you a lot. He says it's a shame you and he don't see each other anymore."
Hendley nodded. "Yeah, and that's my fault, not his."
"He also said you were too smart to fuck up the way you did."
Ordinarily, it would have been a positively seismic faux pas, but it was obvious from looking in the boy's eyes that he hadn't meant it as any sort of insult but rather as a question or was it? Hendley suddenly asked himself.
"It was a bad time for me," Gerry reminded his guest. "And anybody can make a mistake. Your dad even made a few himself."
"That's true. But Dad was lucky to have Arnie around to cover his ass." That left his host an opening, which he jumped at.
"How's Arnie doing?" Hendley asked, making the dodge to maneuver for time, still wondering why the kid was here, and actually starting to get a little uneasy about it, though he was not sure why he should feel that way.
"Fine. He's going to be the new chancellor for the University of Ohio. He ought to be good at it, and he needs a calm sort of job, Dad thinks. I think he's right. How that guy managed not to have a heart attack is beyond me and Mom both. Maybe some people really do thrive on the action." His eyes never left Hendley's through the entire discourse. "I learned a lot talking to Arnie."
"What about from your father?"
"Oh, a thing or two. Mainly, I learned things from the rest of the bunch."
"Who do you mean?"
"Mike Brennan for one. He was my Principal Agent," Jack Jr. explained. "Holy Cross graduate, career Secret Service. Hell of a pistol shot. He's the guy who taught me to shoot."
"Oh?"
"The Service has a range on the Old Post Office Building, couple of blocks from the White House. I still get to go there occasionally. Mike's an instructor in the Secret Service Academy now, up at Beltsville. Really good guy, smart and laid-back. Anyway, you know, he was my babysitter, like, and I used to ping on him about stuff, ask him what Secret Service people do, how they train, how they think, the things they look for while they're protecting Mom and Dad. I learned a lot from him. And all the other people."
"Like?"
"FBI guys, Dan Murray, Pat O'Day-Pat's the Major Case Inspector for Murray. He's getting ready to retire. Can you believe it, he's going to raise beef cattle up in Maine. Funny damned place to punch cattle. He's a shooter, too, like Wild Bill Hickock with an attitude, but it's too easy to forget he's a Princeton grad. Pretty smart guy, Pat is. He taught me a lot about how the Bureau runs investigations. And his wife, Andrea, she's a mind reader. Ought to be, she ran Dad's detail during a very scary time, master's degree in psychology from University of Virginia. I learned a shitload from her. And the Agency people, of course, Ed and Mary Pat Foley-God Almighty, what a pair they are. But you know who the most interesting one of all was?"
He did. "John Clark?"
"Oh yeah. The trick was getting him to talk. I swear, compared to him, the Foleys are Desi and Lucy. But once he trusts you, he will open up some. I cornered him when he got his Medal of Honor-it was on TV briefly, retired Navy chief petty officer gets his decoration from Vietnam. About sixty seconds of videotape on a slow news day. You know, not one reporter asked what he did after he left the Navy. Not one. Jesus, they are thick. Bob Holtzman knew part of it, I think. He was there, standing in the corner, across the room from me. He's pretty smart for a newsie. Dad likes him, just doesn't trust him as far as he can sling an anchor. Anyway,