“Next indicator, we’re seeing more organized activity within the Iranian military. Troops are training. We’re getting intercepts of tactical radio traffic. It’s routine, but there’s a lot of it. They had an all-nighter at Foggy Bottom to go over all this stuff. The Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Rutledge, set it up. He evidently ran the I and R division pretty ragged.” The State Department’s Office of Intelligence and Research was the smaller and much poorer cousin to the intelligence community, but in it were a handful of very astute analysts whose diplomatic perspective occasionally gave insights the intelligence community missed.
“Conclusions?” Jack asked. “From the all-nighter, I mean.”
“None.” Of course, Goodley could have added, but didn’t. “I’ll be talking to them in an hour or so.”
“Pay attention to what I and R says. Pay particular attention to–”
“Bert Vasco. Yes,” Goodley agreed. “He’s all right, but I’ll bet the seventh floor is giving him a pain in the ass. I talked to him twenty minutes ago. He says, are you ready, forty-eight hours. Nobody agrees with that. Nobody, ” CARDSHARP emphasized.
“But. . . ?” Ryan rocked back in his chair.
“But I won’t bet against him, boss. I have nothing to support his assessment. Our desk people at CIA don’t agree. State won’t back him up–they didn’t even give it to me; I got it from Vasco directly, okay? But, you know, I am not going to say he’s wrong.” Goodley paused, realizing that he was not sounding like every other NIO. “We have to consider this one, boss. Vasco has good instincts, and he’s got balls, too.”
“We’ll know quickly enough. Right or wrong, I agree that he’s the best guy over there. Make sure Adler talks to him, and tell Scott I don’t want him stomped, regardless of how it turns out.”
Ben nodded emphatically as he made a note. “Vasco gets high-level protection. I like that, sir. It might even encourage other people to make a gut call once in a while.”
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“The Saudis?”
“Nothing from them. Almost like they’re catatonic. I think they’re afraid to ask for any help until there’s a reason for it.”
“Call Ali within the hour,” the President ordered. “I want his opinion.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if he wants to talk to me, at any time, night or day, tell him he’s my friend, and I always have time for him.”
“And that’s the morning news, sir.” He rose and stopped. “Who ever decided on CARDSHARP, by the way?”
“We did,” Price said from the far end of the room. Her left hand went up to her earpiece. “It’s in your file. You evidently played a good game of poker in your frat house.”
“I won’t ask you what my girlfriends said about me,” the acting National Security Advisor said, on his way out the door.
“I didn’t know that, Andrea.”
“He’s even won some money at Atlantic City. Everybody underestimates him ’cause of his age. TRADER just pulled in.”
Ryan checked his agenda. Okay, this was about George’s appearance before the Senate. The President took a minute to review his morning appointment list, while a Navy mess steward brought in a light breakfast tray.
“Mr. President, the Secretary of the Treasury,” Agent Price announced at the side door to the corridor.
“Thank you, we can handle this alone,” Ryan said, rising from his desk as George Winston came in.
“Morning, sir,” SecTreas said, as the door closed quietly. He was dressed in one of his handmade suits, and was carrying a manila folder. Unlike his President, the Secretary of the Treasury was used to wearing a jacket most of the time. Ryan took his off and dropped it on the desk. Both sat on the twin couches, with the coffee table between them.
“Okay, how are things across the street?” Ryan asked, pouring himself some coffee, with the caffeine in this morning.
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“If I ran my brokerage house like that, the SEC would have my hide on the barn door, my head over the fireplace, and my ass in Leavenworth. I’m going to–hell, I’ve already started bringing in some of my administrative folks down from New York. There are just too many people over there whose only job is looking at each other and telling them how important they all are. Nobody’s responsible for anything. Damn it, at Columbus Group, we often make decisions by committee, but we make by-God decisions in time for them to matter. There are too many people, Mr. Pres–”
“You can call me Jack, at least in here, George, I–” The door to the secretaries’ room opened and the photographer came in with his Nikon. He didn’t say anything. He rarely did. He just snapped away, and the rubric was for everyone to pretend he simply wasn’t there. It would have been a hell of an assignment for a spy, Ryan thought.
“Fine. Jack, how far can I go?” TRADER asked.
“I already told you that. It’s your department to run. Just so you tell me about it first.”
“I’m telling you, then. I’m going to cut staff. I’m going to set that department up like a business.” He stopped for a second. “And I’m going to rewrite the tax code. God, I didn’t know how screwed up it was until two days ago. I had some in-house lawyers come in and–”
“It has to be revenue-neutral. We can’t go dicking around with the budget. None of us has the expertise yet, and until the House of Representatives is reconstituted–” The photographer left, having caught the President in a great pose, both hands extended over the coffee tray.
“Playmate of the Month,” Winston said, with a hearty laugh. He lifted a croissant and buttered it. “We’ve run the models. The effect on revenue will be neutral on the basis of raw numbers, Jack, but there will probably be an overall increase in usable funds.”
“Are you sure? Don’t you need to study all the–”
“No, Jack. I don’t need to study anything. I brought Mark Gant in to be my executive assistant. He knows computer modeling better than anybody I’ve ever met. He spent last week chewing through the–didn’t anybody ever tell you? They never stop looking at the tax system over
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there. Study? I pick up the phone, and inside half an hour I’ll have a thousand-page document on my desk telling me how things were in 1952, what the tax code then did in every segment of the economy–or what people think it did, as opposed to what they thought then that it did, or as opposed to what the studies in the 1960s said they thought that it did.” SecTreas paused for a bite. “Bottom line? Wall Street is far more complex, and uses simpler models, and those models work. Why? Because they’re simpler. And I’m going to tell the Senate that in ninety minutes, with your permission.”
“You’re sure you’re right on this, George?” POTUS asked. That was one of the problems, perhaps the largest of all. The President couldn’t check everything that was done in his name–even checking one percent would have been an heroic feat–but he was responsible for it all. It was that knowledge that had doomed so many Presidents to micro-managerial failure. “Jack, I’m sure enough to bet my investors’ money on it.”
Two pairs of eyes met over the table. Each man knew the measure of the other. The President could have said that the welfare of the nation was a matter of greater moment than the few billions of dollars Winston had managed at the Columbus Group, but he didn’t. Winston had built his investment house from nothing. Like Ryan, a man of humble origins, he’d created a business in a ferociously competitive environment on the basis of brains and integrity. Money entrusted to him by his clients had to be more precious than his own, and because it had always been so, he’d grown rich and powerful, but never forgotten the how and why of it all. The first important public-policy statement to be made by Ryan’s administration would ride on Winston’s savvy and honor. The President thought it over for a second, and then he nodded.
“Then run with it, TRADER.” But then Winston had his misgivings. It was instructive to the President that even so powerful a figure as the Secretary of the Treasury lowered his eyes for a second, and then said something quieter and less positive than his confident assertion of five seconds earlier.
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“You know, politically this is going to–”
“What you’re going to say to the Senate, George, is it good for the country as a whole?”
“Yes, sir!” An emphatic nod of the head.
“Then don’t wimp out on me.”
SecTreas wiped his mouth with the monogrammed napkin, and looked down again. “You know, after this is all over and we go back to normal life, we really have to find a way to work together. There aren’t many people like us, Ryan.”