Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

NEC SHARED THEIR tape with the whole world. As competitive as the news business was, a consciousness of public responsibility did pervade the profession, and the tape of the President's brief conversation went out an hour later on television sets across the globe.

She'd been right from the first instant, the Prime Minister told herself. He was far out of his depth. He couldn't even stand up straight. His words rambled. He let his wife speak for him—and she was frantic, emotional, weak. America's time as a major power was ending, because the country lacked firm leadership. She didn't know who had caused this plague to happen, but it was easy to guess. It had to be the UIR. Why else had he called them together in western China? With her fleet at sea guarding the approaches to the Persian Gulf, she was doing her part. She was sure she would be rewarded for it in due course.

"YOUR PRESIDENT IS distracted," Zhang said. "Understandably so."

"Such a great misfortune. You have our deepest sympathy," the Foreign Minister added. The three, plus the translator, had also just seen the tape.

Adler had been slow in getting the news of the epidemic, but he was up to speed now. He had to set it all aside, however. "Shall we proceed?"

"Does our distant province agree to our compensation demand?" the Foreign Minister asked.

"Unfortunately not. They take the position that the entire incident results from your extended maneuvers. Viewed abstractly, that point of view is not entirely without merit," the Secretary of State told them in diplo-speak.

"But the situation is not abstract. We are conducting peaceful exercises. One of their pilots saw fit to attack our aircraft, and in the process another of their foolish aviators destroyed an airliner. Who is to say if it was an accident or not?"

"Not an accident?" Adler asked. "What possible purpose could there be for such a thing?"

"Who can say with these bandits?" the Foreign Minister asked in return, stirring the pot a little more.

ED AND MARY Pat Foley came in together. Ed was carrying a large rolled poster or something, Jack saw as he sat in the Cabinet Room, still wearing greens with HOPK.INS stenciled on them. Next came Murray, with Inspector O'Day in his wake. Ryan stood to go to him.

"I owe you, sorry I didn't get to see you sooner." He took the man's hand.

"That was pretty easy compared to this," Pat said. "And my little girl was there, too. But, yeah, glad I was there. I won't have any nightmares about that shoot." He turned. "Oh, hi, Andrea."

Price smiled for the first time that day. "How's your daughter, Pat?"

"Home with the sitter. They're both okay," he assured her.

"Mr. President?" It was Goodley. "This is pretty hot."

"Okay, then shall we get to work? Who starts?"

"I do," the DCI said. He slid a sheet of paper across the table. "Here."

Ryan took it and scanned it. It was some sort of official form, and the words were all in French. "What's this?"

"It's the immigration and customs clearance form for an airplane. Check the ID box, top-left corner."

"HX-NJA. Okay, so?" SWORDSMAN asked. His chief of staff sat at his side, keeping his peace. He felt the tension that the executives had brought into the room.

The blowup of Chavez's photo at Mehrabad Airport was actually larger than a poster, and had been printed up mainly as a joke. Mary Pat unrolled it, and laid it flat on the table. Two briefcases were used to keep it from rolling back up. "Check the tail," the DDO advised.

"HX-NJA. I don't have time for Agatha Christie, people," the President warned them.

"Mr. President." This was Dan Murray. "Let me walk you through this, but I'll say up front, that photo is something I could take into court and get a conviction with.

"The customs form identifies a business jet, a Gulf-stream G-IV belonging to this Swiss-based corporation." A piece of paper went down on the conference table. "Flown by this flight crew." Two photos and fingerprint cards. "It left Zaire with three passengers. Two were nuns, Sister Jean Baptiste and Sister Maria Magdalena. They were both nurses at a Catholic hospital down there. Sister Jean treated Benedict Mkusa, a little boy who contracted Ebola and died of it. Somehow, Sister Jean caught it, too, and the third passenger, Dr. Mohammed Moudi— we don't have a photo of him yet; we're working on it— decided to fly the sick one to Paris for treatment. Sister Maria tagged along, too. Dr. Moudi is an Iranian national working with the WHO. He told the boss-nun that she might have a chance there and said that he could whistle up a private jet to get her there. With me so far?"

"And this is the jet."

"Correct, Mr. President. This is the jet. Except for one thing. This jet supposedly crashed into the sea after taking off after a refueling stop in Libya. We have a ton of paperwork about that. Except for one thing." He tapped the poster again. "That photo was taken by Domingo Chavez—"

"You know him," Mary Pat put in.

"Go on. When did Ding shoot the frame?"

"Clark and Chavez accompanied Secretary Adler to Tehran, just last week."

"The aircraft was reported lost some time before that. It was even tracked by one of our destroyers when it squawked emergency. No trace was ever found, however," Murray went on. "Ed?"

"When Iraq came apart, Iran allowed the senior military leadership to skip. They all had golden parachutes. Our friend Daryaei let them jump out of the airplane. He even provided transport, all right? This started the day after the jet disappeared," Foley told them. "They were flown to Khartoum, in the Sudan. Our station chief there is Frank Clayton, and he drove to the airport and shot these pictures to confirm our intelligence information." The DCI slid them across.

"Looks like the same airplane, but what if somebody just played with the numbers—letters, whatever?" Ryan asked.

"Next indicator," Murray said. "There were two Ebola cases in Khartoum."

"Clark and Chavez talked to the attending physician a few hours ago," Mary Pat added.

"Both the patients flew on this airplane. We have photos of them getting off. So," the FBI Director said, "now, we have an airplane with a sick person aboard. The airplane disappears—but it turns up less than twenty-four hours later somewhere else, and two of the passengers come down with the same illness that the nun had. The passengers came from Iraq, via Iran, to the Sudan."

"Who owns the airplane?" Arnie asked.

"It's a corporation. We should have further details in a few hours from the Swiss. But the flight crew is Iranian. We have info on them because they learned how to fly over here," Murray explained. "And, finally, we have our friend Daryaei here on the same airplane. Looks like it's been taken out of international service. Maybe Daryaei is using it to hop around his new country now. So, Mr. President, we have the disease, the airplane, and the owner, all tied up. Tomorrow we'll work with Gulfstream to see if the aircraft has any unique characteristics that we can identify in addition to the registration code. We'll have the Swiss pull info on the ownership and the flight logs for the rest of their fleet.

"We now know who did this, sir," Murray concluded. "This chain of evidence is hard to beat."

"There are more details to flesh out," Mary Pat said. "Background on this Dr. Moudi. Tracking down some monkey shipments—they use monkeys to study the disease. How they staged the faked airplane crash—you believe it? The bastards even made an insurance claim."

"We're going to suspend this meeting for a moment. Andrea?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Get Secretary Bretano and Admiral Jackson in here."

"Yes, sir." She left the room. Ed Foley waited for the door to close behind her.

"Uh, Mr. President?"