Том Клэнси - The Teeth of the Tiger

“Yes, sir, I do. If NSA, say, pays attention to what the big central banks are doing, you are ideally located to take advantage of the signals-intelligence they gather and cross-deck to Langley. Must give your currency-trading troops the best sort of insider information, and if you play your cards carefully – that is, if you don’t get greedy – you can make a ton of long-term money without anybody really noticing. You do that by not attracting investors. They’d talk way too much. So, that activity funds the things you do here. Exactly what it is you do, that I have not speculated on very much.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes, sir, that is a fact.”

“You haven’t talked to your father about this?”

“No, sir.” Jack Jr. shook his head. “He’d just blow it off. Dad told me a lot when I asked, but not stuff like this.”

“What did he tell you?”

“People stuff. You know, dealing with politicians, which foreign president likes little girls or little boys. Jeez, a lot of that going around, especially overseas. What sort of people they were, how they think, what their individual priorities and eccentricities are. Which country took good care of its military. Which country’s spook services were good, and which ones were not. A lot of things about the people on The Hill. The sort of stuff you read in books or the papers, except what Dad told me was the real shit. I knew not to repeat it anywhere,” the young Ryan assured his host.

“Even in school?”

“Nothing I didn’t see in the Post first. The papers are pretty good about finding stuff out, but they’re too quick to repeat damaging things about people they don’t like, and they frequently don’t publish stuff about people they do like. I guess the news business is pretty much the same as women trading gossip over the phone or the card table. Less a matter of hard facts than sniping at people you don’t care for.”

“They’re as human as everybody else.”

“Yes, sir, they are. But when my mom operates on somebody’s eyes, she doesn’t care if she likes the person or not. She swore an oath to play her game by the rules. Dad’s the same way. That’s how they raised me to be,” John Patrick Ryan, Jr., concluded. “Same thing every dad tells every son: If you’re going to do it, do it right or don’t do it at all.”

“Not everybody thinks that way anymore,” Hendley pointed out, though he’d told his two sons, George and Foster, exactly the same thing.

“Maybe so, Senator, but that’s not my fault.”

“What do you know about the trading business?” Hendley asked.

“I know the basics. I can talk the talk, but I haven’t learned the nitty-gritty enough to walk the walk.”

“And your degree from Georgetown?”

“History, strong minor in economics, kinda like Dad. Sometimes I’d ask him about his hobby – he still likes to play the market, and he has friends in the business, like George Winston, his Secretary of the Treasury. They talk a lot. George has tried and tried to get Dad to come inside his company, but he won’t do anything more than go in and schmooze. They’re still friends, though. They even hack away at golf together. Dad’s a lousy golfer.”

Hendley smiled. “I know. Ever try it yourself?”

Little Jack shook his head. “I already know how to swear. Uncle Robby was pretty good. Jeez, Dad really misses him. Aunt Sissy still comes to the house a lot. She and Mom play piano together.”

“That was pretty bad.”

“That redneck racist fuck,” Junior observed. “Excuse me. Robby was the first guy I ever knew who got murdered.” The amazing thing was that his murderer had been taken alive. The Secret Service detail had been half a second behind the Mississippi State Police in getting to him, but some civilian had tackled the bastard before anyone could get a round off, and so he’d gone to jail alive. That fact had at least eliminated any conspiracy nonsense. It had been a Ku Klux Klan member, sixty-seven years old, who just couldn’t abide the thought that Ryan’s retirement had brought his black Vice President to the position of President of the United States. His trial, conviction, and sentencing had gone off with startling speed – the assassination had all been on videotape, not to mention there’d been six witnesses all within two yards of the killer. Even the Stars and Bars atop the State House in Jackson had flown at half-staff for Robby Jackson, to the dismay and disgust of some. “Sic volvere Parcas,” Jack observed.

“What’s that?”

“The Fates, Senator. One spins the thread. One measures the thread. And one cuts the thread. ‘So spin the Fates,’ the Roman adage is. I never saw Dad so broken up about anything. Mom handled it better, really. I guess docs are used to people dying. Dad – well, he just wanted to whack the guy himself. It was pretty tough.” The news cameras had caught the President weeping at the funeral service at the Naval Academy Chapel. Sic volvere Parcas. “So, Senator, how does my fate spin out here?”

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 fair play, 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 assistance. They say they wish to establish goodwill only.”