Tom Clancy - Command Authority

“It is cold. It is also money. It’s the real world.”

“I get it,” Ryan said. “But I’m slammed right now. I’ve got conference calls all day tomorrow with investigators in Moscow, Cyprus, Liechtenstein, and Grand Cayman.”

Lamont just breathed into the phone for a moment. Then he said, “Aren’t you the pit bull?”

“I’m trying.”

“You know, Jack, the Galbraith case is a particularly tough one, as it is starting to look more and more like well-positioned types in the tax office were involved. From my experience, these types of cases are never resolved to the satisfaction of our clients.”

Ryan asked, “Are you suggesting I don’t bother?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Just suggesting that you don’t break your back on it. You’ve hired investigators in five countries, you’ve pulled a lot of resources from our legal department, our accounting department, our translation department.”

“Galbraith’s got the money,” Jack countered. “It’s not like we’re paying for it.”

“True, but we don’t want to get bogged down with one case. We want new cases, new opportunities, because that’s where the real money lies.”

“What are you saying, Sandy?”

“Just a warning. I was young and hungry once. Wanted to bloody well fix the system by shining a light on all the schemes in Russia, to make a difference. But the system is cracked, man. You can’t beat the bloody Kremlin. You are going to get yourself burned out with this work rate, and it will leave you frustrated as hell when it doesn’t pan out.” He paused; it seemed to Ryan he was struggling for the words. “Don’t shoot all your powder on this target. It’s a lost cause. Bring some of that killer instinct toward getting new clients. That’s where the money is.”

Jack liked Sandy Lamont. He was intelligent and funny and, even though Jack had worked with him for only a few months, the forty-year-old Englishman had taken Jack under his wing and treated him almost like a kid brother.

It was a cutthroat industry he was in now. Not literally, of course, but figuratively speaking; the well-dressed men and women in The City were always hunting opportunities, and always protecting what they had with vehemence.

Jack could not help thinking that some of their anger and excitement in chasing the next buck or pound or yen or ruble was rather misplaced, considering the life-and-death struggles he himself had been involved in over the past few years.

Jack wished like hell he was back with the guys, sitting on Clark’s porch with a beer and brainstorming ways to find out details of what happened this evening in Moscow. The camaraderie he’d experienced in the past few years was something he’d almost taken for granted. Now that he was here, on his own, all he could do was wonder what the rest of the men of The Campus were up to back in the States.

He felt incredibly alone and unimportant here in London tonight, despite the fact that his colleague was on the other end of the phone.

Suck it up, Jack. You signed on to do a job and you will damn well do it.

“You there, mate?”

“Yeah, Sandy. I’m here. I’ll be there first thing in the morning. We can start coming up with a plan to pitch to Haldane’s clients.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Killer instinct. See ya.” Lamont hung up.

Jack stepped into the shower. Killer instinct. If you only knew, Sandy.

The White House might have been referred to as the People’s House, but for the last decade no family had lived within its walls more than the Ryans.

President Jack Ryan may have been well into the second year of his final term in office, but he still felt like an outsider here. His real home was up in Maryland. The White House was a temporary address for him, and though he had to admit he enjoyed much of the work of being the President of the United States, he would also enjoy retiring back to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, once and for all.

An hour before heading to bed, Ryan strolled into the main residence of the White House after putting in a full evening of work in the Oval Office. He and Cathy went into Jack’s private study, and together they called George Washington University Hospital to check on the condition of Sergey Golovko. They learned nothing new; a barrage of tests were being run and the Russian remained weak, with low blood pressure and a litany of gastrointestinal and endocrinal complaints. He had been moved to the ICU while they diagnosed his condition, but he was conscious and alert, if very uncomfortable.

Jack and Cathy thanked the doctors for their efforts, then Jack forced himself to brighten his mood so he could accompany Cathy on their nightly rounds of tucking in the kids for bed.

Evenings at the White House were not very different from bedtime in most homes with children in America. Just as everywhere, the nightly ordeal of getting the kids to brush their teeth and ready to go to sleep happened more smoothly some nights than others.

They first dropped in to say good night to Kyle Daniel. His room was the West Bedroom, and it looked in many ways like most American boys’ bedrooms; there were toy chests brimming with train tracks, action figures, puzzles, and board games, and the bedspread and curtains had a NASA motif, with planets and satellites and astronauts on a sea of black sky and stars.

The room wasn’t huge, but it was admittedly larger and statelier than the average eight-year-old boy’s room. This had been the bedroom of John F. Kennedy, Jr., when he was a toddler, and Ronald Reagan used the room as a gym.

Kyle’s room wasn’t terribly neat, which derived chiefly from Cathy and Jack’s instructions to both children to pick up after themselves. Jack constantly reminded the kids they wouldn’t have attendants at their beck and call for their entire lives, so there was no sense in becoming overly accustomed and dependent on them.

Kyle seemed to be genetically predisposed to removing Legos, trains, Matchbox cars, and other small, sharp objects from his toy box and leaving them all over the floor.

Although the Ryans gave firm instructions to the residence staff to leave enough of the daily straightening to the kids that they could develop a respect for responsibility, more than once Jack passed Kyle’s room and caught one of the Secret Service agents scooping up toys and putting them back on a shelf or in a toy box. Each time, the President would lean in the doorway with a long gaze at the offending agent, and each time, the agent would sheepishly make some excuse, usually saying the cleanup was only for operational reasons, since she might need to cross the room quickly to get to Kyle, and having an eight-inch-long Lego fire truck in the way might somehow compromise her ability to accomplish her mission.

Jack would invariably raise an eyebrow, give a tiny smile, and shake his head before moving on.

Once Kyle was tucked in for the night, Jack and Cathy stepped down the hall to check on Katie. Katie’s room was the East Bedroom; it had been Nancy Reagan’s study and Caroline Kennedy’s bedroom, as well as the bedrooms of “First Kids” Tricia Nixon, Susan Ford, and Amy Carter. It was noticeably neater than Kyle’s room, due chiefly to the fact that she was ten years old to Kyle’s eight. On the far wall stood a tall detailed playhouse, a replica of the White House itself, and this, along with a canopied bed in lavender, dominated the room. On a table was a photo of a beaming Katie with a smiling Marcella Hilton, a Secret Service agent who died while saving Katie’s life during a kidnapping attempt. Katie did not remember her anymore, but both her parents wanted to honor Marcella’s memory by keeping her picture in the White House residence, and they hoped future Presidents and First Ladies would reflect on the importance of the work of the Secret Service.