by Tom Clancy
That one in New York had affirmed the government’s position in another area, but in doing so had limited the applicability of the principle—and that case hadn’t gone further, and was law for a large part of the country.
These were the wrong people. Their view of judicial power was too circumscribed. They deferred too much to Congress and the state legislatures. Pat Martin’s view of law was different from his own. Martin didn’t see that judges were supposed to right what was wrong—the two had often debated the issue over lunch in conversations spirited but always good-natured. Martin was a pleasant man, and a sufficiently good debater that he was hard to move off any position, whether he was wrong or not, and while that made him a fine prosecutor he just didn’t have the temperament, he just didn’t see the way things were supposed to be, and he’d picked judges the same way, and the Senate might be dumb enough to consent to the selections, and that couldn’t happen. For this sort of power, you had to pick people who knew how to exercise it in the proper way.
He really had no choice. He bundled the list into an envelope and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket and made a phone call for lunch with one of his many contacts.
30
PRESS
THEY DID IT FOR THE morning news, so pervasive had become the influence of television. This was how reality was defined, changed, and announced. A new day had surely dawned. The viewer was left in little doubt. There was a new flag hanging behind the announcer, a green field, the color of Islam, with two small gold stars. He started off with an invocation from the Koran, and then went into political matters. There was a new country. It was called the United Islamic Republic. It would be comprised of the former nations of Iran and Iraq. The new nation would be guided by the Islamic principles of peace and brotherhood. There would be an elected parliament called a majlis. Elections, he promised, would be held by the end of the year. In the interim there would be a revolutionary council comprised of political figures from both countries, in proportion to population—which gave Iran the whip hand, the announcer didn’t say; he didn’t have to.
There was no reason, he went on, for any other country to fear the UIR. The new nation proclaimed its goodwill for all Muslim nations, and all nations who had friendly relations with the former divided segments of the new land. That this statement was contradictory in numerous ways was not explored. The other Gulf nations, all of them Islamic, had not actually enjoyed friendly relations with either of the partners. The elimination of the former Iraqi weapons facilities would continue apace so that there would be no question of hostility to the international community. Political prisoners would be freed at once—
“And now they can make room for the new ones,” Major Sabah observed at PALM BOWL. “So, it’s happened.” He didn’t have to phone anyone. The TV feed was being viewed all over the Gulf, and in every room with a functioning television the only happy face was the one on the screen—that is, until the scene changed to show spontaneous demonstrations at the various mosques, where people made their morning prayers, and walked outside to display their joy.
“HELLO, ALI,” Jack said. He’d stayed up reading the folders Martin had left, knowing that the call would come, suffering, again, from a headache that he seemed to acquire just from walking into the Oval Office. It was surprising that the Saudis had been so long in authorizing the call from their Prince/Minister-Without-Portfolio. Maybe they’d just hoped to wish it away, a characteristic not exactly unique to that part of the world. “Yes, I’m watching the TV now.” At the bottom of the display, like the captioning for the hearing-impaired, was a dialogue box being typed by intelligence specialists at the National Security Agency. The rhetoric was a little flowery, but the content was clear to everyone in the room. Adler, Vasco, and Goodley had come in as soon as the feed arrived, liberating Ryan from his reading, if not his headache.
“This is very unsettling, if not especially surprising,” the Prince said over the encrypted line.
“There was no stopping it. I know how it looks to you, Your Highness,” the President said tiredly. He could have indulged in coffee, but he did want to get some sleep tonight.
“We are going to place our military at a higher state of readiness.”
“Is there anything you want us to do?” Ryan asked.
“For the moment, just to know that your support has not changed.”
“It hasn’t. I’ve told you before. Our security commitment to the Kingdom remains the same. If you want us to do something to demonstrate that, we’re ready to take whatever steps seem reasonable and appropriate. Do you—”
“No, Mr. President, we have no formal requests at this time.” That statement was delivered in a tone that made Jack’s eyes flicker off the speakerphone and to his visitors.
“In that case, might I suggest that you have some of your people discuss options with some of mine?”
“It must be kept quiet. My government has no wish to inflame the situation.”
“We’ll do what we can. You can start talking to Admiral Jackson—he’s J-3 in the—”
“Yes, Mr. President, I met him in the East Room. I will have our working-level people contact him later today.”
“Okay. If you need me, Ali, I’m always at the end of the phone.”
“Thank you, Jack. I hope you will sleep well.” You’ll need it. We all will. And the line went dead. Ryan killed the button on the phone to make sure.
“Opinions?”
“Ali wants us to do something, but the King hasn’t decided yet,” Adler said.
“They’ll try to establish contacts with the UIR.” Vasco took up the conversation. “Their first instinct will be to get a dialogue going, try to do a little business. The Saudis will take the lead. Figure Kuwait and the rest of the lesser states will let them handle the contacts, but we’ll be hearing from them soon, probably through channels.”
“We have a good ambassador in Kuwait?” the President asked.
“Will Bach,” Adler said, with an emphatic nod. “Career FSO. Good man. Not real imaginative, but a good plugger, knows the language and culture, lots of friends in their royal family. Good commercial guy. He’s been pretty effective as a middleman between our businesspeople and their government.”
“Good deputy chief of mission to back him up,” Vasco went on, “and the attaches there are tops, all spooks, good ones.”
“Okay, Bert.” Ryan took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Tell me what happens next.”
“The whole south side of the Gulf is scared shitless. This is their nightmare come true.”
Ryan nodded and shifted his gaze. “Ben, I want CIA’s assessment of the UIR’s intentions, and I want you to call Robby and see what kind of options we have. Get Tony Bretano into the loop. He wanted to be SecDef, and I want him to start thinking about the non-admin part of the job.”
“Langley doesn’t have much of a clue,” Adler pointed out. “Not their fault, but that’s how it is.” And so their assessment would present a range of potential options, from theater nuclear war—Iran might have nukes, after all—to the Second Coming, and three or four options in between, each with its theoretical justification. That way, as usual, the President had the chance to choose the wrong one, and it wouldn’t be anyone’s fault but his own.
“Yeah, I know. Scott, let’s see if we can establish some contacts with the UIR, too.”
“Extend the olive branch?”
“You got it,” the President agreed. “Everyone figure they need time to consolidate before they do anything radical?” There were nods with the President’s assessment, but not from everyone.
“Mr. President?” Vasco said.
“Yeah, Bert—by the way, good call. You weren’t exactly right on timing, but damned if you weren’t right enough.”
“Thanks. Mr. President, on the consolidation issue, that’s about people, right?”
“Sure.” Ryan and the rest nodded. Consolidating a government meant little more than that the
people got used to the new system of rule and accepted it.
“Sir, if you look at the number of people in Iraq who have to get used to this new government, compare that number to the population of the Gulf states. It’s a big jump in terms of distance and territory, but not in terms of population,” Vasco said, reminding them that although Saudi Arabia was larger than all of America east of the Mississippi, it had fewer people than the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
“They’re not going to do anything right away,” Adler objected.
“They might. Depends on what you mean by ‘right away,’ Mr. Secretary.”
“Iran has too many internal problems,” Goodley started to say.
Vasco had come to like presidential access and attention, and decided to seize the floor. “Don’t underestimate the religious dimension,” he warned. “That is a unifying factor which could erase or at least suppress their internal problems. Their flag says it. The name of the country says it. People all over the world like a winner. Daryaei sure looks like a winner now, doesn’t he? One other thing.”
“What’s that, Bert?” Adler asked.
“You notice the flag? The two stars are pretty small,” Vasco said pensively.
“So?” This was Goodley. Ryan looked back at the TV and the announcer. The flag was still there behind him and—
“So, there’s plenty of room for more.”
IT WAS A moment such as he had dreamed of, but the culmination of such a dream is always better than its contemplation, because now the cheers were real, striking his ears from the outside, not the inside. Mahmoud Haji Daryaei had flown in before dawn, and with the rising of the sun he’d walked into the central mosque, removing his shoes, washing his hands and forearms, because a man was supposed to be clean before his God. Humbly, he’d listened to the incantation from the minaret, calling the faithful to prayer, and this day people didn’t roll back over and try to capture a few more hours of sleep. Today they flocked to the mosque from blocks around in a gesture of devotion that moved their visitor to his core. Daryaei took no special place, but he appreciated the singularity of the moment, and tears streamed down his dark, deeply lined cheeks at the overwhelming emotion of the moment. He had fulfilled the first of his tasks. He had fulfilled the wishes of the Prophet Mohammed. He had restored a measure of unity to the Faith, the first step in his holy quest. In the reverent hush following the conclusion of morning prayers, he rose and walked out into the street, and there he was recognized. To the despairing panic of his security guards, he walked along the street, returning the greetings of people at first stupefied and then ecstatic to see the former enemy of their country walking among them as a guest.
There were no cameras to record this. It was not a moment to be polluted by publicity, and though there was danger, he accepted it. What he was doing would tell him much. It would tell him of the power of his Faith, and the renewed faith of these people, and it would tell him whether or not he had Allah’s blessing on his quest, for Daryaei truly was a humble man, doing what he had to do, not for himself, but for his God. Why else, he often asked himself, would he have chosen a life of danger and denial? Soon the sidewalk traffic turned into a crowd, and from a crowd to a mob. People he’d never met appointed themselves to be his guardians, forcing a path for him through the bodies and the cheers as his aged legs made their way while his now-serene dark eyes swept left and right, wondering if danger would come, but finding only joy that reflected his own. He gazed and gestured to the crowd as a grandfather might greet his progeny, not smiling, but composed, accepting their love and respect, and with his benign eyes promising greater things, because great deeds had to be followed by greater ones, and the moment was right.
“SO, WHAT SORT of man is he?” Movie Star asked. His flight to Frankfurt had been followed by one to Athens, and from there to Beirut, and from there to Tehran. He knew Daryaei only by reputation.
“He knows power,” Badrayn answered, listening to the demonstrations outside. There was something about peace, he imagined. The war between Iraq and Iran had lasted close to a decade. Children had been sent off to die. Rockets had blasted the cities of both countries. The human cost would never be fully assessed, and though the war had ended years before, now it was truly ended—a thing of the heart rather than of law, perhaps. Or maybe a thing of God’s law, which was different from that of man. The resulting euphoria was something he’d once felt himself. But now he knew better. Feelings like that were weapons of statecraft, things to be used. Outside were people who a short time before had chafed at what they had and what they did not have, who questioned the wisdom of their leader, who bridled—as much as one could in so tightly controlled a society as this one was—at the freedoms they lacked. That was gone now, and it would remain gone for—how long? That was the question, and that was why such moments had to be properly used. And Daryaei knew all of those things.
“So,” Badrayn said, turning off the outside noise of the faithful, “what have you learned?”
“The most interesting things I learned from watching television. President Ryan is doing well, but he has difficulties. The government is not yet fully functional. The lower house of their parliament has not yet been replaced—the elections for that will begin to take place next month. Ryan is popular. The Americans love to poll one another,” he explained. “They call people on the telephone and ask questions—only a few thousand, often not that many, and from this they report to one another what everyone thinks.”
“The result?” Badrayn asked.
“A large majority seems to approve what he is doing—but he isn’t really doing anything except to continue. He hasn’t even chosen a Vice President yet.”
Badrayn knew that, but not the reason. “Why?” he asked.
Movie Star grinned. “I asked that question myself. The full parliament must approve such a thing, and the full parliament has not yet been reestablished. It will not be so for some time. Moreover, there is the problem with the former Vice President, that Kealty fellow, who claims that he is the President—and this Ryan has not imprisoned him. Their legal system doesn’t deal with treason effectively.”
“And if we were able to kill Ryan ... ?”
Movie Star shook his head. “Very difficult. I took an afternoon to walk around Washington. Security at the palace is very strict. It is not open to public tours. The street in front of the building is closed. I sat on a bench for an hour, reading, and watched for signs around the place. Riflemen on all the buildings. I suppose we would have a chance on one of his official trips, but that would require extensive planning for which we lack the necessary time. And so, that leaves us with—”
“His children,” Badrayn observed.
JESUS, I HARDLY see them anymore, Jack thought. He’d just gotten off the elevator, accompanied by Jeff Raman, and checked his watch. Just after midnight. Damn. He’d managed to sit through a hurried dinner with them and Cathy before hustling back downstairs for his reading and meetings, and now ... everyone was asleep.
The upstairs corridor was a lonely place, too wide for the intimacy of a real home. Three agents were in view, “standing post,” as they called it, and the warrant officer with “the Football” full of its nuclear codes. It was quiet because of the time of night, and the overall impression was rather like that of an upscale funeral home, not a house with a family in it. No clutter, no toys lying on the rug, no empty glasses in front of a TV. Too neat, too tidy, too cold. Always somebody around. Raman traded looks with the other agents, whose nods meant “Okay, everything clear.” Nobody with guns around, Ryan thought. Super.
The bedrooms were too far apart up here. He turned left, heading for Katie’s room first. Opening the door, he saw his youngest, recently graduated from crib to bed, lying on her side, a fuzzy brown teddy bear next to her. She still wore sleepers with feet on them. Jack could remember when Sally had worn the same, and how cute children looked that way, like little packages. But Sally now looked forward to the day she’d
buy things from Victoria’s Secret, and Little Jack—he had taken to objecting to that label of late—now insisted on boxer shorts because that was the new “in” thing for boys of his age group, and they had to be pulled down low, because the “in” thing was to risk having them fall off. Well, he still had a toddler. Jack approached the bed, and stood there for a minute, just looking at Katie and quietly enjoying the status of fatherhood. He looked around, and again the room was unnaturally neat. Everything was picked up. Not a loose item on the floor. Her clothing for the coming day was neatly laid out on a wooden valet. Even the white socks were folded next to the diminutive sneakers with cartoon animals on them. Was this a way for a child to live? It seemed like a Shirley Temple movie from when his mom and dad were kids—some upper-class thing that he’d always wondered about: Did people really live that way?
Not real people, just royalty, and the family of the man sentenced to the presidency. Jack smiled, shook his head, and left the room. Agent Raman closed the door for him, not even letting POTUS do that. Somewhere else in the building, Ryan was sure, an electronic status board showed that the door had been opened and closed, probably sensors told that someone had entered the room, and probably someone had asked over the radio link the Service people used to be told that SWORDSMAN was tucking SANDBOX in.
He stuck his head in Sally’s room. His elder daughter was similarly asleep, doubtless dreaming of some boy or other in her class—Kenny or something, wasn’t it? Somebody who was way cool. Little Jack’s bedroom floor was actually polluted by the presence of a comic book, but his white shirt was pressed and hanging on another valet, and someone had shined his shoes.