THE ABC CORRESPONDENT, female and blond, had the name of Joy, which for some reason struck Ryan as utterly inappropriate to the day, but it was probably the name her parents had given her, and that was that. If Maria from CBS had been pretty, Joy was stunning, and perhaps a reason ABC had the top-rated morning show. Her hello handshake was warm and friendly–and something else that almost made Jack’s heart stop.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” she said softly, in a voice better suited to a dinner party than a morning TV news show.
“Please.” Ryan waved her to the chair opposite his.
“Ten minutes before the hour. We’re here in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to speak with President John Patrick Ryan,” her voice cooed to the camera. “Mr. President, it’s been a long and difficult night for our country. What can you tell us?”
Ryan had it down sufficiently pat that the answer came out devoid of conscious thought. His voice was calm and slightly mechanical, and his eyes locked on hers, as he’d been told to do. In this case it wasn’t hard to concentrate on her liquid brown eyes, though looking so deeply into them this early in the morning was disconcerting. He hoped it didn’t show too much.
“Mr. President, the last few months have been very traumatic for all of us, and last night was only more so. You will be meeting with your national security staff in a few minutes. What are your greatest concerns?”
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“Joy, a long time ago an American President said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Our country is as strong today as yesterday–”
“YES, THAT IS true.” Daryaei had met Ryan once before. He’d been arrogant and defiant then, in the way of a dog standing before his master, snarling and brave–or seemingly so. But now the master was gone, and here was the dog, eyes fixed on a beautiful but sluttish woman, and it surprised Daryaei that his tongue wasn’t out and drooling. Fatigue had something to do with it. Ryan was tired; that was plain to see. What else was he? He was like his country, the Ayatollah decided. Outwardly strong, perhaps. Ryan was a young man still, broad of shoulder, erect of posture. His eyes were clear, and his voice firm, but when asked of his country’s strength, he spoke of fear and the fear of fear. Interesting.
Daryaei knew well enough that strength and power were things of the mind more than the body, a fact as true of nations as of men. America was a mystery to him, as were America’s leaders. But how much did he have to know? America was a godless country. That was why this Ryan boy talked of fear. Without God, both the country and the man lacked direction. Some had said that the same was true of Daryaei’s country, but if that were true at all, it was for a different reason, he told himself.
Like people all over the world, Daryaei concentrated on Ryan’s face and voice. The answer to the first question was obviously mechanical. Whatever America knew about this glorious incident, they weren’t telling. Probably they didn’t know very much, but that was to be understood. His had been a long day, and Daryaei had used it profitably. He’d called his Foreign Ministry and had the chief of the America desk (actually a whole department in the official building in Tehran) order a paper on the working of the American government. The situation was even better than Daryaei had hoped. They could make no new laws, could levy no new taxes, could spend no new money until such time as their Congress was reconstituted, and that would require time. Almost all of their ministries were
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headless. This Ryan boy–Daryaei was seventy-two–was the American government, and he was not impressed with what he saw.
The United States of America had thwarted him for years. So much power. Even after reducing its might following the downfall of the Soviet Union–the “lesser Satan”–America could do things possible for no other nation. All it needed was political resolve, and though that was rare enough, the threat of it was ever daunting. Every so often the country would rally behind a single purpose, as had happened not so long before against Iraq, with consequences so startlingly decisive as compared with what little his own country had managed in a shooting war that had lasted nearly a full decade. That was the danger of America. But America was a thinner reed now–or rather, America was, if not quite headless, then nearly so. The strongest body was rendered crippled and useless by an injury to its neck, the more so from one to its head….
Just one man, Daryaei thought, not hearing the words from the television now. The words didn’t matter now. Ryan wasn’t saying anything of substance, but telling the man half a world away much with his demeanor. The new head of that country had a neck that became the focus of Daryaei’s gaze. Its symbolism was clear. The technical issue, after all, was to complete the separation of head from body, and all that stood between the two was the neck.
“TEN MINUTES TO the next one,” Arnie said after Joy left to catch her car to the airport. The Fox reporter was in makeup.
“How am I doing?” Jack disconnected the mike wire before standing this time. He needed to stretch his legs.
“Not bad,” van Damm judged, charitably. He might have said something else to a career politician, but a real politico would have had to field really tough questions. It was as though a golfer were playing against his handicap instead of a tour-pro partner, and that was fair, as far as it went. Most important, Ryan needed to have his confidence built up if he were to function at all. The presidency
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was hard enough at the best of times, and while every holder of that office had wished more than once to be rid of Congress and other agencies and departments as well, it was Ryan who would have to learn how indispensable the whole system of government was–and he’d learn the
hard way.
“I have to get used to a lot, don’t I?” Jack leaned against the wall outside the Roosevelt Room, looking up and down the corridor.
“You’ll learn,” the chief of staff promised him.
“Maybe so.” Jack smiled, not realizing that the activity of the morning–the recent activity–had given his mind something to shunt aside the other circumstances of the day. Then a Secret Service agent handed him a slip of paper.
HOWEVER. UNFAIR IT was to the other families, it was to be understood that the first priority had to be the body of President Durling. No fewer than four mobile cranes had been set up on the west side of the building, operating under the direction of hard-hatted construction foremen standing with a team of skilled workers on the floor of the chamber, much too close for safety, but OSHA wasn’t around this morning. The only government inspectors who mattered were Secret Service–the FBI might have had overall jurisdiction, but no one would have stood between them and their own mournful quest. There was a doctor and a team of paramedics standing by as well, on the unlikely chance that someone might have survived despite everything to the contrary. The real trick was coordinating the actions of the cranes, which dipped into the crater–that’s how it looked–like a quartet of giraffes drinking from the same water hole, never quite banging together due to the skill of the operators.
“Look here!” The construction supervisor pointed. In the blackened claw of a dead hand was an automatic pistol. It had to be Andy Walker, principal agent of Roger Durling’s Detail. The last frame of TV had shown him within feet of his President, racing to spirit him off the
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podium, but too late to accomplish anything more than his own death in the line of duty.
The next dip of the next crane. A cable was affixed around a block of sandstone, which rose slowly, twirling somewhat with the torsion of the steel cable. The remainder of Walker’s body was now visible, along with the trousered legs of someone else. All around both were the splintered and discolored remains of the oak podium, even a few sheets of charred paper. The fire hadn’t really reached through the pile of stones in this part of the ruined building. It had burned too rapidly for that.
“Hold it!” The construction man grabbed the arm of the Secret Service agent and wouldn’t let him move. “They’re not going anywhere. It’s not worth getting killed for. Couple of more minutes.” He waited for one crane to clear the path for the next, and waved his arms, telling the operator how to come in, where to dip, and when to stop. Two workers slipped a pair of cables around the next stone block, and the foreman twirled his hand in the air. The stone lifted.