“Can you take me right into the Fort? I’ll kick my little brother’s door down.”
“Might be out in the field.”
“Friday night? I’ll take the chance.” Robby’s real reason was that his conversation with the major had been his first talk with an Army officer in years. Now that he was a captain, the next step was making flag. If he wanted to make that – Robby was as confident as any other fighter pilot, but the step from captain to rear admiral (lower half) is the most treacherous in the Navy – having a somewhat broader field of knowledge wouldn’t hurt. It would make him a better staff officer, and after his CAG job, if he got it, he’d go back to being a staff puke again.
“Okay.”
The two-hour drive down from Travis Air Force Base to Fort Ord – Ord has only a small airfield, not large enough for transports – was an interesting one, and Robby was in luck. After two hours of swapping sea stories for war stories and learning things that he’d never known about, he found that Tim was just arriving home from a long night on the town. The elder brother found that the couch was all he needed. It wasn’t what he was used to, of course, but he figured he could rough it.
Jack and his bodyguard arrived at the Governor’s suite right on time. He didn’t know any of the Secret Service detail, but they’d been told to expect him, and he still had his CIA security pass. A laminated plastic ID about the size of a playing card with a picture and a number, but no name, it ordinarily hung around his neck on a chain like some sort of religious talisman. This time he showed it to the agents and tucked it back into his coat pocket.
The briefing was set up as that most cherished of political institutions, the working breakfast. Not as socially important as a lunch, much less a dinner, breakfasts were for some reason or other perceived to be matters of great import. Breakfasts were serious.
The Honorable J. (for Jonathan, which he didn’t like) Robert (call me Bob) Fowler, Governor of Ohio, was a man in his middle fifties. Like the current President, Fowler was a former state’s attorney with an impressive record of law enforcement behind him. He’d ridden the reputation of the man who’d cleaned up Cleveland into six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, but you didn’t go from that House to the White House, and the Senate seats in his state were too secure. So he’d become Governor six years before, and by all reports an effective one. His ultimate political goal had been formed over twenty years before, and now he’d made it to the finals.
He was a trim five-eleven, with brown eyes and hair showing the first signs of gray over the ears. And he was weary. America demands much of her presidential candidates. Marine Corps boot camp was a tryst by comparison. Ryan looked at a man almost twenty years his senior who for the past six months had lived on too much coffee and bad political-dinner food, yet somehow managed to smile at all the bad jokes told by people he didn’t like and, most remarkably of all, to make a speech given no less than four times per day sound new and fresh and exciting to everyone who heard it. He also had about as much appreciation of foreign policy, Ryan thought, as Jack did of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which wasn’t a hell of a lot.
“You’re Dr. John Ryan, I take it.” Fowler looked up from his morning paper.
“Yes, sir.”
“Excuse me for not getting up. I sprained my ankle last week, and it hurts like a son of a bitch.” Fowler waved to the cane beside him. Jack hadn’t seen that on the morning news broadcasts. He’d given his acceptance speech, danced around the stage… on a bum ankle. The man had sand. Jack walked over to shake hands with him.
“They tell me that you are the acting Deputy Director of Intelligence.”
“Excuse me, Governor, but the title is Deputy Director (Intelligence). That means I currently head one of the Agency’s principal directorates. The others are Operations, Science and Technology, and Administration. Admin is what it sounds like. The Ops guys gather data the old-fashioned way; they’re the real field spooks. The S and T guys run the satellite programs and other scientific stuff. The Intel guys try to figure out what Ops and S and T deliver to us. That’s what I try to do. The real DDI is Admiral James Greer, and he’s -”
“I’ve heard. Too bad. I hear he is a fine man. Even his enemies say he’s honest. That’s probably the best compliment any man can have. How about some breakfast?” Fowler fulfilled the first requirement of political life. He was pleasant. He was charming.
“Sounds okay to me, sir. Can I give you a hand?”
“No, I can manage.” Fowler used the cane to rise. “You are an ex-Marine, ex-broker, ex-history teacher. I know about the business with the terrorists a few years back. My people – my informants, I should say,” he added with a grin as he sat back down, “tell me that you’ve moved up the ladder at CIA very quickly, but they will not tell me why. It’s not in the press either. I find that puzzling.”
“We do keep some secrets, sir. I am not at liberty to discuss all the things you might like to know, and in any case you’d have to depend on others to tell you about me. I’m not objective.”
The Governor nodded pleasantly. “You and Al Trent had one pisser of a fight awhile back, but he says things about you that ought to make you blush. How come?”
“You’ll have to ask Mr. Trent that, sir.”
“I did. He won’t say. He doesn’t actually like you very much, either.”
“I am not at liberty to discuss that at all. Sorry, sir. If you win in November, you can find that out.” How to explain that Al Trent had helped CIA arrange the defection of the head of KGB – to get even with the people who had put a very close Russian friend of his in a labor camp. Even if he could tell the story, who would ever believe it?
“And you really pissed Beth Elliot off last night.”
“Sir, do you want me to talk like a politician, which I am not, or like what I am?”
“Tell it straight, son. That’s one of the rarest pleasures a man in my position has.” Ryan missed that signal entirely.
“I found Dr. Elliot arrogant and abusive. I’m not used to being jacked around. I may owe her an apology, but maybe she owes me one, too.”
“She wants your ass, and the campaign hasn’t even started yet.” This observation was delivered with a laugh.
“It belongs to someone else, Governor. Maybe she can kick it, but she can’t have it.”
“Don’t ever run for public office, Dr. Ryan.”
“Don’t get me wrong, sir, but there is no way in hell that I would ever subject myself to what people like you have to put up with.”
“How do you like being a government employee? That’s a question, not a threat,” Fowler explained.
“Sir, I do what I do because I think it’s important, and because I think I’m good at it.”
“The country needs you?” the presidential candidate asked lightly. That one rocked the acting DDI back in his chair. “That’s a tough answer to have to make, isn’t it? If you say no, then you ought not to have the job because somebody can do it better. If you say yes, then you’re an arrogant son of a bitch who thinks he’s better than everybody else. Learn something from that, Dr. Ryan. That’s my lesson for the day. Now let me hear yours. Tell me about the world – your version of it, that is.”
Jack took out his notes and talked for just under an hour and just over two cups of coffee. Fowler was a good listener. The questions he asked were pointed ones.
“If I read you right, you say you do not know what the Soviets are up to. You’ve met the General Secretary, haven’t you?”
“Well -” Ryan stopped cold. “Sir, I cannot – that is, I shook hands with him twice at diplomatic receptions.”
“You’ve met him for more than a handshake, but you can’t talk about it? That is most interesting. You’re no politician, Dr. Ryan. You tell the truth before you think to lie. It would appear that you think the world is in pretty good shape at the moment.”
“I can remember when it was in far worse shape, Governor,” Jack said, grateful for having been let off the hook.