Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

But, no. Destiny had betrayed him, in the person of John Patrick Ryan, on a cold, snowy Moscow night, sitting, he recalled, in a streetcar barn, sitting in a resting tram. And so now he had comfort and security. His daughter would soon be married to what the Americans called "old money," what other countries called the nobility, and what he called worthless drones—the very reason the Communist Party had won its revolution. His wife was content with her appliances and her small circle of friends. And his own anger had never died.

Ryan had robbed him of his destiny, of the sheer joy of power and responsibility, of being the arbiter of his nation's path—and then Ryan had taken to himself that same destiny, and the fool didn't know how to make use of it. The real disgrace was to have been done in by such a person. Well, there was one thing to be done, wasn't there? Gerasimov walked into the mud room that led out the back, selected a leather jacket, and walked outside. He thought for a moment. Yes, he'd light a cigarette, and just walk up the driveway to where they were, four hundred meters away. Along the way he would consider how to couch his remarks, and his gratitude to President Ryan. He'd never stopped studying America, and his observations on how the media thought would now stand him in good stead, he thought.

"DID I WAKE you up, Skipper?" Jones asked. It was about four in the morning at Pearl Harbor.

"Not hardly. You know, my PAO is a woman, and she's pregnant. I hope all this crap doesn't put her into early labor." Rear Admiral (Vice Admiral selectee, now) Mancuso was at his desk, and his phone, on his instructions, wasn't ringing without a good reason. An old shipmate was such a reason.

"I got a call from NEC, asking about a little job we did in the Atlantic."

"What did you say?"

"What do you think, Skipper? Zip." In addition to the honor of the situation, there was also the fact that Jones did most of his work with the Navy. "But—"

"Yeah, but somebody is gonna talk. Somebody always does."

"They know too much already. The Today Show is doing a live shot from Norfolk, the Eight-Ten Dock. You can guess what they're saying."

Mancuso thought about flipping his office TV on, but it was still too early for the NBC morning news show— no. He did flip it on and selected CNN. They were doing sports now, and the top of the hour was coming.

"Next they might ask about another job we did, the one involving a swimmer."

"Open line, Dr. Jones," CoMSuePAC warned.

"I didn't say where, Skipper. It's just something you'll want to think about."

"Yeah," Mancuso agreed. "Maybe you can tell me one thine."

"What's that, Ron?"

"What's the big deal? I mean, sure, I won't talk and neither will you, but somebody will, sure as hell. Too good a sea story not to tell. But what's the big deal, Bart? Didn't we do the right thing?"

"I think so," the admiral replied. "But I guess people just like a story."

"You know, I hope Ryan runs. I'll vote for him. Pretty cool stuff, bagging the head of the KGB and—"

"Ron!"

"Skipper, I'm just repeating what they're saying on TV, right? I have no personal knowledge of that at all." Damn, Jonesy thought, what a sea story this one is. And it's all true. At the other end of the line the "Breaking News" graphic came up on Mancuso's TV screen.

"YES, I AM Nikolay Gerasimov," the face said on screens all over the world. There were at least twenty reporters clustered on the other side of the stone fence, and the hard part was hearing one of the shouted questions.

"Is it true that you were—"

"Are you—"

"Were you—"

"Is it true that—"

"Silence, please." He held up his hand. It took fifteen seconds or so. "Yes, I was at one time the chairman of KGB. Your President Ryan induced me to defect, and I have lived in America ever since, along with my family."

"How did he get you to defect?" a reporter shouted.

"You must understand that the intelligence business is, as you say, rough. Mr. Ryan plays the game well. At the time there was ongoing power struggle. CIA opposed my faction in favor of Andrey Il'ych Narmonov. So, he came to Moscow under cover of advisor to START talks. He claimed that he wanted to give me information to make the meeting happen, yes?" Gerasimov had decided that downgrading his English skills would make him seem more credible to the cameras and microphones. "Actually, you can say he trap me with accusation that I was going to create, how you say, treason? Not true, but effective, and so I decide to come to America with my family. I come by airplane. My family come by submarine."

"What? Submarine?"

"Yes, was submarine Dallas." He paused and smiled rather grimly. "Why are you so hard on President Ryan? He serve his country well. A master spy," Gerasimov said admiringly.

"WELL, THERE GOES that story." Bob Holtzman muted his television and turned to his managing editor.

"Sorry, Bob." The editor handed the copy back. It was to have run in three days. Holtzman had done a masterful job of assembling his information, and then taken the time to integrate it all into a cohesive and flattering picture of the man whose office was only five blocks from his own. It was about spin, that most favored of Washington words. Somebody had changed the spin, and that was that. Once the initial story went out, it was impossible even for an experienced journalist like Holtzman to change it, especially if his own paper didn't support him.

"Bob," the editor said with a measure of embarrassment, "your take on this is different than mine. What if this guy's a cowboy? I mean, okay, getting the submarine was one thing, Cold War and all that, but tampering with internal Soviet politics—isn't that close to an act of war?"

"That's not what it was really about. He was trying to get an agent out, code name CARDINAL. Gerasimov and Aleksandrov were using that spy case to topple Narmonov and kill off the reforms he was trying to initiate."

"Well, Ryan can say that all day if he wants. That's not how it's going to come across. 'Master spy'? Just what we need to run the country, hmph?"

"Ryan isn't like that, God damn it!" Holtzman swore. "He's a straight shooter right out of—"

"Yeah, he shoots straight, all right. He's killed at least three people. Killed, Bob! How the hell did Roger Durling ever get it into his head that this was the right guy to be Vice President. I mean, Ed Kealty isn't much of a prize, but at least—"

"At least he knows how to manipulate us, Ben. He suckered that airhead on TV, and then he suckered the rest of us into following the story his way."

"Well…" Ben Saddler ran out of things to say at that point. "It's factual, isn't it?"

"That isn't the same as 'true, Ben, and you know it."

"This is going to have to be looked into. Ryan looks like a guy who's played fast and loose with everything he's touched. Next, I want this Colombian story run down. Now, can you do it? Your contacts at the Agency are pretty good, but I have to tell you, I worry about your objectivity on this."

"You don't have a choice, Ben. If you want to keep up, it's my story—course you can always just reword what the Times says," Holtzman added, making his editor flush. Life could be tough in the media, too.

"Your story, Bob. Just make sure you deliver. Somebody broke the law, and Ryan's the one who covered everything up and came out smelling like a rose. I want that story." Saddler stood. "I have an editorial to write."

DARYAEI COULD SCARCELY believe it. The timing could scarcely have been better. He was days away from his next goal, and his target was about to descend into the abyss entirely without his help. With his help, of course, the fall would be farther still.

"Is that what it appears to be?"

"It would seem so," Badrayn replied. "I can do some quick research and be back to you in the morning."