Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Volodin looked directly at Molchanova now. “On the contrary, just the opposite is true. America’s domineering role in the world ends in our sphere of influence. They can make a lot of noise, threaten to expand NATO yet again, and they can continue to make threats on the world stage, but the Europeans need our products and services.

“Now that Russia and China have created a new world order, the childish threats of the West will have even less of an effect on us.”

“Mr. President. Do you consider Russia to be a world power?”

Volodin smiled. “No one can deny that the greatest powers of the twentieth century were the United States and the Soviet Union. The fall of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest tragedies of the last century. In my role as leader of Russia, I cannot say more than this without being branded by the West as a communist. This, of course, is a ridiculous accusation, because, frankly, who in modern Russia has had more success in the open markets than me?

“But it is the West that does not understand our history. The economic model was faulty, but the nation was strong. During our drive from command economy to market economy, we hit many patches of ice, but in retrospect, it was the West that was watering the road.”

“Are you saying the West now has less influence on Russia?”

Volodin nodded. “I am saying that exactly. Russia will make decisions based on Russia’s interests, and Russia’s interests alone, but this will be good for our neighbors.”

He smiled into the camera. “A strong Russia will create stability in the region, not discord, and I see it as my role to make Russia strong.”

President Ryan began his workday in the Oval Office just after six a.m. He still wasn’t sleeping well at Blair House, so he had developed the habit of getting into work about an hour before normal to make use of the time.

It was eight a.m. now, and Ryan was already dragging. But as difficult as it was to run the highest office in the land with little sleep, Jack did have to admit he was fortunate to fuel himself with some of the best coffee on the planet.

As soon as Mary Pat Foley arrived for their morning meeting, he poured her a cup, along with a second cup of the day for himself, knowing he’d pay a price for the caffeine by the early afternoon.

Just as they were about to get started, the intercom on Ryan’s desk beeped, and his secretary came over the speaker. “Mr. President, AG Murray is here.”

“Send him in, please.”

Attorney General Dan Murray entered the Oval Office with a fast, bouncing gait and excited eyes behind his thick glasses.

Ryan stood up. “You’ve got that look, Dan.”

Murray smiled. “That’s because I have good news. We’ve found the person who poisoned Sergey Golovko.”

“Thank God. Let me hear it.”

Murray said, “Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, I don’t have a hell of a lot of experience in dealing with polonium-poisoning investigations. It turns out there isn’t much out there easier to trace with the right equipment.

“The polonium leaves a trail wherever it goes. It’s called ‘creeping.’ We were able to follow Golovko backward from the White House to his hotel, to the limo he and his group took from Reagan National, then back to Lawrence, Kansas. Every location, every place he sat, everything he touched, all have traces of the isotope on it.

“At the University of Kansas he made a speech and took part in a Q-and-A with students at the Hall Center. His hotel, his rented vehicle, the dais on the stage in the auditorium where he talked, the waiting room, and the bathroom backstage where he got ready—they all have evidence of polonium.”

Murray smiled a little. “And then… nothing.”

Ryan cocked his head. “Nothing?”

“Yep. The place where he had breakfast before going to the university. Clean. The commercial aircraft he flew from Dallas to Lawrence. Clean. His hotel in Dallas. Clean. We went all the way through all his other stops on his trip. Every hotel, car, restaurant, airplane. There are no radiation traces anywhere before he went into a meet-and-greet room with students at KU.”

Mary Pat said, “That sounds suspiciously like a dead end.”

“You might think so, but we picked up the trail again. We found a glass in the kitchen of the cafeteria on campus that basically glowed in the dark, even though it’s been washed since the event. Witnesses said Golovko drank a Sprite while onstage—we think that was his glass.

“We got a list of the people who worked in the cafeteria during that shift, and we were going to start interviewing them one by one, but they have an employee locker room, so we started there, instead. We tested the lockers, and got a hit on one, both inside and out. It belongs to a twenty-one-year-old student, the same person who gave the drink to Golovko before he went onstage.”

“The student, don’t tell me he is Russian.”

“It’s a she, and she’s not Russian. She’s Venezuelan.”

“Oh, boy,” said Ryan. Venezuela was a close ally with Russia. If they sent an intelligence agent into the United States for an assassination, it would only further hurt U.S.–Venezuelan relations, which were already bad enough.

Murray said, “We were going to put a surveillance package on her, to build an investigation, but we really need to know there isn’t any more polonium out there that might expose others to danger. My experts tell me they think she’s handled it so extensively and haphazardly she probably only has weeks to live, but if she’s got more of it than what she put in Sergey’s drink, then we need to find it and throw it in a lead box asap.”

Jack sighed. “Pick her up.” It really wasn’t a tough call to make, though it was frustrating to think they might miss an opportunity to film her meeting with a Russian intelligence agent.

Mary Pat asked, “What do you know about her?”

“Her name is Felicia Rodríguez. She has been living in Kansas since she was fifteen years old. She’s been back to see her grandparents a few times in Caracas, but not for any length of time. She doesn’t seem to be an active intelligence agent, or even affiliated with the ruling power in Venezuela.”

Jack said, “You can’t possibly think she was unwitting in this.”

“She obviously knew she was spiking Golovko’s beverage, but she might have been duped somehow. My experts tell me there are so many traces of polonium-210 in her locker, they think she had no idea what she was dealing with. Maybe she thought she was slipping him a roofie.”

“A roofie?”

“Yeah. You know, to slur his speech, make him look senile and out of it. The Cubans have done this sort of thing to marginalize their adversaries.”

“That’s true,” Mary Pat agreed.

Murray stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll make the call to have her arrested. They will get her to the hospital and put her in quarantine.” Murray added, “Where she will be well guarded, obviously.”

As Murray left the Oval Office, Ryan’s secretary announced the arrival of Robert Burgess, secretary of defense, along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mark Jorgensen. They were here for the morning meeting, but immediately Ryan could see something even more pressing was on their minds as they entered.

“What’s up?”

Burgess said, “Russia’s defense minister announced this morning that a series of war games are starting, today, in the Black Sea. Within an hour of his announcement, virtually the entire Black Sea fleet started mobilizing. Two dozen ships raised anchor and moved out of the port of Sevastopol.”

“They are calling this just a run-of-the-mill military exercise?”