the Sum Of All Fears (1991)

by Tom - Jack Ryan 05 Clancy

  "My President, it is not something we look upon kindly," Golovko assured him.

  "That is doubtless true of the Americans also." Narmonov paused for a moment, then smiled. "Do you know what this could be?"

  "We are always open to ideas."

  "Think like a politician. This could easily be a sign of some sort of power play within their government. Our involvement would then be merely incidental. "We have heard that there

  Golovko thought about that. "We have heard that there is--that Ryan, their Deputy Director, is unloved by Fowler. . . ."

  "Ryan, ah, yes, I remember him. A worthy adversary, Sergey Nikolay'ch?"

  "He is that."

  "And an honorable one. He gave his word to me that one time, and he kept his word."

  Definitely something a politician would remember, Golovko thought.

  "Why are they unhappy with him?" Narmonov asked.

  "Reportedly a clash of personalities."

  "That I can believe. Fowler and his vanity." Narmonov held up his hands. "There you have it. Perhaps I might have made a good intelligence analyst?"

  "The finest," Golovko agreed. He had to agree, of course. Moreover, his President had said something that his own people had not examined fully. He left the august presence of his chief of state with a troubled expression. The defection of KGB Chairman Gerasimov a few years ago--an event that Ryan had himself engineered, if Golovko read the signs correctly--had inevitably crippled KGB's overseas operations. Six complete networks in America had collapsed, along with eight more in Western Europe. Replacement networks were only now beginning to take their place. That left major holes in KGB's ability to penetrate American government operations. The only good news was that they were starting to read a noteworthy fraction of American diplomatic and military communications--as much as four or five percent in a good month. But code-breaking was no substitute for penetration agents. There was something very strange going on here. Golovko didn't know what it was. Perhaps his President was right. Perhaps this was merely the ripples from an internal power-play. But it could also have been something else. The fact that Golovko didn't know what it was did not help matters.

  "Just made it back in time," Clark said. "Did they sweep the wheels today?"

  "If it's Wednesday. . . ." Jack replied. Every week his official car was examined for possible electronic bugs.

  "Can we talk about it, then?"

  "Yes."

  "Chavez was right. It's easy, just a matter of dropping a nice little mordida on the right guy. The regular maintenance man will be taken sick that day, the two of us get tapped to service the 747. I get to play maid, scrub the sinks and the crappers, replenish the bar, the whole thing. You'll have the official evaluation on your desk tomorrow, but the short version is, yeah, we can do it, and the likelihood of discovery is minimal."

  "You know the downside?"

  "Oh, yeah. Major International Incident. I get early retirement. That's okay, Jack. I can retire whenever I want. It would be a shame for Ding, though. That kid is showing real promise."

  "And if you're discovered?"

  "I say in my best Spanish that some Japanese reporter asked me to do it, and paid me a lot of pesos to do it. That's the hook, Jack. They won't make a big deal about it if they think it's one of their own. Looks too bad, loss of face and all that."

  "John, you're a tricky, underhanded son of a bitch."

  "Just want to serve my country, sir." Clark started laughing. A few minutes later he took the turn. "Hope we're not too late."

  "It was a long one at the office."

  "I saw that thing in the paper. What are we doing about it?"

  "The White House will be talking to Holtzman, telling him to lay off."

  "Somebody dipping his pen in the company inkwell?"

  "Not that we know about, same with the FBI."

  "Camouflage for the real story, eh?"

  "Looks that way."

  "What bullshit," Clark observed as he pulled into the parking place.

  It turned out that Carol was in her home, cleaning up after dinner. The Zimmer family Christmas tree was up. Clark began ferrying the presents in. Jack had picked some of them up in England; Clark and Nancy Cummings had helped to wrap them--Ryan was hopeless at wrapping presents. Unfortunately, they'd walked into the house just in time to hear crying.

  "No problem, Dr. Ryan," one of the kids told him in the kitchen. "Jackie had a little accident. Mom's in the bathroom."

  "Okay." Ryan walked that way, careful to announce his presence.

  "Okay, okay, come in," Carol said.

  Jack saw Carol leaning over the bathtub. Jacqueline was crying in the piteous monotone of a child who knows that she has misbehaved. There was a pile of kids' clothes on the tile floor, and the air positively reeked of crushed flowers. "What happened?"

  "Jackie think my perfume is same as her toy perfume, pour whole bottle." Carol looked up from scrubbing.

  Ryan lifted the little girl's shirt. "You're not kidding."

  "Whole bottle--expensive! Bad girl!"

  Jacqueline's crying increased in pitch. She'd probably had her backside smacked already. Ryan was just as happy not to have seen that. He disciplined his own kids as necessary, but didn't like to see other people smack theirs. That was one of several weak spots in his character. Even after Carol lifted her youngest out of the tub, the smell had not gone away.

  "Wow, it is pretty strong, isn't it?" Jack picked Jackie up, which didn't mute her crying very much.

  "Eighty dollar!" Carol said, but her anger was now gone. She had ample experience with small children, and knew that they were expected to do mischief. Jack carried the little one out to the living room. Her attitude changed when she saw the stack of presents.

  "You too nice," her mother noted.

  "Hey, I just happened to be doing some shopping, okay?"

  "You no come here Christmas, you have you own family."

  "I know, Carol, but I can't let Christmas go by without stopping in." Clark came in with a final pile. These were his, Jack saw. Good man, Clark.

  "We have nothing for you," Carol Zimmer said.

  "Sure you do. Jackie gave me a good hug."

  "What about me?" John asked.

  Jack handed Jackie over. It was funny. Quite a few men were wary of John Clark on the basis of looks alone, but the Zimmer kids thought of him as a big teddy bear. A few minutes later they drove away.

  "Nice of you to do that, John," Ryan said as they drove off.

  "No big deal. Hey, man, you know how much fun it was to shop for little kids? Who the hell wants to buy his kid a Bali bra--that's what Maggie wanted, put it on her list--a sexy bra, for Christ's sake. How the hell can a father walk into a department store and buy something like that for his own daughter?"

  "They get a little big for Barbie Dolls."

  "More's the pity, doc, more's the pity."

  Jack turned and chuckled. "That bra--"

  "Yeah, Jack, if I ever find out, he's dog meat."

  Ryan had to laugh at that, but he knew he could afford to laugh. His little girl wasn't dating yet. That would be hard, watching her leave with someone else, beyond his protective reach. Harder still for a man like John Clark.

  "Regular time tomorrow?"

  "Yep."

  "See ya' then, doc."

  Ryan walked into his house at 8:55. His dinner was in its usual place. He poured his usual glass of wine, took a sip, then removed his coat and hung it in the closet before walking upstairs to change clothes. He caught Cathy going the other way and smiled at her. He didn't kiss her. He was just too tired. That was the problem. If he could only get time to relax. Clark was right, just a few days off to unwind. That's all he needed, Jack told himself as he changed.

  Cathy opened the closet door to get some medical files she'd left in her own topcoat. She almost turned away when she noticed something, not sure what it was. Cathy Ryan leaned in, puzzled, then caught it. Where was it? Her nose searched left and
right in a way that might have appeared comical except for the look on her face when she found it. Jack's camel-hair coat, the expensive one she'd gotten for him last year.

  It wasn't her perfume.

  26

  INTEGRATION

  The assembly had begun with the purchase of additional instruments. An entire day was spent attaching one heavy block of spent uranium to the inside of the far end of the case.

  "This is tedious, I know," Fromm said almost apologetically. "In America and elsewhere there are special jigs, specially designed tools, people assemble many individual weapons of the same design, all advantages that we do not have."

  "And here everything must be just as exact. Commander," Ghosn added.

  "My young friend is correct. The physics are the same for all of us."

  "Then don't let us stop you," Qati said.

  Fromm went immediately back to work. Part of him was already counting the money he'd receive, but most concerned itself with the job at hand. Only half of the machinists had actually worked on the bomb's physics package itself. The rest had been employed entirely with manufacturing other fittings, most of which could be called cradles. These would hold the bomb components in place, and were mainly made from stainless steel for strength and compactness. Each was set in place according to a precise sequence, as the bomb was more complex than most machines, and required assembly according to a rigid set of instructions. Here again the process was made simpler by the quality of the design and the precision of the machine tools. Even the machinists were amazed that the parts all fit, and they murmured among themselves that whatever Fromm might be--and on this subject their speculation had been wide-ranging and colorful--he was an inhumanly skilled designer. The hardest part was installing the various uranium blocks. Installation of the lighter and milder materials went much more smoothly.

  "The procedure for the tritium transfer?" Ghosn asked.

  "We'll leave that for last, of course," Fromm said, backing off from checking a measurement.

  "Just heat the battery to release the gas, correct?"

  "Yes," Fromm said with a nod, "but--no, no, not that way!"

  "What did I do wrong?"

  "This must twist in," Fromm told the machinist. He stepped forward to demonstrate. "Like that, do you see?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "The elliptical reflectors hang on these--"

  "Yes, thank you, I know."

  "Very good."

  Fromm waved to Ghosn. "Come over here. You see how this works now?" Fromm pointed to two series of elliptical surfaces which nested together one after the other--there was a total of nineteen--each made of a different material. "The energy off the Primary impacts the first set of these surfaces, destroying each in its turn, but in the process ..."

  "Yes, it is always more clear to see the physical model than to extract it from a sheet of figures." This portion of the weapon derived its utility from the fact that light waves have no mass but do carry momentum. They were not "light" waves at all, technically speaking, but since the energy was all in the form of photons, the same principle held. The energy would immolate each of the elliptical surfaces, but in the process each surface would transfer a small but reliable percentage of the energy in another direction, adding to the energy already headed that way from the Primary itself.

  "Your energy budget is lavish, Herr Fromm," Ghosn observed not for the first time.

  The German shrugged. "Yes, it must be. If you cannot test, you must overengineer. The first American bomb--the one used on Hiroshima--was an untested design. It was wasteful of materials and disgustingly inefficient, but it was overengineered. And it did work. With a proper test program ..." With a proper test program he could measure the empirical effects, determine exactly what the necessary energy budget was, and how well he managed it, determine the exact performance of each component, improve those that needed improvement, and reduce the size of those which were too large or too massive for the task at hand, just as the Americans, and Russians, and British, and French had done over a period of decades, constantly refining their designs, making them more and more efficient, and because of that, smaller, lighter, simpler, more reliable, less expensive. This, Fromm thought, was the ultimate engineering discipline, and he was immeasurably grateful that he had finally gotten the chance to try his hand at it. This design was crude and heavy, no masterpiece of design. It would function--of that he was certain--but with time he could have done so much better....

  "Yes, I see. A man of your skill could reduce this entire unit to the size of a large bucket."

  It was a vast compliment. "Thank you, Herr Ghosn. Probably not that small, but small enough for the nose of a rocket."

  "If our Iraqi brothers had taken the time ..."

  "Indeed, there would be no Israel. But they were foolish, were they not?"

  "They were impatient," Ibrahim said, silently cursing them for it.

  "One must be cold and clearheaded about such things. Such decisions must be made on the basis of logic, not emotion."

  "Indeed."

  Achmed was feeling very poorly indeed. He'd made his excuses and taken his leave, heading off to see the Commander's own physician, as per orders from Qati. Achmed had little experience of doctors. It was, he thought, something to be avoided if possible. He'd seen combat action and seen death and wounds, but never to himself. Even that was preferable to his current situation. One could understand injury from a bullet or a grenade, but what had made him ill so quickly and unexpectedly?

  The doctor listened to his description of his condition, asked a few questions that were not entirely foolish, and noted that Achmed was a smoker--that had earned the fighter a head-shake and a cluck, as though cigarettes had anything to do with his situation. What rubbish, Achmed thought. Didn't he run six kilometers each day--or had, until very recently?

  The physical examination came next. The doctor placed a stethoscope on his chest and listened. Instantly, Achmed noted, the doctor's eyes became guarded in a way not unlike the expression of a courageous fighter who didn't wish to betray his feelings.

  "Breathe in," the physician ordered. Achmed did so. "Now, out slowly."

  The stethoscope moved. "Again, please." The procedure was repeated six more times, front and back.

  "Well?" Achmed asked when the examination was finished.

  "I don't know. I want to take you to see someone who understands these lung problems better."

  "I have no time for that."

  "You have time for this. I will talk to your Commander if necessary."

  Achmed managed not to grumble. "Very well."

  It was a measure of Ryan's own situation that he took no note of it, or more correctly that he was grateful for the diminished attention his wife accorded him. It helped. It took some of the pressure off. Maybe she understood that he just needed to be left alone for a while. He'd make it up to her, Jack promised himself. He sure as hell would, when he got it all back together. He was sure of that, or told himself that he was, though a distant part of his mind was less sure and announced the fact to a consciousness that preferred not to listen. He tried to cut back on the drinking, but with the reduced demands he could, he decided, get a little more sleep, and the wine helped him sleep. In the spring, when things warmed up, he'd get back into a healthier routine. Yeah, that was it. He'd jog. He'd take the time at work, at lunch he'd get outside with the rest of the local sweat squad and run around the perimeter road inside the CIA enclosure. Clark would be a good trainer for this. Clark was a rock. Better him than Chavez, who was disgustingly fit and singularly unsympathetic to those who failed to keep in good shape--doubtless a carryover from his time in the infantry, Ryan thought. Ding would learn as he got closer to thirty. That number was the great equalizer, when you stopped being young and had to face the fact that everything had limits.

  Christmas could have gone better, he thought, sitting at his desk. But it had been in the middle of the week, which meant that the kids were ho
me two full weeks. It also meant that Cathy had to miss time at work, and that was a little hard on her. She liked her work, and as much as she loved the kids, and as fine a mother as she was, she resented the time away from Hopkins and her patients. Strictly speaking, it wasn't fair for her, Jack admitted to himself. She, too, was a professional and a fine one, despite which she was the one who always got tapped with kid duty while he never got relief from his work. But there were thousands of eye surgeons, and even a few hundred professors of eye surgery, but there was only one DDCI, and that was that. Not fair, perhaps, but a fact.

  So much the better if he were able to accomplish something, Ryan told himself. Letting Elizabeth Elliot handle that damned newsie had been a mistake. Not that he'd expected much else from Marcus Cabot. The man was a drone. It really was that simple. He enjoyed the prestige that went with his post, but he didn't do anything. Ryan got most of the work, none of the credit, and all of the blame. Maybe that would change. He had the Mexican operation fully in hand, had taken that over entirely from the Directorate of Operations, and, by God, he'd get the credit for this. Maybe then things would get better. He pulled out the file for the operation and decided that he'd go over every detail, check every possible contingency. This one would work, and he'd make those White House bastards respect him.

  "Go to your room!" Cathy shouted at Little Jack. Both an order and an admission of failure. Then she walked out of the room, tears in her eyes. She was acting stupidly, shouting at the kids when she should be confronting her own husband. But how? What could she say? What if--what if it were true? Then what? She kept telling herself that it couldn't be, but that was too hard to believe. How else to explain it? Jack had never failed at anything in his life. She remembered with pride the fact that he'd risked his life for her and the children. She'd been terrified, the breath frozen in her throat, walking along the beach, watching her man advance toward men with guns, with his life and others in the balance. How could a man who had done that betray his own wife? It didn't make any sense.