by Marc Cameron
Her usual prohibition against reading at the table took a backseat when the material had to do with medical issues. Neither she nor Ryan had much of an appetite, and their light dinner consisted more of moving the seared sea bass around the plate than eating it.
She tapped the photo with her index finger, driving home her point. “Yesterday would not be too soon. Enucleation—removal of the eye—may be the only option if the tumor has advanced far enough.”
Ryan’s wife often gave him a fresh perspective and, since she knew him so well, pointed out instances where his personal biases might be clouding his judgment. She didn’t have the nuclear codes, but she knew what made Ryan tick. In the great scheme of things, that was almost the same thing. The problem was, right now, he didn’t want to be calmed down.
He’d just finished a BLUF—bottom line up front—briefing about recent events, including Father West’s text and the feuding Chinese generals. He saved the folder with photographs of General Song’s granddaughter for last, ending with the proposed surgery at Kellogg Eye Center.
“I should assist,” Cathy said. “Dan Berryhill is a brilliant surgeon, but I can help him.”
Ryan resisted the urge to pound the table at the notion. “Well, that’s out of the question.”
“Why? This is my expertise, Jack. Let me help.”
“That’s not . . . It’s not on the table,” Ryan said. “Mary Pat is formulating a plan as we speak.”
“To talk to the general?” Cathy asked.
“Best we don’t discuss specifics,” Ryan said. “But yes, that’s about the size of it. Someone from CIA will make contact, see if the general is interested in giving us anything.”
“Here am I,” Cathy said. “Send me.”
“Quoting Isaiah doesn’t help your cause.”
Cathy fumed quietly, studying her plate as though the answer to her problems was in her sea bass. The only sounds in the dining room were the clink of silverware and the pulse from Ryan’s growing headache pounding in his ears. For a time, it looked like he might get away with ignoring his wife’s suggestion—a behavior which almost always came at his peril.
No such luck.
“I’m serious about this, Jack,” she launched in. “Dan Berryhill and I did our ophthalmology residency at Johns Hopkins together. He’s the logical choice at Kellogg to do the surgery. I’ll go in undercover and assist.”
Ryan closed his eyes, trying—and failing—to hide the stricken look that crossed his face. “Undercover?”
“You know what I mean,” Cathy said. “I can go in without all the fuss that follows you around. Maureen and the rest of my Secret Service detail will be with me, but few people need know I’m even there. I’ll be gowned up with a surgical bonnet and mask.”
“And then what?” Ryan asked.
“Then I get close to General Song when he comes in to check on his granddaughter in recovery—and I ask for his help. You said it yourself; your source thinks he’s ripe to turn. This way, I talk to him and you don’t burn a valuable asset in the PRC.”
“How do you know all that?” Ryan said, looking pained. “Am I talking in my sleep now?”
“Hon.” His wife gave him a reassuring—if a little condescending—pat on the arm. “You do a lot of talking on the phone when I’m right here. I know you think I’m a potted plant—”
“You know better than that.” Ryan rolled his eyes. “But this plan of yours, it sounds too much like—”
“Like what?” She cut him off. “The right thing to do? What’s that Edmund Burke saying—For evil to triumph, it’s only necessary for good women to do nothing . . .”
Ryan raised a professorial brow. “I’d be careful there. That’s misattributed to Burke. He did, however, say: Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.”
“Leave it to you to remember that little tidbit,” Cathy snapped.
“Yeah, because I’m so overbearing.”
Cathy threw her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Listen,” she said. “This has us both about to lose our minds. Pat West is my friend, too. I have to do something to help find out what’s going on.”
“The risks here are enormous. There’s a high likelihood that General Song doesn’t even know.”
“I understand that,” Cathy said. “But he’s a Chinese general involved in war-gaming scenarios—and the Chinese are somehow behind Pat’s arrest in Indonesia, which, according to his text, has something to do with a video-gaming technology. It’s not that much of a leap to think there may be a connection. He’s bound to know something.”
Ryan sighed. “I really do talk in my sleep.” He groaned, his brain working in overdrive. There had to be a way to talk his wife out of this, short of a presidential order—which carried slightly less weight than a mere suggestion with Cathy. He’d been friends with Pat West since they were in high school, and then later when they were both at CIA. That friendship had naturally carried over to the Ryan family. A quiet soul, West was generally a loner. Cathy had felt it was her duty to mother him, seeing him as someone who needed to be looked after. His arrest was particularly difficult for her.
As it turned out, Jack wasn’t the only one thinking strategically. Cathy backed off her plan to go to Michigan for a moment.
“So what do you plan to do?” she asked, pushing away her plate.
“In other news,” Ryan said, attempting to change the subject but keeping up his guard, “Senator Chadwick has decided she wants to be my new best friend.”
Cathy gasped, momentarily deterred. “Tell me you don’t trust her.”
“No,” Ryan said. “Well, yes. I mean, I trust her to be Michelle Chadwick. She needs my support for a literacy bill aimed at Native American kids.”
“There has to be something else,” Cathy said.
“Oh.” Ryan chuckled. “There definitely is—”
“That woman hates you with a passion. It’s evident every time she opens her mouth on television. Pretty sure she’d rather see you crash and burn than help a Native kid learn to read.”
Ryan shrugged. “Maybe so.”
“So I suppose you have a plan to get Pat out?”
“Believe me,” Ryan said. “I’d like nothing more than to lead a Marine expeditionary brigade into Jakarta and break Father Pat out of prison. But there’s that pesky little problem of Indonesia’s national sovereignty we have to deal with.”
“What does President Gumelar say?”
“He admits the charges are false but says his hands are tied.”
“Of course he does,” Cathy said. She’d always considered him a bit weak-kneed.
“Indonesia appears to be subject to the rule of mob,” Ryan said, “rather than the rule of law. If the populace believes Father Pat has been preaching Christianity to Muslims, then he has been preaching Christianity to Muslims—no matter what the truth and common sense say. Gumelar had a Chinese Christian finance minister who made a comment that the masses thought was blasphemy against Islam. He is the president’s close friend—and he’s still in jail eighteen months after the fact. I have Adler and his people at State looking into some inducements that can help President Gumelar sell a release plan to his people, but I have to be careful not to give away the farm for a personal friend.”
“I suppose,” Cathy said, unconvinced. “I guess there are other wrongly accused Americans locked up around the world.”
“One or two,” Ryan said.
She studied his face, eyes narrowing. “But you’re really going?”
“Of course.”
“But no battalion of Marines.”
“Gumelar is an important ally,” Ryan said. “Sadly enough. We’ve been planning a trip for months. This just moves up the timetable.”
“People will see it as—”
“I don’t care,” Ryan said. �
�I’m not sitting behind the desk on this one. If I can prove to Gumelar that China is behind this, that would be a different story.”
Cathy studied the tablecloth for a moment, thinking. She looked up suddenly. “That’s why you need to let me help. You’re busy saving Father Pat. Let me help save this little girl’s eye—and talk to the general. I want to do my bit as the President’s wife.”
Ryan groaned softly, reaching across the table to take his wife’s hand. “I stepped into that one, didn’t I?”
“I’ll say,” Cathy said. “Come on, this’ll be fun. No one outside of our people and the general will ever even know I was there.”
“Hon,” Ryan said. “Make no mistake. What you are doing is good, but it is espionage, pure and simple. And that is never, ever, ever, that easy.”
She smiled broadly, raising her eyebrows up and down, squeezing his hand.
He gave her a wary look. “What?”
“You know,” she said, eyes soft now. “Speaking of Edmund Burke, a long time ago—eons, really—I heard you quote him to my father while you were downstairs waiting for me to get ready to go. I fell in love with you right then and there.”
“Was it the one about women? Burke was kind of . . .”
She gave him a playful punch on the arm.
“You said to my father, No one ever made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”
“Boy.” Ryan chuckled. “Your dad must have thought I was a sophomoric idiot.”
“Thank you for letting me do this, Jack. It’s a little, but it’s something.”
29
Baltimore Homicide Detective Emmet Ryan taught his son Jack early in life to listen to experts. The two United States Secret Service special agents sitting across the Resolute desk certainly qualified. Together, Gary Montgomery and Maureen Richardson had almost forty years of experience in dignitary protection. A GS-15, akin to an assistant special agent in charge in other government agencies, Maureen Richardson reported directly to the special agent in charge of PPD. Mo, as she preferred to be called, served as lead agent for the satellite detail that protected the First Lady. Much smaller than the big show surrounding POTUS, the FLOTUS detail was low-key and fluid. Mo and her Secret Service agents followed Dr. Ryan wherever she went, and then blended seamlessly, amoebalike, with Montgomery’s larger detail when the Ryans traveled together. They integrated but stood ready to go their separate ways if the schedule or situation dictated it.
It was a dance, and Montgomery and Richardson were experienced and savvy enough to make the intricate steps look easy.
Jack Ryan generally steered well clear of specifics regarding his own security. Where Cathy was involved, his instincts as a husband stomped back those of the nation’s chief executive.
Hundreds of agents from Protective Operations, Protective Intelligence and Analysis, and Uniformed Division officers conducted travel advances, executed logistical plans, liaised with medical personnel and Air Force and Marine support, and formed multiple concentric rings of electronic, structural, and personal security around the President and his family. Though he didn’t get into their business, Ryan made it a point to know everything he could on the agents assigned to the inner circle. Inside the bubble, within arm’s reach of the President, they lived under the constant eye of the television camera, not to mention the active threat of people who wanted to see their boss with a bullet in the head. Threats came in daily on social media, over the telephone, or in written communication. These men and women were, by necessity, the cream of the crop.
Ryan hadn’t handpicked Maureen Richardson to protect his wife, but he would have, had he been given the opportunity. She was a shooter—which he liked. Her record showed she’d had two OISs—officer-involved shootings—during her time as a uniformed officer with the Denver Police Department, once with her AR-15 rifle, the last with her Glock sidearm. Both times she’d fired four shots and hit her intended target with each round. She’d been cleared after each shooting and commended by her department and her community. Ryan found it particularly noteworthy that on both occasions she’d left cover, advancing toward violence when she saw others under attack. A good quality to have in someone you wanted to watch over your wife. This propensity also fit perfectly with the mission of the Secret Service—who were trained not to take cover during an assault, but to make themselves the larger target while getting their protectee out of danger.
Cathy liked her, too, and that didn’t hurt.
Mo’s mouse-brown hair was cut just above strong shoulders. A perpetually rosy complexion made her look as if she’d just come inside from a brisk wind—no matter the weather. A prominent chin and roundish cheeks gave her face a resting smile, even when she was upset. The look was more than a little disquieting, which Ryan counted as a plus, considering it was her job to put people off guard. Secret Service agents had to exude a certain gravitas. A collegiate judo champion, Mo Richardson moved with the centered grace of an accomplished martial artist. Her husband was an agent on the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, and one got the impression that the two of them spent hours in the dojo each day, trying to kick each other’s ass, when they weren’t on duty. While not as tall or imposing as Gary Montgomery was, Mo still possessed the don’t-screw-with-me persona that caused would-be attackers to stutter-step before taking any action, buying time.
Gary Montgomery was listening to her plan.
Sort of.
“We’ll send in a larger advance team than usual,” Mo said. “They’ll filter in with local agents by onesies and twosies, so we’ll establish a significant boots on the ground presence before SURGEON arrives—”
Arnie van Damm knocked and then stuck his head in the door that led directly across to the Roosevelt Room. His office was to the left, down that same hall.
“Mr. President,” van Damm said. “Senator Chadwick is here to discuss that new information we were talking about.”
It shouldn’t have been this way, but Secret Service personnel were accustomed to their meetings being interrupted by seemingly more important business. Code name CARPENTER, van Damm also had Secret Service protection, albeit a small detail of mainly portal-to-portal security. He often said to his detail that if he ignored them, it meant he trusted them to do their jobs without his input. Fortunately for the agents, Ryan didn’t see his wife’s security as taking a back burner to anything. Ever.
“Go ahead and have the senator brief you,” Ryan said. “See if this mysterious constituent of hers has anything we don’t already know. We’ll be done here in a few minutes.”
The chief of staff ducked out as quickly as he’d come in, shutting the door behind him.
Ryan motioned for the agents to continue.
Richardson laid out the rest of her plan to keep Cathy safe while getting her close to General Song.
“You’re planning a tarmac pickup in Detroit?” Montgomery asked.
“Of course,” Mo said. “We’ll take an Airport Police vehicle from the plane but move the First Lady to an armored Jeep Cherokee once we get her inside the hangar, out of sight. Local law enforcement will be present but hanging back. The entire package will be covert vehicles, moving with the flow of traffic but ready to go overt lights and sirens immediately, should the need arise.”
Montgomery nodded. “She shouldn’t be on the ground long.”
“We’ll arrive at four a.m.,” Mo said. “The operation will be that same morning, minimizing SURGEON’s time on-site.”
“There’s a bridge over the Huron River across the road from the Eye Center,” Montgomery said. “And the Amtrak station is right there, no vagrants to speak of, but plenty of opportunity for people to loiter and say they’re waiting on the Wolverine to Chicago. And no underground parking at the Eye Center. She’ll have to walk in from the open.”
Mo’s lips perked into an impish grin. “Mrs. Ryan
has agreed to go in full Marvel Comics disguise.”
The President raised a brow.
“A ball cap, sir. She’s more recognizable than Captain America, but, as I said, it’ll be dark, and the less fuss we make, the less we stand out.”
Mo Richardson went on to explain where she’d have rovers and post-standers, “looking chill, but armed and ready to react.” Advance agents would personally contact Ann Arbor PD and the local office of the FBI late on the evening before arrival.
Gary Montgomery, who’d received his undergraduate from the University of Michigan, quizzed her at every turn, peeling back the layers of her plan and giving inside information from recent trips to watch Wolverine football.
“I’ll scrub up with SURGEON,” Mo went on, “going into the operating room with her. General Song travels with four security people. One of those will stay with the cars. According to State and CIA, he’ll travel with one aide, and a minder from Department Two, or possibly the Ministry of State Security. My money is on a Two man from military intelligence, though. The minder changes periodically, so we’ve not identified him yet. Director Foley is assisting with that. Besides me, I’ll have four agents dressed as hospital techs. And two more behind the nursing station. Shoulder weapons will be staged there, in the event of any escalation. We’ve already tried it and the scrubs are loose enough to hide sidearms. The team watching from the operating theater viewing window will have radios. They’ll have me and the First Lady in sight at all times. It goes without saying—but I’m going to say it anyway. We all plan to stay out of the way and let the doctors do their jobs, but my number-one priority is to keep Dr. Ryan safe.”
Ryan mouthed a silent Thank you.
“You should be good security-wise in the operating room,” Montgomery pointed out. “It’s after that when it gets touchy.”
“I agree,” Mo said. “Dr. Ryan will attempt contact when the general is allowed in to see his granddaughter in recovery. It’s a small area, so that minimizes the number of his people present while maximizing ours. If the general cops an attitude, we’ll be outta there with SURGEON before any of his people even know what’s going on.”