Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“Three or four weeks. And I want to be able to hang my hat on it.”

“I’ll tell the DCI,” Goodley promised.

“Anything else?” Ryan asked.

“That’s it for now, sir.”

Jack nodded and checked his calendar. He had a fairly routine day, but the next one would largely be spent on Air Force One flying hither and yon across America, and he was overnighting in-he flipped the page on the printout-Seattle, before flying home to Washington and another full day. It was just as easy for him to use the VC-25A as a red-eye … oh, yeah, he had a breakfast speech in Seattle to the local Jaycees. He’d be talking about school reform. That generated a grunt. There just weren’t enough nuns to go around. The School Sisters of Notre Dame had taught him at St. Matthew’s Elementary School in northeast Baltimore back forty-plus years earlier-and taught him well, because the penalty for not learning or for misbehaving did not bear contemplation for a seven-year-old. But the truth of the matter was that he’d been a good, and fairly obedient- dull, Jack admitted to himself with a wry smile-child who’d gotten good marks because he’d had a good mom and a good dad, which was a lot more than too many contemporary American kids could say- and how the hell was he supposed to fix that? Jack asked himself. How could he bring back the ethos of his parents’ generation, the importance of religion, and a world in which engaged people went to the altar as virgins? Now they were talking about telling kids that homosexual and lesbian sex was okay. What would Sister Frances Mary have said about that? Jack wondered. A pity she wasn’t around to crack some senators and representatives over the knuckles with her ruler. It had worked on him and his classmates at St. Matthew’s …

The desk speaker buzzed. “Senator Smithers just arrived at the West Entrance.” Ryan stood and went to his right, the door that came in from the secretaries’ anteroom. For some reason, people preferred that one to the door off the corridor opposite the Roosevelt Room. Maybe it was more businesslike. But mainly they liked to see the President standing when the door opened, his hand extended and a smile on his face, as though he really was glad to see them. Sure, Wilbur.

Mary Smithers from Iowa, matronly, three kids and seven grandkids, he thought, more talk about the Farm Bill. What the hell was he supposed to know about farms? the President wondered. On those rare occasions that he purchased food, he did it at the supermarket-because that’s where it all came from, wasn’t it? One of the things on the briefing pages for his political appearances was always the local price for bread and milk in case some local reporter tested him. And chocolate milk came from brown cows.

Accordingly, Ambassador Hitch and Assistant Secretary Rutledge will be flying back to Washington for consultations,” the spokesman told the audience.

“Does this signal a break in relations with China?” a reporter asked at once.

“Not at all. ‘Consultations’ means just that. We will discuss the recent developments with our representatives so that our relations with China can more speedily be brought back to what they ought to be,” the spokesman replied smoothly.

The assembled reporters didn’t know what to make of that and so three more questions of virtually identical content were immediately asked, and answers of virtually identical content repeated for them.

“He’s good,” Ryan said, watching the TV, which was pirating the CNN (and other) coverage off the satellites. It wasn’t going out live, oddly enough, despite the importance of the news being generated.

“Not good enough,” Arnie van Damm observed. “You’re going to get hit with this, too.”

“I figured. When?”

“The next time they catch you in front of a camera, Jack.”

And he had as much chance of ducking a camera as the leadoff hitter at opening day at Yankee Stadium, the President knew. Cameras at the White House were as numerous as shotguns during duck season, and there was no bag limit here.

Christ, Oleg!” It took a lot to make Reilly gasp, but this one crossed the threshold. ”Are you serious?”

“So it would appear, Mishka,” Provalov answered.

“And why are you telling me?” the American asked. Information like this was a state secret equivalent to the inner thoughts of President Grushavoy.

“There is no hiding it from you. I assume you tell everything we do together to Washington, and it was you who identified the Chinese diplomat, for which I and my country are in your debt.”

The amusing part of that was that Reilly had darted off to track Suvorov/Koniev without a thought, just as a cop thing, to help out a brother cop. Only afterward-about a nanosecond afterward, of course-had he thought of the political implications. And he’d thought this far ahead, but only as speculation, not quite believing that it could possibly have gone this far forward.

“Well, yes, I have to keep the Bureau informed of my operations here,” the legal attaché admitted, not that it was an earthshaking revelation.

“I know that, Mishka.”

“The Chinese wanted to kill Golovko,” Reilly whispered into his vodka. “ Fuck .”

“My word exactly,” Provalov told his American friend. “The question is-”

“Two questions, Oleg. First, why? Second, now what?”

“Third, who is Suvorov, and what is he up to?”

Which was obvious, Reilly thought. Was Suvorov merely a paid agent of a foreign country? Or was he part of the KGB wing of the Russian Mafia being paid by the Chinese to do something-but what, and to what purpose?

“You know, I’ve been hunting OC guys for a long time, but it never got anywhere near this big. This is right up there with all those bullshit stories about who ‘really’ killed Kennedy.”

Provalov’s eyes looked up. “You’re not saying…”

“No, Oleg. The Mafia isn’t that crazy. You don’t go around looking to make enemies that big. You can’t predict the consequences, and it isn’t good for business. The Mafia is a business, Oleg. They try to make money for themselves. Even their political protection is aimed only at that, and that has limits, and they know what the limits are.”

“So, if Suvorov is Mafia, then he is only trying to make money?”

“Here it’s a little different,” Reilly said slowly, trying to help his brain keep up with his mouth. “Here your OC guys think more politically than they do in New York.” And the reason for that was that the KGB types had all grown up in an intensely political environment. Here politics really was power in a more direct sense than it had ever been in America, where politics and commerce had always been somewhat separate, the former protecting the latter (for a fee) but also controlled by it. Here it had always been, and still remained, the other way around. Business needed to rule politics because business was the source of prosperity, from which the citizens of a country derived their comforts. Russia had never prospered, because the cart kept trying to pull the horse. The recipient of the wealth had always tried to generate that wealth-and political figures are always pretty hopeless in that department. They are only good at squandering it. Politicians live by their political theories. Businessmen use reality and have to perform in a world defined by reality, not theory. That was why even in America they understood one another poorly, and never really trusted one another.

“What makes Golovko a target? What’s the profit in killing him?” Reilly asked aloud.

“He is the chief adviser to President Grushavoy. He’s never wanted to be an elected official, and therefore cannot be a minister per se, but he has the president’s ear because he is both intelligent and honest-and he’s a patriot in the true sense.”