The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [24]
It didn't catch Hendley short. He'd seen this question coming a quarter mile away, but it was not an especially easy question even so. "What about your father?"
"Who says he has to know? You have six subsidiary corporations that you probably use to hide your trading activities." Finding that out hadn't been all that easy, but Jack knew how to dig.
"Not 'hide,' " Hendley corrected. " 'Disguise,' maybe, but not 'hide.' "
"Excuse me. As I told you, I used to hang out with spooks."
"You learned a lot."
"I had some pretty good teachers."
Ed and Mary Pat Foley, John Clark, Dan Murray, and his own father. Damned Skippy, he's had some pretty good teachers, Hendley thought.
"What exactly do you think you'd do here?"
"Sir, I'm pretty smart, but not that smart. I'll have to learn a lot. I know that. So do you. What do I want to do? I want to serve my country," Jack said evenly. "I want to help get things done that need doing. I don't need money. I have trust funds set up from Dad and Granddad-Joe Muller, Mom's dad, I mean. Hell, if I wanted, I could get a law degree and end up like Ed Kealty, working my way toward the White House on my own, but my dad isn't a king and I'm not a prince. I want to make my own way and see how things play out."
"Your dad can't know about this, at least not for a while."
"So? He kept a lot of secrets from me." Jack thought that was pretty funny. "Turnabout is fairplay, isn't it?"
"I'll think about it. You have an e-mail address?"
"Yes, sir." Jack handed across a card.
"Give me a couple of days."
"Yes, sir. Thanks for letting me in to see you." He stood, shook hands, and made his way out.
The boy had grown up in a hurry, Hendley thought. Maybe having a Secret Service detail helped with that - or hurt, depending on what sort of person you happened to be. But this boy had come from good stock, as much from his mother as his father. And clearly he was smart. He had a lot of curiosity, usually a sign of intelligence.
And intelligence was the only thing there was never enough of, anywhere in the world.
"SO?" Ernesto asked.
"It was interesting," Pablo replied, lighting a Dominican cigar.
"What do they want of us?" his boss asked.
"Mohammed began by talking about our common interests, and our common enemies."
"If we tried to do business over there, we would lose our heads," Ernesto observed. With him, it was always business.
"I pointed that out. He replied that theirs is a small market, hardly worth our time. They merely export raw materials. And that is true. But he can help us, he said, with the new European market. Mohammed tells me that his organization has a good base of operations in Greece, and with the demise of international borders in Europe that would be the most logical point of entry for our consignments. They will not charge us for their technical asssistance. They say the wish to establish goodwill only."
"They must want our help very badly," Ernesto observed.
"They have their own considerable resources, as they have demonstrated, jefe. But they seem to need some expertise for smuggling weapons in addition to people. In any case, they ask little, and they offer much."
"And what they offer will make our business more convenient?" Ernesto wondered.
"It will certainly make the Yanquis devote their resources to different tasks."
"It could create havoc in their country, but the political effects could be serious "
"Jefe, the pressure they put upon us now can scarcely get worse, can it?"
"This new norteamericano president is a fool, but dangerous even so."
"And so, we can have our new friends distract him, jefe," Pablo pointed out. "We will not even use any