Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

senior officer knows a few things about the subject, yes.”

“That was nicely phrased,” the President noted dryly. “I don’t want to

know any more about that subject, do I?”

“No reason for it right now, sir, no.”

“Goto?”

“Possibly one of his people. Actually the best indicator will be how their

police report it. If anything they tell us is at variance with what we’ve

learned from our own people, then we’ll know that somebody played with

the data, and not all that many people have the ability to order changes in

police reports.” Jack paused for a moment. “Sir, I’ve had another indepen-

dent evaluation of the man’s character.” He went on to repeat Kris Hunter’s

story.

“You’re telling me that you believe he had this young girl killed, and will

use his police to cover it up? And you already knew he likes that sort of

thing?” Durling flushed. “You wanted me to extend this bastard an olive

branch? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Jack took a deep breath. “Okay, yes, Mr. President, I had that coming.

The question is, now what do we do?”

Durling’s face changed. “You didn’t deserve that, sorry.”

‘ ‘Actually I do deserve it, Mr. President. I could have told Mary Pat to get

her out some time ago-but I didn’t,” Ryan observed bleakly. ‘ ‘I didn’t see

this one coming.”

“We never do, Jack. Now what?”

“We can’t tell the legal attache at the embassy because we don’t ‘know’

about this yet, but I think we prep the FBI to check things out after we’re

officially notified. I can call Dan Murray about that.”

“Shaw’s designated hitter?”

Ryan nodded. “Dan and I go back a ways. For the political side, I’m not

sure. The transcript of his TV speech just came in. Before you read it, well,

you need to know what sort of fellow we’re dealing with.”

“Tell me, how many common bastards like that run countries?”

“You know that better than I do, sir.” Jack thought about that for a mo-

ment. ‘ ‘It’s not entirely a bad thing. People like that are weak, Mr. President.

Cowards, when you get down to it. If you have to have enemies, better that

they have weaknesses.”

He might make a state visit, Durling thought. We might have to put him up

at Blair House, right across the street. Throw a state dinner: we’ll walk out

into the East Room and make pretty speeches, and toast each other, and

shake hands as though we’re bosom buddies. Be damned to that! He lifted

the folder with Goto’s speech and skimmed through it.

“That son of a bitch! ‘America will have to understand,’ my ass!”

“Anger, Mr. President, isn’t an effective way of dealing with problems.”

“You’re right,” Durling admitted. He was silent for a moment, then he

smiled in a crooked way. “You’re the one with the hot temper, as I recall.”

Ryan nodded. “I’ve been accused of that, yes, sir.”

“Well, that’s two big ones we have to deal with when we get back from

Moscow.”

“Three, Mr. President. We need to decide what to do about India and Sri

Lanka.” Jack could see from the look on Curling’s face that the President

had allowed himself to forget about that one.

Burling had allowed himself to semiforget another problem as well.

“How much longer will I have to wait?” Ms. binders demanded.

Murray could see her pain even more clearly than he heard it. How did

you explain this to people? Already the victim of a vile crime, she’d gotten it

out in the open, baring her soul for all manner of strangers. The process

hadn’t been fun for anyone, but least of all for her. Murray was a skilled and

experienced investigator. He knew how to console, encourage, chivvy infor-

mation out of people. He’d been the first FBI agent to listen to her story, in

the process becoming as much a part of her mental-health team as Dr.

Golden. After that had come another pair of agents, a man and a woman who

specialized more closely in cases of this type. After them had come two sep-

arate psychiatrists, whose questioning had necessarily been somewhat ad-

versarial, both to establish finally that her story was true in all details and to

give her a taste of the hostility she would encounter.

Along the way, Murray realized, Barbara Linders had become even more

of a victim than she’d been before. She’d built her self up, first, to reveal

herself to Clarice, then again to do the same with Murray, then again, and yet

once more still. Now she looked forward to the worst ordeal of all, for some

of the members of the Judiciary Committee were allies of Ed Kealty, and

some would take it upon themselves to hammer the witness hard either to

curry favor with the cameras or to demonstrate their impartiality and profes-

sionalism as lawyers. Barbara knew that. Murray had himself walked her

through the expected ordeal, even hitting her with the most awful of ques-

tions-always preceded with as gentle a preamble as possible, like, “One of

the things you can expect to be asked is-”

It took its toll, and a heavy toll at that. Barbara-they were too close now

for him to think of her as Ms. Linders-had shown all the courage one could

expect of a crime victim and more besides. But courage was not something

one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could

withdraw only so much before it was necessary to stop, to take the time to

make new deposits. Just the waiting, the not knowing when she would have

to take her seat in the committee room and make her opening statement in

front of bright TV lights, the certainty that she would have to bare her soul

for the entire world … it was like a robber coming into the bank night after

night to steal from her hard-won accumulation of inner resolve.

It was hard enough for Murray. He had built his case, had the prosecutor

lined up, but he was the one close to her. It was his mission, Murray told

himself, to show this lady that men were not like Ed Kealty, that a man was

as repulsed by such acts as women were. He was her knight-errant. The dis-

grace and ultimate imprisonment ol that criminal was now his mission in life

even more than it was hers.

“Barb, you have to hang in there, kid. We’re going lo gel tins hastanl, but

we can’t do it the right way unless …” He mouthed the words, putting

conviction he didn’t feel into them. Since when did politics enter into a crim-

inal case? The law had been violated. They had their witnesses, ihcir physi-

cal evidence, but now they were stuck in a holding pattern thai was as

damaging to this victim as any defense lawyer might be.

“It’s taking too long!”

“Two more weeks, maybe three, and we go to bat, Barb.”

“Look, I know something is happening, okay? You think I’m dumb? He’s

not out making speeches and opening bridges and stuff now, is he? Some-

body told him and he’s building up his case, isn’t he?”

“1 think what’s happening is that the President is deliberately holding him

in close so that when this does break, he won’t be able to fall back on a high

public profile as a defense. The President is on our side, Barb. I’ve briefed

him in on this case myself, and he said, ‘A criminal is a criminal,’ and that’s

exactly what he should have said.”

Her eyes came up to meet his. They were moist and desperate. “I’m com-

ing apart, Dan.”

“No, Barb, you’re not,” Murray lied. “You’re one tough, smart, brave

lady. You’re going to come through this. He’s the one who’s going to come

apart.” Daniel E. Murray, Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau

of Investigation, reached his hand across the table. Barbara Linders took it,

squeezing it as a child might with her father, forcing herself to believe and to

trust, and it shamed him that she was paying such a price because the Presi-

dent of the United States had to subordinate a criminal case to a question of

politics. Perhaps it made sense in the great scheme of things, but for a cop

the great scheme of things usually came down to one crime and one victim.

16

Payloads

The final step in arming the H-i 1/88-19 missiles necessarily had to await

official word from the nation’s Prime Minister. In some ways the final pay-

off was something of a disappointment. They had originally hoped to affix a

full complement of warheads, at least six each, to the nose of each bird, but

to do that would have meant actually testing the trans-stage bus in flight, and

that was just a little too dangerous. The covert nature of the project was far