"Talk is cheap, especially for somebody in that business," Jack said. He still hadn't quite made the leap of imagination to include himself "in that business." "Probably just a blip, one more politician with a few too many drinks under his belt who had a bad day at the office or the track--"
"Or the geisha house," Kris Hunter suggested. She finished removing the makeup, then sat on the edge of the counter and lit a cigarette. Kristyn Hunter was an old-fashioned reporter. Though still on the sunny side of fifty, she was a graduate of Columbia's School of Journalism and had just been appointed chief foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Her voice was as dry as dust. "Two years ago that bastard put a move on me. His language would shock a Marine, and his suggestions were ... shall we say, eccentric. I presume you have information on his personal habits, Dr. Ryan?"
"Kris, never, ever, not even once will I discuss what personal stuff, if any, we have on foreign officials." Jack paused. "Wait. He doesn't speak English, does he?" Ryan closed his eyes, trying to remember what his briefing documents had said on that point.
"You didn't know? He can when it pleases him, but he doesn't when it doesn't. That day, it didn't. And his translator that day was a female, about twenty-seven. She didn't even blush." Hunter chuckled darkly. "I sure as hell did. What does that tell you, Dr. Ryan?"
Ryan had few doubts about the information that had come out of Operation SANDALWOOD. Despite that, it was very nice to hear this from a completely independent source. "I guess he likes blondes," Jack said lightly.
"So they say. They also say that he has a new one now."
"This is getting serious," Holtzman noted. "Lots of people like to fool around, Kris."
"Goto loves to show people how tough he is. Some of the rumors about Goto are downright ugly." Kris Hunter paused. "I believe them, too."
"Really?" Ryan asked with the utmost innocence. "Woman's intuition?"
"Don't be sexist," Hunter warned, too seriously for the mood of the moment.
Ryan's voice turned earnest. "I'm not. My wife has better instincts for judging people than I do. I guess it helps that she's a doc. Fair enough?"
"Dr. Ryan, I know you know. I know the FBI has been looking very discreetly at a few things out in the Seattle area."
"Is that so?"
Kris Hunter wasn't buying. "You don't keep secrets about this sort of thing, not if you have friends in the Bureau like I do, and not if one of the missing girls is the daughter of a police captain whose next-door neighbor is S-A-C of the FBI's Seattle Field Division. Do I need to go on?"
"Then why are you sitting on it?"
Kris Hunter's green eyes blazed at the National Security Advisor. "I'll tell you why, Dr. Ryan. I was raped in college. 1 thought the bastard was going to kill me. I looked at death. You don't forget that. If this story comes out the wrong way, that girl and maybe others like her could end up dead. You can recover from rape: I did. You can't recover from death."
"Thanks," Ryan said quietly. His eyes and his nod said even more. Yes, I understand. And you know that I understand.
"And he's the next head of that country's government." Kris Hunter's eyes were even more intense now. "He hates us, Dr. Ryan. I've interviewed him. He didn't want me because he found me attractive. He wanted me because he saw me as a blond-and-blue symbol. He's a rapist. He enjoys hurting people. You don't forget the look in the eyes once you've seen it. He's got that look. We need to watch out for this guy. You tell the President that."
"I will," Ryan said as he headed out the door.
The White House car was waiting just outside. Jack had something to think about as it headed for the Beltway.
"Softball," the Secret Service agent commented. "Except for after."
"How long you been doing this, Paul?"
"Fourteen fascinating years," Paul Robberton said, keeping an eye on things from the front seat. The driver was just a guy from the General Services Administration, but Jack rated a Secret Service bodyguard now.
"Fieldwork?"
"Counterfeiters. Never drew my weapon," Robberton added. "Had a few fair-sized cases."
"You can read people?"
Robberton laughed. "In this job, you'd better hope so, Dr. Ryan."
"Tell me about Kris Hunter."
"Smart and tough as nails. She's right: she was sexually assaulted in college, a serial rapist. She testified against the mutt. It was back when lawyers were a little ... free with how they treated rape victims. You know--did you encourage the rat, stuff like that. It got ugly, but she rode it out and they convicted the bum. He bit the big one in prison, evidently said the wrong thing to an armed robber. Pity," Robberton concluded dryly.
"Pay attention to what she thinks, you're telling me."
"Yes, sir. She would have been a good cop. I know she's a pretty fair reporter."
"She's gathered in a lot of information," Ryan murmured. Not all of it good, not yet pulled together properly, and colored by her own life experiences, but sure as hell, she had sources. Jack looked at the passing scenery and tried to assemble the incomplete puzzle.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
"The house," Ryan said, drawing a surprised look from Robberton. In this case, "the house" didn't mean "home." "No, wait a minute." Ryan lifted his carphone. Fortunately he knew the number from memory.
"Hello?"
"Ed? Jack Ryan. You guys busy?"
"We are allowed Sunday off, Jack. The Caps play the Bruins this afternoon."
"Ten minutes."
"Fair enough." Ed Foley set the phone back in its place on the wall. "Ryan's coming over," he told his wife. Damn it.
Sunday was the one day they allowed themselves to sleep. Mary Pat was still in her housecoat, looking unusually frowzy. Without a word she left the morning paper and walked off toward the bathroom to fix her hair. There was a knock at the door fifteen minutes later.
"Overtime?" Ed asked at the door. Robberton came in with his guest.
"I had to do one of the morning shows." Jack checked his watch. "I'll be on in another twenty minutes or so."
"What gives?" Mary Pat entered the room, looking about normal for an American female on a Sunday morning.
"Business, honey," Ed answered. He led everyone to the basement recreation room.
"SANDALWOOD," Jack said when they got there. He could speak freely here. The house was swept for bugs every week. "Do Clark and Chavez have orders to get the girl out yet?"
"Nobody gave us the execute order," Ed Foley reminded him. "It's just about set up, but--"
"The order is given. Get the girl out now."
"Anything we need to know?" Mary Pat asked.
"I haven't been comfortable with this from the beginning. I think maybe we deliver a little message to her sugar daddy--and we do it early enough to get his attention."
"Yeah," Mr. Foley said. "I read the paper this morning, too. He isn't saying friendly stuff, but we are laying it on them pretty hard, y'know?"
"Sit down, Jack," Mary Pat said. "Can I get you coffee or anything?'
"No, thanks, MP." He looked up after taking a place on a worn couch. "A light just went off. Our friend Goto seems to be an odd duck."
"He does have his quirks," Ed agreed. "Not terribly bright, a lot of bombast once you get through the local brand of rhetoric, but not all that many ideas. I'm surprised he's getting the chance."
"Why?" Jack asked. The State Department material on Goto had been typically respectful of the foreign statesman.
"Like I said, he's no threat to win the Nobel in physics, okay? He's an apparatchik. Worked his way up the way politicos do. I'm sure he's kissed his share of asses along the way--"
"And to make up for that, he has some bad habits with women," MP added. "There's a lot of that over there. Our boy Nomuri sent in a lengthy dispatch on what he's seen." It was the youth and inexperience, the DDO knew. So many field officers on their first major assignment reported everything, as though writing a book or something. It was mainly th
e product of boredom.
"Over here he couldn't get elected dogcatcher," Ed noted with a chuckle.
Think so? Ryan thought, remembering Edward Kealty. On the other hand, it might just turn out to be something America could use in the right forum and under the right circumstances. Maybe the first time they met, if things went badly, President Durling could make a quiet reference to his former girlfriend, and the implications of his bad habits on Japanese-American relations ...
"How's THISTLE doing?"
Mary Pat smiled as she rearranged the Sega games on the basement TV. This was where the kids told Mario and all the others what to do. "Two of the old members are gone, one retired and one on overseas assignment, in Malaysia, as I recall. The rest of them are contacted. If we ever want to--"
"Okay, let's think about what we want them to do for us."
"Why?" MP asked. "I don't mind, but why?"
"We're pushing them too hard. I've told the President that, but he's got political reasons for pushing, and he isn't going to stop. What we're doing is going to hurt their economy pretty bad, and now it turns out that their new PM has a real antipathy to us. If they decide to push back, I want to know before it happens."
"What can they do?" Ed Foley sat on his son's favorite Nintendo chair.
"I don't know that, either, but I want to find out. Give me a few days to figure out what our priorities are. Damn, I don't have a few days," Jack said next. "I have to prep for the Moscow trip."
"It takes time to set up anyway. We can get our boys the comm gear and stuff."
"Do it," Jack ordered. "Tell 'em they're in the spy business for-real."
"We need presidential authorization for that," Ed warned. Activating a spy network in a friendly country was not a trivial undertaking.
"I can deliver it for you." Ryan was sure that Durling wouldn't object. "And get the girl out, earliest opportunity."
"Debrief her where?" MP asked. "For that matter, what if she says no? You're not telling us to kidnap her, are you?"
Ouch, Jack thought. "No, I don't suppose that's a good idea. They know how to be careful, don't they?"
"Clark does." Mary Pat knew from what he'd taught her and her husband at the Farm, all those years ago: No matter where you are, it's enemy territory. It was a good axiom for field spooks, but she'd always wondered where he'd picked it up.
Most of these people should have been at work, Clark thought--but so did they, and that was the problem, wasn't it? He'd seen his share of demonstrations, most of them expressing displeasure with his country. The ones in Iran had been especially unpleasant, knowing that there were Americans in the hands of people who thought "Death to America!" was a perfectly reasonable expression of concern with the foreign policy of his country. He'd been in the field, part of the rescue mission that had failed--the lowest point, Clark told himself, in a lengthy career. Being there to see it all fail, having to scramble out of the country, they were not good memories. This scene brought some of it back.
The American Embassy wasn't taking it too seriously. Business as usual, after a fashion, the Ambassador had all his people inside the embassy building, another example of Frank-Lloyd-Wright-Meets-the-Siegfried-Line design, this one located across from the Ocura Hotel. After all, this was a civilized country, wasn't it? The local police had an adequate guard force outside the fence, and as vociferous as the demonstrators were, they didn't seem the sort to attack the severe-looking cops arrayed around the building. But the people in the street were not kids, not students taking a day off from class--remarkably, the media never reported that so many of those student demonstrations coincided with semester finals, a worldwide phenomenon. In the main, these were people in their thirties and forties, and for that reason the chants weren't quite right. There was a remarkably soft edge on the expressions. Embarrassed to be here, somewhat confused by the event, more hurt than angry, he thought as Chavez snapped his pictures. But there were a lot of them. And there was a lot of hurt. They wanted to blame someone--the inevitable them, the someone else who always made the bad things happen. That perspective was not uniquely Japanese, was it?
As with everything in Japan, it was a highly organized affair. People, already formed into groups with leaders, had arrived mostly by crowded commuter trains, boarded buses at the stations, and been dropped off only a few blocks away. Who chartered the buses? Clark wondered. Who printed the signs? The wording on them was literate, which was odd, he was slow to realize. Though often well schooled in English, Japanese citizens messed up the foreign tongue as much as one might expect, especially on slogans. He'd seen one young man earlier in the day wearing a T-shirt with the legend "Inspire in Paradise," probably an exact representation of something in Japanese, and yet another example of the fact that no language translated precisely into another. But not these signs. The syntax was perfect in every case he saw, better, in fact, than he might have seen in an American demonstration. Wasn't that interesting?
Well, what the hell, he thought. I'm a journalist, right?
"Excuse me," John said, touching a middle.-aged man on the arm.
"Yes?" The man turned in surprise. He was nicely turned out, wore a dark suit, and his tie was neatly knotted in the collar of his white shirt. There wasn't even much anger on his face, nor any emotion that might have built up from the spirit of the moment. "Who are you?"
"I am a Russian journalist, for the Interfax News Agency," Clark said, showing an ID card marked in Cyrillic.
"Ah." The man smiled and bowed politely. Clark returned the gesture correctly, drawing an approving look for his good manners.
"May I please ask you some questions?"
"Certainly." The man almost seemed relieved to be able to stop shouting. A few questions established that he was thirty-seven, married with one child, a salaryman for an auto company, currently laid off, and very upset with America at the moment--though not at all unhappy with Russia, he added quickly.
He's embarrassed by all this, John thought, thanking the man for his opinion.
"What was that all about?" Chavez asked quietly from behind his camera.
"Russkiy," "Klerk" replied sharply.
"Da, tovarisch."
"Follow me," "Ivan Sergeyevich" said next, entering the crowd. There was something else odd, he thought, something he wasn't quite getting. Ten meters into the crowd, it was clear. The people at the periphery of the mob were supervisory. The inside was composed of blue-collar workers, more casually dressed, people with less dignity to lose. Here the mood was different. The looks he got were angrier, and though they became more polite when he identified himself as a non-American, the suspicion was real, and the answers to his questions, when he got answers, were less circumspect than he'd received before.
In due course the people moved off, guided by their senior leadership and shepherded by police to another place, one that had a stage prepared. That was where things changed.
Hiroshi Goto took his time, making them wait a long time even for an environment in which patience was a thoroughly inculcated virtue. He walked to the podium with dignity, noting the presence of his official entourage, arrayed in seats on the back of the stage. The TV cameras were already in place, and it was just a matter of waiting for the crowd to pack in tight. But he waited longer than that, standing there, staring at them, with his inaction forcing them to pack in tighter, and the additional time merely added to the tension.
Clark could feel it now. Perhaps the strangeness of the event was inevitable. These were highly civilized people, members of a society so ordered as to seem alien, whose gentle manners and generous hospitality contrasted starkly with their suspicion of foreigners. Clark's fear started as a distant whisper, a warning that something was changing, though his trained powers of observation caught nothing at all beyond the usual bullshit of politicians all over the world. A man who'd faced combat in Vietnam and even more danger all over the world, he was again a stranger in a strange land, but his age and experience worked against him.
Even the angry ones in the middle of the crowd hadn't been all that nasty--and, hell, did you expect a man to be happy when he's been laid off? So it wasn't all that big a deal--was it?
But the whispers grew louder as Goto took a sip of water, still making them wait, waving with his arms to draw his audience in closer, though this portion of the park was already jammed with people. How many? John wondered. Ten thousand? Fifteen? The crowd grew quiet of its own accord now, hardly making any noise at all. A few looks explained it. Those on the periphery were wearing armbands on their suit coats--damn, John swore at himself, that was their uniform of the day. The ordinary workers would automatically defer to those who dressed and acted like supervisors, and the armbands were herding them in closer. Perhaps there was some other sign that hushed them down, but if so Clark missed it.
Goto began talking quietly, which stilled the crowd completely. Heads automatically leaned forward a few inches in an instinctive effort to catch his words.
Damn, I wish we'd had more time to learn the language, both CIA officers thought. Ding was catching on, his superior saw, changing lenses and locking in on individual faces.
"They're getting tense," Chavez noted quietly in Russian as he read the expressions.
Clark could see it from their posture as Goto spoke on. He could catch only a few words, perhaps the odd phrase or two, basically the meaningless things that all languages had, the rhetorical devices a politician used to express humility and respect for his audience. The first roar of approval from the crowd came as a surprise, and the spectators were so tightly packed that they had to jostle one another to applaud. His gaze shifted to Goto. It was too far. Clark reached into Ding's tote bag, and selected a camera body to which he attached a long lens, the better to read the speaker's face as he accepted the approval of the people, waiting for their applause to subside before he moved on.
Really working the crowd, aren't we?
He tried to hide it, Clark saw, but he was a politician and though they had good acting skills, they fed off their audience even more hungrily than those who worked before cameras for a living. Goto's hand gestures picked up in intensity, and so did his voice.
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