Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

"A total outsider," Holtzman observed quietly. "But—"

The chief of staff nodded. "Yeah, but. But he's being analyzed as though he's an insider with a hidden agenda, and they're playing the insider games as if they apply to him, but they don't."

"So the key to the guy is there's nothing to figure out… son of a bitch," Bob concluded. "He hates the job, doesn't he?"

"Most of the time. You should have been there when he spoke in the Midwest. He got it then. All those people loving him, and he loved them back, and it showed—and it scared the shit out of him. Nothing to figure out? Exactly. Like they say in golf, the hardest thing to do is to hit a straight ball, right? Everybody's looking for curves. There aren't any."

Holtzman snorted. "So, what's the angle if there isn't an angle?"

"Bob, I just try to control the media, remember? Damned if I know how you report this, except to state the facts—you know, like you're supposed to do."

That was a lot for the journalist to take. He'd been in Washington for all of his professional life. "And every politician is supposed to be like Ryan. But they're not."

"This one is," Arnie shot back.

"How am I supposed to tell my readers that? Who'll believe it?"

"Ain't that the problem?" he breathed. "I've been in politics all my life, and I thought I knew it all. Hell, I do know it all. I'm one of the best operators ever was, everybody knows that, and all of a sudden this yahoo comes into the Oval Office and says the emperor's naked, and he's right, and nobody knows what to do about it except to say that he isn't. The system isn't ready for this. The system is only ready for itself."

"And the system will destroy anybody who says different." Holtzman snorted with the thought: If Hans Christian Andersen had written "The Emperor's Clothes" about Washington, then the kid who'd spoken the truth out loud would have been killed on the spot by the assembled crowd of insiders.

"It'll try," Arnie agreed.

"And what are we supposed to do about it?"

"You're the one who said that you don't want to officiate at the hanging of an innocent man, remember?"

"Where's that leave us?"

"Maybe to talk about the unruly mob," Arnie suggested, "or the emperor's corrupt court."

NEXT TO GO was Austrian Airlines 774. It was down to a routine now, and the arrangements were well within the technical parameters. The cans of shaving cream had been filled a bare forty minutes before departure. The proximity of the Monkey House to the airport helped, as did the time of day, and having people race the last few hundred meters to the gate was not unusual anywhere in the world, particularly for flights like this one. The «soup» was sprayed into the bottom of the can, by a plastic valve that was invisible to X-ray examination. The nitrogen went in the top to a separate insulated container located in the center of the cans. The process was clean and safe—for extra but really unnecessary safety, the cans were sprayed and wiped; that was just to make the travelers happy. The cans were quite cold, of course, though not dangerously so. As the liquid nitrogen boiled off, it would vent through a pressure valve into the ambient atmosphere, where it merely joined the air. Though nitrogen is an important element in explosives, by itself it is totally inert, clear, and odorless. Nor would it react chemically with the contents of the cans, and so the pressure-relief valve retained a precise quantity of the warming gas to act as a safe propel-lant for the «soup» when the time came.

The filling was done by the medical corpsmen in their protective suits—they refused to work without them, and ordering them otherwise would only have made them nervous and sloppy, and so the director indulged their fears.

Two groups of five remained to be done. The cans could really all have been prepared at the same time, Moudi knew, but no unnecessary chances were being taken, a thought that made him stop cold. No unnecessary chances? Sure.

DARYAEI DIDN'T SLEEP that night, which was unusual for him. Though with increasing years he found that he needed less of it, getting off to sleep had never been difficult for him. On a really quiet night, if the winds were right, he could hear the airliners bring their engines to the roar of takeoff power—a distant sound, rather like a waterfall, he sometimes thought, or perhaps an earthquake. Some fundamental sound of nature, distant and foreboding. And now he found himself listening for it, and with his imagination, wondering if he heard it or not.

Had he gone too fast? He was an old man in a country where so many died young. He remembered the diseases of his youth, and later he'd learned their scientific causes, mainly poor water and sanitation, for Iran had been a backward country for most of his lifetime, despite its long history of civilization and power. Then it had been resurrected by oil and the immense riches that had come with it. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shahanshah—King of kings! the phrase proclaimed—had begun to raise the country, but made the mistake of moving too fast and making too many enemies. In Iran's dark age, as in every other such time, secular power had devolved to the Islamic clergy, and in liberating the nation's peasantry, he'd trod on too many toes, making enemies of people whose power was spiritual and to whom the common folk looked for order in lives made chaotic by change. Even so, the Shah had almost succeeded, but not quite, and not quite was as damning a curse as the world produced for those who would be great.

What did such men think? Just as he himself was old, so the Shah had grown old and sick with cancer, and watched the work of a lifetime evaporate in a matter of weeks, his associates executed in a brief orgy of settled scores, bitter at his betrayal by his American friends. Had he thought that he'd gone too far—or not far enough? Daryaei didn't know, and now he would have liked to know, as he listened for the distant sounds of waterfalls in the still of a Persian night.

To move too fast was a grievous error, which the young learned and the old knew, but not to move enough, fast enough, far enough, strongly enough, that was what really denied goals to those who would be great. How bitter it must be to lie in bed, without the sleep one needed to think clearly, and wonder and curse oneself for chances missed and chances lost.

Perhaps he knew what the Shah had thought, Daryaei admitted to himself. His own country was drifting again. Even insulated as he was, he knew the signs. It showed up as subtle differences in dress, especially the dress of women. Not much, not quite enough for his true believers to persecute them, for even the true believers had softened their devotion, and there were gray areas into which people could venture to see what might happen. Yes, the people still believed in Islam, and yes, they still believed in him, but, really, the Holy Koran wasn't that strict, and their nation was rich, and to grow richer it needed to do business. How could it be a champion of the Faith unless it grew richer, after all? The best and brightest of Iran's young went abroad to be educated, for his country did not possess the schools that the infidel West had—and, for the most part, they came back, educated in skills which his country needed. But they also came back with other things, invisible, doubts and questions, and memories of a freewheeling life in a different society where the pleasures of the flesh were available to the weak, and all men were weak. What if all Khomeini and he had accomplished was to delay what the Shah had started? The people who had come back to Islam in reaction to Pahlavi were now drifting back to the promise of freedom he'd offered them. Didn't they know? Didn't they see? They could have all the trappings of power and all the blessings of what people called civilization and still remain faithful, still have the spiritual anchor—without which all was nothing.