Cameron, Marc - Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

“I had a dream about Ding’s son,” Cathy said through another yawn. “Patsy says he got a little homesick during Boot Camp, but he’s doing well now.”

Ryan looked up at the smooth curves of his wife under the sheets in the blue shadows of the bedroom and thought seriously about kicking off his sneakers instead of tying them.

“He’s a good man,” Ryan said. “And a fine Marine.”

Ding and Patsy Chavez’s son—and John Clark’s grandson—had only recently graduated from the Marine Corps’ Infantry Training Battalion after finishing Boot Camp at MCRD San Diego.

Cathy pulled the sheet up over her face. “Turn the light on if you need to.”

“I’m fine,” Ryan said.

“You think JP gets special treatment because his godfather is the President of the United States?”

Ryan scoffed. “I’m betting he keeps that little tidbit of information to himself if he doesn’t want to get his ass kicked on a daily basis.”

“I guess,” Cathy said. “Poor kid’s got too much to live up to. Hey, there’s a little bag on the table in my dressing room. Could you get someone to drop it off at Carter’s office? It’s for their new baby.”

Ryan chuckled. FLOTUS put together her own gift bags and gave POTUS honey-dos. His press secretary, Carter Bailey, had just returned from family leave. “I’ll drop it off myself,” he said. “It’s what? Ten steps out of my way. Gary and I are doing a walk and talk this morning anyway.” He leaned down to kiss her on the forehead, which was the only bit of skin exposed, until she lowered the sheet and puckered her lips, eyes closed.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now go save the world.”

He winked at her, then realized she didn’t have her glasses on so she could barely see him anyway. Getting old was hell, but if he had to do it, he’d just as soon do it with Caroline Muller Ryan.

“You, too,” he said.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” the Secret Service agent posted in the West Sitting Hall said when Ryan eased the bedroom door shut behind him.

“Morning, Pauline,” he said, nodding crisply to the stocky brunette. He made it a point to learn a bit about everyone on his detail. Along with being a crack shot, Special Agent Pauline Dempsey had an Olympic silver medal in the eight-hundred-meter run.

He held up the pink floral gift bag he was delivering for Cathy. “I know what you’re thinking,” Ryan said. “This doesn’t go with the tracksuit.”

Dempsey smiled. “Not at all, Mr. President. Perfect accessory.”

She’d been up all night and was just reaching the end of her shift, but her smile was genuine and without guile, like someone who was self-assured enough to be comfortable in her own skin around the President of the United States. She was there to protect him. She was good at her job, and she knew it.

Dempsey spoke quietly into the beige mic pinned to her lapel as he passed on his way across the hall.

“Crown, Dempsey, SWORDSMAN en route to the first floor.”

She nodded at the response she got over the radio.

“Special Agent in Charge Montgomery will meet you downstairs, Mr. President.”

Ryan thanked her and boarded the elevator across the sitting hall, adjacent to the old cloakroom.

Gary Montgomery stood waiting on the ground floor, quiet, unflappable, except when he was not, and God help the man who got in Montgomery’s way when that happened. He and his wife had just bought a house in rural Anne Arundel County not far from Annapolis. The commute in was a relatively quick drive down Highway 50 at this hour, leading the wave of commuter traffic. His dark hair was still damp and slightly curled from a morning shower. He wore gray sweatpants and a dark blue University of Michigan football sweatshirt that, no doubt, covered the SIG Sauer pistol he was never without when he was near the President. While Cathy compared him to a linebacker, at six-three, two-forty, he’d actually played fullback for his beloved Wolverines during his undergraduate years in Ann Arbor.

“Top of the morning to you, Mr. President,” Montgomery said.

Ryan returned the greeting, genuinely happy to see the man.

He held up the pink gift bag again. “Mind if we stop in at the press secretary’s office before we go for our walk?”

The Secret Service agent gave a slight nod. “After you, sir.”

Not friends, exactly, they were certainly more than President and protector. If anything, Montgomery had become an unofficial adviser, often sitting in on meetings as a Secret Service agent, and then offering his opinion when Ryan asked him, usually while they were in the gym.

When he was growing up, Ryan’s father often pointed out that most people never knew what to do with their hands when they stood and waited. Some shoved them in their pockets, others nervously clenched and unclenched their fists, some rubbed them together like a housefly. Gary Montgomery let his hands hang by his sides. Relaxed. Ready. Emmet Ryan would have trusted him—and as far as Jack Ryan was concerned, that was about the highest praise that could be given.

Ryan led the way west, down the colonnade past the Press Room. Instead of keeping left to enter the Oval from the outside, he continued straight, bringing him and Montgomery into the West Wing off the end of the Cabinet Room, where it was a short walk around the corner to Carter Bailey’s office.

He was surprised to see a young man wearing a wrinkled beige trench coat over a crumpled gray suit enter through the door off the Press Room. A woman followed him in. She was a bit older, shorter by a head, and, unlike him, she ironed her clothes. She wore a blue raincoat and a matching tam against the cold outside. Both nodded to the uniformed Secret Service officer posted at the desk inside the door, who noted their lanyard badges. They knew the drill, and signed in at her desk.

Ryan recognized them as CIA staff who often accompanied the director, Jay Canfield.

The woman was Gretchen something. Ryan could not for the life of him remember her last name. She’d been back from maternity leave only a few weeks—everybody seemed to be having babies these days. Drooping eyes said she’d probably not gotten much sleep the night—or weeks—before. Still, exhausted or not, her bright smile lit up an oval face between the high collar of her coat and the jaunty tam. She hung back a few steps from the young man. He was at least ten years younger and impetuous with youth, so he led the way. His sandy hair was slicked back straight from a high forehead, looking darker, and starker, than it would have looked had he let it fall naturally. The copper stubble of a new goatee was his way of trying to do something about it. Ryan gave him an A for effort, and a D-minus for the patchy goatee.

Ryan nodded as they approached. Gretchen’s cheeks flushed as they got closer. The youngster remained nonchalant.

Pack. That was her name. Gretchen Pack.

“Getting an early start?” Ryan asked.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” the kid said, stopping cold a few feet from Ryan and Gary Montgomery. The Secret Service agent had that effect on people. “We’re here to assist with the meeting.”

Ryan looked at his watch, and then at Montgomery.

“The meeting? With me?”

“I assume so, Mr. President,” the kid said.

Ryan fished his cell phone from the pocket of his track jacket and dialed Mary Pat Foley’s number as they walked.

“You’re up,” she said.

“What’s this about a meeting?”

“I was just getting everyone together before we woke you,” Foley said.

“Okay,” Ryan said. “I’ll call you from the Oval.”

“I’m there now,” she said. “I’ll tell you in person.”

Director of National Intelligence Foley; Ryan’s chief of staff, Arnie van Damm; and Navy Commander Rob Forestall were waiting in the secretaries’ suite outside the open door of the Oval.