Том Клэнси - The Teeth of the Tiger

“Jack, my boy, when you come to the point, you do come to the point,” Hendley said, with a touch of admiration in his voice.

“When you knew his name, I knew I had you, sir.” A briefly triumphant look in the eyes. “I’ve been checking you out for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh?” And with that, Hendley felt his stomach contract.

“It wasn’t hard. It’s all on the public record, just a question of mix and match. Like the connect-the-dots things they give to little kids in their activity books. You know, it amazes me that this place never made the news–”

“Young man, if that’s a threat–”

“What?” Jack Jr. was surprised by the interruption. “You mean, blackmail you? No, Senator, what I meant to say is that there’s so much raw information lying around out there, that you have to wonder how reporters miss it. I mean, even a blind squirrel will find an acorn once in a while, y’know?” He paused for a moment before his eyes lit up. “Oh, I get it. You handed them what they expected to find, and they ran with it.”

“It’s not that hard, but it’s dangerous to underestimate them,” Hendley warned.

“Just don’t talk to them. Dad told me a long time ago: ‘A closed mouth gathers no foot.’ He always let Arnie do the leaks. Nobody else said anything to the press without Arnie’s guidance. I swear, I think the media was scared of that guy. He’s the one who lifted a Times reporter’s White House pass and made it stick.”

“I remember that,” Hendley responded. There had been quite a stink about it, but soon enough even the New York Times realized that having no reporter in the White House Press Room hurt in a very tender spot. It had been an object lesson in manners which had lasted for almost six months. Arnie van Damm had a longer and nastier memory than the media, which was quite something in and of itself. Arnold van Damm was a serious player of five-card-draw poker.

“What’s your point, Jack? Why are you here?”

“Senator, I want to play in the bigs. This here, I think, is the bigs.”

“Explain,” Hendley commanded. Just how much had the boy put together?

John Patrick Ryan, Jr., opened his briefcase. “For starters, this is the only building taller than a private residence on the sight line from NSA Fort Meade to CIA Langley. You can download satellite photos off the Internet. I printed them all up. Here.” He handed a small binder across. “I checked with the zoning offices, and I found out that three other office buildings were planned for this area, and all were denied construction permits. The records didn’t say why, but nobody made a fuss about it. The medical center down the road, however, got really nice finance terms from Citibank on their revised plans. Most of your personnel are former spooks. Your security people are all former military police, rank E-7 or higher. The electronic security system here is better than they have at Fort Meade. How the hell did you manage that, by the way?”

“Private citizens have a lot more freedom negotiating with contractors. Go on,” the former senator said.

“You never did anything illegal. That conflict-of-interest charge that killed your Senate career was a crock of shit. Any decent lawyer could have had it tossed right out of court on a summary judgment, but you rolled over and played dead on it. I remember how Dad always liked you for your brains, and he always said you were a straight shooter. He didn’t say that about all that many people on The Hill. The senior people at CIA liked working with you, and you helped with funding for a project some other folks on The Hill had a conniption fit over. I don’t know why it is, but a lot of people there hate the intelligence services. Used to drive Dad nuts, how every time he had to sit down with senators and congressmen over that stuff, had to bribe them with pet projects for their districts and stuff. Jeez, Dad hated that. Whenever he did it, he’d grumble for a week before and after. But you helped him a lot. You used to be pretty good working inside the Capitol Building. But when you had your political problem, you just caved in. I thought it was pretty hard to believe. But what I really had trouble swallowing was how Dad never talked about it at all. He never said a single word. When I asked, he changed the subject. Even Arnie never talked about it – and Arnie answered every question I ever hit him with. So, the dogs didn’t bark, y’know?” Jack leaned back, keeping his eyes on his host at all times. “Anyway, I never said anything either, but I sniffed around during my senior year at Georgetown, and I kept talking to people, and those folks taught me how to look into things quietly. Again, it’s not all that hard.”

“And so, what conclusion did you reach?”

“You would have been a good president, Senator, but losing your wife and kids was a big hit. We were all busted up about that. Mom really liked your wife. Please excuse me for bringing it up, sir. That’s why you left politics, but I think you’re too much of a patriot to forget about your country, and I think Hendley Associates is your way of serving your country – but off the books, like. I remember Dad and Mr. Clark talking over drinks upstairs one night – my senior year of high school, it was. I didn’t catch much of it. They didn’t want me there, and so I went back to watching the History Channel. Coincidence, they had a show about SOE that night, the British Special Operations Executive from World War Two. They were mostly bankers. ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan recruited lawyers to start up the OSS, but the Brits used bankers to screw over people. I wondered why, and Dad said bankers are smarter. They know how to make money in the real world, whereas lawyers aren’t quite as smart – that’s what Dad said, anyway. I guess he figured that’s what he did. With his trading background, I mean. But you’re a different sort of pirate, Senator. I think you’re a spook, and I think Hendley Associates is a privately funded spook shop that works off the books – completely outside the federal budget process. So, you don’t have to worry about senators and congress-critters snooping around and leaking stuff because they think you do bad things. Hell, I did a Google search and there’s only six mentions of your company on the Internet. You know, there’s more pieces than that about my mom’s hairstyle. Women’s Wear Daily used to like clobbering her. Really pissed Dad off.”

“I remember.” Jack Ryan, Sr., had once cut loose in front of reporters on that issue, and paid the price of being laughed at by the chattering classes. “He talked to me about how Henry VIII would have given the reporters some special haircuts for that.”

“Yeah, with an ax at the Tower of London. Sally used to laugh about it some. She needled Mom about her hair, too. I guess that’s one nice thing about being a man, eh?”

“That and shoes. My wife didn’t like Manolo Blahniks. She liked sensible shoes, the sort that didn’t make her feet hurt,” Hendley said, remembering, and then running into a concrete wall. It still hurt to talk about her. It probably always would, but at least the pain did affirm his love for her, and that was something. Much as he loved her memory, he could not smile in public about her. Had he remained in politics, he’d have had to do that, pretend that he’d gotten over it, that his love was undying but also unhurtful. Yeah, sure. One more price of political life was giving up your humanity along with your manhood. And it was not worth that price. Even to be President of the United States. One of the reasons why he and Jack Ryan, Sr., had always gotten along was that they were so alike.

“You really think this is an intelligence agency?” he asked his guest as lightly as the situation allowed.