“I imagine a stiff shot of bourbon will kill it, too, Gus. I have patients to see.”
“How do you like regular clinical rounds, Alex?” Lorenz missed them, too.
“Good to be a real doc again. I just wish my patients had a little more hope. But that’s the job, ain’t it?”
“I’ll fax you data on the structural analysis on the samples if you want. The good news is that it seems pretty well contained,” Lorenz repeated.
“I’d appreciate it. See ya, Gus.” Alexandre hung up. Pretty well contained? That’s what we thought before . . . But then his thoughts shifted, as they had to. White male patient, thirty-four, gay, resistant TB that came out of left field. How do we stabilize him? He lifted the chart and walked out of his office.
“SO I’M TH E wrong guy to help with the court selections?” Pat Martin asked.
“Don’t feel too bad,” Arnie answered. “We’re all the wrong guy for everything.”
“Except you,” the President noted with a smile.
“We all make errors of judgment,” van Damm admitted. “I could have left with Bob Fowler, but Roger said he needed me to keep this shop running, and–”
“Yeah.” Ryan nodded. “That’s how I got here, too. So, Mr. Martin?”
“No laws were broken by any of this.” He’d spent the last three hours going over the CIA files and Jack’s die-
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tated summary of the Colombian operations. Now one of his secretaries, Ellen Sumter, knew about some rather restricted things–but she was a. presidential secretary, and besides, Jack had gotten a smoke out of it. “At least not by you. Ritter and Moore could be brought up on failure to fully report their covert activities to the Congress, but their defense would be that the sitting President told them to do it that way, and the Special and Hazardous Operations guidelines appended to the oversight statute give them an arguable defense. I suppose I could get them indicted, but I wouldn’t want to prosecute the case myself,” he went on. “They were trying to work on the drug problem, and most jurors wouldn’t want to hurt them for doing so, especially since the Medellin cartel came apart partly as a result. The real problem on that one is the international-relations angle. Colombia’s going to be pissed, sir, and with very good reason. There are issues of international law and treaties which applied to the activity, but I’m not good enough in that field to render an opinion. From the domestic point of view, it’s the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. The President is Commander-in-Chief. The President decides what is or is not in the country’s security interest as part of his executive powers. The President can, therefore, take whatever action he deems appropriate to protect those interests– that’s what executive power means. The brake on that, aside from statutory violations that mainly apply inside the country, is found in the checks and balances exercised by the Congress. They can deny funds to prevent something, but that’s about all. Even the War Powers Resolution is written in such a way as to let you act first before they try and stop you. You see, the Constitution is flexible on the really important issues. It’s designed for reasonable people to work things out in a reasonable way. The elected representatives are supposed to know what the people want, and act accordingly, again, within reasonable limits.”
The people who wrote the Constitution, Ryan wondered to himself, were they politicians or something else?
“And the rest?” the chief of staff asked.
“The CIA operations? Not even close to any sort of vi-
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olation, but again the problem is one of politics. Speaking for myself–I used to run espionage investigations, remember– Mr. President, what beautiful jobs they were. But the media is going to have a ball,” he warned.
Arnie thought that was a pretty good start. His third President didn’t have to worry about going to jail. The political stuff came after that, which was, for him, a first of sorts.
“Closed hearings or open?” van Damm asked.
“That’s political. The main issue there is the international side. Best to kick that one around with State. By the way, you’ve got me right against the edge here, ethically speaking. Had I discovered a possible violation against you in any of these three cases, I’d be unable to discuss them with you. As it is, my cover is to say that you, Mr. President, asked me for an opinion on the possible criminal violations of others, to which inquiry I must, as a federal official, respond as part of my official duties.”
“You know, it would be nice if everybody around me didn’t talk like a lawyer all the time,” Ryan observed crossly. “I have real problems to deal with. A new country in the Middle East that doesn’t like us, the Chinese making trouble at sea for reasons 1 don’t understand, and I still don’t have a Congress.”
“This is a real problem,” Arnie told him. Again.
“I can read.” Ryan gestured to the pile of clippings on his desk. He’d just discovered that the media graced him with early drafts of adverse editorials scheduled to run the next day. How nice of them. “I used to think CIA was Alice in Wonderland. That’s not even Triple-A ball. Okay, the Supreme Court. I’ve read over about half of the list. They’re all good people. I’ll have my selections this time next week.”
“ABA is going to raise hell,” Arnie said.
“Let ’em. I can’t show weakness. I’ve learned that much last night. What’s Realty going to do?” the President asked next.
“The only thing he can do, weaken you politically, threaten you with scandal, and force you to resign.” Arnie held his hand up again. “I’m not saying it makes sense.”
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“Damned little in this town does, Arnie. That’s why I’m trying.”
ONE CRUCIAL ELEMENT in the consolidation of the new country was, of course, its military. The former Republican Guards divisions would keep their identity. There had to be a few adjustments in the officer corps. The executions of previous weeks hadn’t totally expunged undesirable elements, but in the interest of amity, the new eliminations were made into simple retirements–the departure briefings were forcefully direct: Step out of line and disappear. It was not a warning to be disregarded. The departing officers invariably nodded their submission, grateful to be allowed to live.
These units had mainly survived the Persian Gulf War–at least a majority of their personnel had, and the shock of their treatment at American hands had been assuaged by their later campaigns to crush rebellious civilian elements, replacing part of their swagger and much of their bravado. Their equipment had b^en replaced from stocks and other means, and that would soon be augmented as well.
The convoys moved out of Iran, down the Abadan highway, through border checkpoints already dismantled. They moved under cover of darkness, and with a minimum of radio traffic, but that didn’t matter to satellites.
“THREE DIVISIONS, HhAVIES at that,” was the instant analysis at I-TAC, the Army’s Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center, a windowless building located in the Washington Navy Yard. The same conclusion was rapidly reached at DIA and CIA. A new Order of Battle assessment for the new country was already under way, and though it was not yet complete, the first back-of-the-envelope calculations showed that the UIR had more than double the military power of all the other Gulf states combined. It would probably be worse when all the factors were fully evaluated.
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“Headed where, exactly, I wonder,” the senior watch officer said aloud as the tapes were rewound.
“Bottom end of Iraq has always been Shi’a, sir,” a warrant officer area specialist reminded the colonel.
“And that’s the closest part to our friends.”
“Roge-o.”
MAHMOUD HAJI DARYAEI had much to think about, and he usually tried to do it outside, not inside, a mosque. In this case it was one of the oldest in the former country of Iraq, within sight of the world’s oldest city, Ur. A man of his God and his Faith, Daryaei was also a man of history and political reality who told himself that all came together in a unified whole that defined the shape of the world, and that all had to be considered. It was easy in moments of weakness or enthusiasm (the two were the same in his mind) to tell himself that certain things were written by Allah’s own immortal hand, but circumspection was also a virtue taught by the Koran, and he found he was able to achieve that most easily by walking outside a holy place, usually in a garden, such as this mosque had.
Civilization had started here. Pagan civilization, to be sure, but all things began somewhere, and it was not the fault of those who had first built this city five thousand years before that God had not yet fully revealed Himself. The faithful who had built this mosque and its garden had also rectified the oversight.