by Marc Cameron
W16, the Secret Service command post located below the Oval Office, kept tabs on his whereabouts in the White House using pressure-sensitive pads installed under the carpeting. They knew exactly what time he walked across the floor and climbed into bed.
They did not know that Cathy had also been reading and was still awake. Fortunately, that meant he didn’t get to sleep for another twenty-five minutes . . .
He could have slept a little longer, but there was too much to do—and Gary Montgomery was meeting him early for a walk and talk around the White House grounds, before one of those inevitable pop quizzes that required Ryan’s full attention. Montgomery was the special agent in charge of PPD—the Secret Service Presidential Protection Detail. Most days, he was the innermost layer of many concentric rings that stood between Ryan and any would-be attacker. If things went bad, Montgomery was the person who shoved the President into the waiting armored Cadillac known as The Beast so he could be whisked away to safety. If things got worse than bad, Gary Montgomery’s body would be the last person they peeled off Ryan.
Both men knew it.
Montgomery was never maudlin, but he was not beyond pointing out the danger of certain endeavors Ryan was wont to drag his detail into. “I cannot protect you if you do that, sir,” really meant, “I’m with you, Boss, but your plan may well get us both killed.”
Along with being what Cathy called “linebacker large,” Montgomery was smart and capable and loyal. Ryan had come to depend on him not just for security, but for counsel from someone other than the political operatives who surrounded him.
Ryan was slated to attend a conference of polar nations in Fairbanks, Alaska, in a few days.
White House Advance, the military liaison officer, and agents of the Secret Service had already made three trips to the venue. Alternate routes had been planned, motorcade parking squared away, hospital trauma centers scouted, and local law enforcement liaised. A presidential lift was a complicated dance under the best of circumstances. Fairbanks, Alaska, was isolated enough from the rest of the United States that it qualified as an overseas trip.
An early walk with Montgomery would give the two men time to discuss any security concerns while providing a quiet excuse for exercise that might go a long way toward lowering their collective blood pressure. The good Lord knew Ryan could use a little of that.
Cathy felt him reach for his glasses and she gave a long, feline yawn. “I have to do a retinal procedure at nine. I could really use another half an hour . . .”
Ryan swung his feet over the edge of the bed, searching for his slippers. “Of course, my dear,” he said. His mind was wide awake, but his voice was still thick with sleep.
He brushed his teeth and then slipped into a gray jogging suit with the presidential seal on the jacket that he’d laid out the evening before.
“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.
“Looks like our walk and talk is going to have to wait,” Ryan said to Montgomery.
“You know where to find me, Mr. President.” He smiled, then left through the main door, presumably to go to his office in W16.
“Burgess and Adler are on their way,” Foley said. She was in her sixties, close to Ryan’s age, though she’d been a career intelligence officer, working the street during the iciest days of the Cold War while he was still in grad school. “I’ve looped in CIA and FBI as well.”
Ryan looked at his watch, a Rolex GMT Cathy had given him years before, and motioned toward the twin couches in the Oval.
“Please sit. I’ll see what I can do about rustling you up some coffee.”
Robbie Forestall, in his khaki work uniform, took a half-step forward. “I’ll take care of that, Mr. President. I took the liberty of putting the night steward on notice that you might be asking.”
“Very well,” Ryan said. “Looks like you all have me at something of a disadvantage.” He shot a narrow eye at van Damm. “It’s enough to call in the secretaries of state and defense along with the directors of CIA and FBI, but not enough to wake me?”
“My call,” the chief of staff said. “Mary Pat and I talked it over.”
Ryan took his customary seat in the Queen Anne chair beside the fireplace while Foley sat nearest him on the couch to his right. Van Damm took the couch opposite her. Forestall remained standing to meet the Navy steward when he came in with the coffee service.
Scott Adler, Bob Burgess, and the two directors arrived moments later. All of them knew that a call from van Damm was a call from the President and skipped whatever it was they had to skip to arrive as soon as humanly possible. Burgess still had a piece of tissue on his jaw he’d used to stanch a shaving cut.
The coffee arrived at about the same time as the FBI director. CIA director Jay Canfield brought up the rear.
As was his custom, Ryan poured the coffee for his guests. Mary Pat started her briefing while he worked.
“Mr. President, officers from the Chinese Ministry of State Security are actively looking for one of their top scientists. A man named Liu Wangshu has disappeared.”
The group nodded with varying levels of recognition. D/CIA Canfield had been briefed nearly as much as Foley, but the others were just being made aware of the situation along with the President. Some did, however, know of Liu.
“Engineering professor in Huludao,” Secretary of Defense Burgess said. “Where the Chinese are building some of their ballistic missile and fast-attack submarines.”
SecState Adler tapped his crossed knee while he peered over the top of his coffee cup. “I feel like the Chinese ambassador introduced him to me at an embassy function last year. The whole thing seemed highly choreographed. The ambassador wanted to demonstrate to us what intelligent scientists they have working for them. Liu is kind of an eccentric guy, if I remember right.”
Director Canfield nodded. “You could call him that.”
Burgess scoffed. “A blue dress shirt could be considered outside the norm to the powers that be in Chinese politics. Liu wears blue jeans, rolls up the sleeves of his paisley shirts, and keeps his hair over his collar.”
Adler nodded. “I distinctly remember thinking he was a Chinese Austin Powers.”
“You’re an apt judge of character,” Foley continued. “He’s made the news several times for dating much younger women. Behaviors that Beijing wouldn’t put up with for a minute but for the fact that he’s single-handedly responsible for the great leaps forward the PLAN has made in submarine technology over the past three years.”
“What kind of tech?” Ryan said. Submarine technology had been a pet project of his for years, since—a very long time ago.
“Propulsion engineering, Mr. President,” Canfield said. “Beyond that, we’re not exactly certain. We know both Beijing and the PLA-Navy brass have given Professor Liu three separate awards. One of them is the Order of the Republic—the highest in the country for someone not in the military—similar to our Medal of Freedom.”
The secretary of defense spoke up again. “China hasn’t had what you could really call a fighting Navy since the fifteenth century. And frankly, Mr. President, I’m not sure they do now. President Zhao is loud and proud about his growing fleet of technologically advanced submarines, but many of the details have yet to be confirmed. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying we underestimate him. We should just take him with a grain of salt.”
Ryan took a sip of his coffee—strong and black—and gave a contemplative nod. “We project our force with carrier groups. Beijing wants to rely on a weapon you can’t see but know is out there somewhere, hiding . . .” He shook his head. Acid from the coffee and a healthy dose of the unknown churned in his empty stomach. “And we like our submarines, too. They make for a pretty damned fine deterrent.”
“We know the Chi-Comms have a lot of diesels,” Burgess said. “Some purchased from Russia, some of them developed themselves. And, I have to admit, quieter than I
’d like them to be.”
“Some of their sub pens are in Huludao,” Ryan mused. “Where Professor Liu taught before he went missing. Do we suspect foul play?”
“The Chinese do,” Foley said. She glanced around the room, as if to assure herself that no one had snuck in since she last checked. “It goes without saying that this is extremely sensitive information.”
Ryan nodded for her to continue. In the end, he had to trust somebody, and if he could not trust the people around him now, all was lost anyway.
“Our sources tell us that one of the reasons Beijing is so proud of Professor Liu is that he is behind much of their engineering progress in the way of propulsion technology. By that I mean he designed it himself. So much of what they have, they’ve been given by the Russians or stolen from us and reverse-engineered. As Bob so bluntly pointed out, China’s naval exploits have caused them to lose a lot of face in the past few hundred years. Professor Liu is not only a genius, he is their genius, and I cannot understate the importance they place on that fact.
“I believe everyone here is familiar with VICAR, our asset in Russia.” Foley didn’t go into detail, but Ryan knew VICAR was Erik Dovzhenko, an SVR officer who assisted members of The Campus in thwarting an Iranian missile attack. According to Foley, Jack Junior knew the man well and trusted him completely, but father and son never spoke of it.
Foley gave a nod to Canfield.