Том Клэнси - The Teeth of the Tiger

“You need merely tell me the time and the place,” Mohammed replied. He handed over his business card. It had his e-mail address, the most useful tool for covert communications ever invented. And with the miracle of modern air travel, he could be anywhere on the globe in forty-eight hours.

HE CAMEin at a quarter to five. Anyone who passed him on the street would not have given him a second look, though he might have caught the eye of the odd unattached female. At six-one, a hundred eighty or so pounds – he worked out regularly – black hair and blue eyes, he wasn’t exactly movie star material, but neither was he the sort of man that a pretty young female professional would have summarily kicked out of bed.

He also dressed well, Gerry Hendley saw. Blue suit with a red pinstripe – it looked English-made – vest, red-and-yellow-striped tie, nice gold tie bar. Fashionable shirt. Decent haircut. The confident look that came from having both money and a good education to go with a youth that would not be misspent. His car was parked in the visitors’ lot in front of the building. A yellow Hummer 2 SUV, the sort of vehicle favored by people who herded cattle in Wyoming, or money in New York. And, probably, that was why . . .

“So, what brings you here?” Gerry asked, waving his guest to a comfortable seat on the other side of his mahogany desk.

“I haven’t decided what I want to do yet, just sort of bumping around, looking for a niche I might fit into.”

Hendley smiled. “Yeah, I’m not so old that I can’t remember how confusing it is when you get out of school. Which one did you go to?”

“Georgetown. Family tradition.” The boy smiled gently. That was one good thing about him that Hendley saw and appreciated – he wasn’t trying to impress anyone with his name and family background. He might even be a little uneasy with it, wanting to make his own way and his own name, as a lot of young men did. The smart ones, anyway. It was a pity that there was no place for him on The Campus.

“Your dad really likes Jesuit schools.”

“Even Mom converted. Sally didn’t go to Bennington. She got through her premed up at Fordham in New York. Hopkins Med now, of course. Wants to be a doc, like Mom. What the hell, it’s an honorable profession.”

“Unlike law?” Gerry asked.

“You know how Dad is about that,” the boy pointed out with a grin. “What was your undergraduate degree in?” he asked Hendley, knowing the answer already, of course.

“Economics and mathematics. I took a double major.” It had been very useful indeed for modeling trading patterns in commodities markets. “So, how’s your family doing?”

“Oh, fine. Dad’s back writing again – his memoirs. Mostly he bitches that he isn’t old enough to do that sort of book, but he’s working pretty hard to get it done right. He’s not real keen on the new President.”

“Yeah, Kealty has a real talent for bouncing back. When they finally bury the guy, they’d better park a truck on top of his headstone.” That joke had even made the Washington Post.

“I’ve heard that one. Dad says it can only take one idiot to unmake the work of ten geniuses.” That adage had not made the Washington Post. But it was the reason the young man’s father had set up The Campus, though the young man himself didn’t know it.

“That’s overstating things. This new guy only happened by accident.”

“Yeah, well, when it comes time to execute that klukker retard down in Mississippi, how much you want to bet he commutes the sentence?”

“Opposition to capital punishment is a matter of principle to him,” Hendley pointed out. “Or so he says. Some people do feel that way, and it is an honorable opinion.”

“Principle? To him that’s the nice old lady who runs a grammar school.”

“If you want to have a political discussion, there’s a nice bar and grill a mile down Route 29,” Gerry suggested.

“No, that’s not it. Sorry for the digression, sir.”

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, Big John – Clark, I mean – he’s one serious honcho. He’s been there, and done that, and he has the T-shirt. How come he isn’t here?”