“YOU’RE RUNNING LATE,” Don Russell said, as Pat O’Day dropped Megan off.
The FBI inspector continued past him, saw to Megan’s coat and blanky, then returned. “The power went off last night and reset my clock-radio for me,” he explained.
“Big day planned?”
Pat shook his head. “Desk day. I have to finish up a few things–you know the drill.” Both did. It was essentially editing and indexing reports, a secretarial function which
on sensitive cases was often done by sworn, gun-toting agents.
“I hear you want to have a little contest,” Russell said.
“They say you’re pretty good.”
“Oh, fair, I guess,” the Secret Service agent allowed.
“Yeah, I try to keep the shots inside the lines, too.”
“Like the SigSauer?”
The FBI agent shook his head. “Smith 1076 stainless.”
“The ten-millimeter.”
“It makes a bigger hole,” O’Day pointed out.
“Nine’s always been enough for me,” Russell reported. Then both men laughed.
“You hustle pool, too?” the FBI agent asked.
“Not since high school, Pat. Shall we set the amount of the wager?”
“It has to be serious,” O’Day thought.
“Case of Samuel Adams?” Russell suggested.
“An honorable bet, sir,” the inspector agreed.
“How about at Beltsville?” That was the site of the Secret Service Academy. “The outside range. Indoors is always too artificial.”
“Standard combat match?”
“I haven’t shot bull’s-eye in years. I don’t ever expect one of my principals to be attacked by a black dot.”
“Tomorrow?” It seemed a good Saturday diversion.
“That’s probably a little quick. I can check. I’ll know this afternoon.”
“Don, you have a deal. And may the best man win.” They shook hands.
“The best man will, Pat. He always does.” Both men knew who it would be, though one of them would have to be wrong. Both also knew that the other would be a good guy to have at your back, and that the beer would taste pretty good either way when the issue was decided.
THE WEAPONS WEREN’T fully automatic. A good machinist could have changed that, but the sleeper agent wasn’t one of those. Movie Star and his people didn’t mind all that much. They were trained marksmen and knew that full-auto was only good for three rounds unless
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you had the arms of a gorilla–after that, the gun jumped up and you were just drilling holes in the sky instead of the target, who just might fire back at you. There was neither time nor space for another round of shooting, but they were familiar with the weapon type, the Chinese knock-off of the Soviet AK-47, itself a development of a German weapon from the 1940s. It fired a short-case 7.62mm cartridge. The magazines held thirty rounds each. The team members used duct tape to double them up, inserting and ejecting the magazines to be sure that everything fit properly. With that task completed, they resumed their examination of the objective. Each of them knew his place and his task. Each also knew the dangers involved, but they didn’t dwell on that. Nor, Movie Star saw, did they dwell on the nature of the mission. They were so dehumanized by their years of activity within the terrorist community that, though this was the first real mission, for most of them, all they really thought about was proving themselves. How they did it, exactly, was less important.
“THEY’RE GOING TO bring up a lot of things,” Adler said.
“Think so?” Jack asked.
“You bet. Most-favored nation, copyright disputes, you name it, it’ll all come up.”
The President grimaced. It seemed obscene to place the copyright protection for Barbra Streisand CDs alongside the deliberate killing of so many people, but–
“Yeah, Jack. They just don’t think about stuff the same way we do.”
“Reading my mind?”
“I’m a diplomat, remember? You think I just listen to what people say out loud? Hell, we’d never get any negotiations done that way. It’s like playing a long low-stakes card game, boring and tense all at the same time.”
“I’ve been thinking about the lives lost…”
“I have, too,” SecState replied with a nod. “You can’t dwell on it–it’s a sign of weakness in their context–but I won’t forget it, either.” That got a rise out of his Commander-in-Chief.
“Why is it, Scott, that we always have to respect their
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cultural context? Why is it that they never seem to respect ours?” POTUS wanted to know.
“It’s always been that way at State.”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” Jack pointed out.
“If we lean too hard on that, Mr. President, it’s like being a hostage. Then the other side always knows that they can hang a couple of lives over us and use it to pressure us. It gives them an advantage.”
“Only if we allow it. The Chinese need us as much as we need them–more, with the trade surplus. Taking lives is playing rough. We can play rough, too. I’ve always wondered why we don’t.”
SecState adjusted his glasses. “Sir, I do not disagree with that, but it has to be thought through very carefully, and we do not have the time to do that now. You’re talking a doctrinal change in American policy. You don’t shoot from the hip on something that big.”
“When you get back, let’s get together over a weekend with a few others and see if there are any options. I don’t like what we’ve been doing on this issue in a moral sense, and I don’t like it because it makes us a little too predictable.”
“How so?”
“Playing by a given set of rules is all well and good, as long as everybody plays by the same rules, but playing by a known set of rules when the other guy doesn’t just makes us an easy mark,” Ryan speculated. “On the other hand, if somebody else breaks the rules and then we break them, too, maybe in a different way, but break them even so, it gives him something to think about. You want to be predictable to your friends, yes, but what your enemy needs to predict is that messing with you gets him hurt. How hurt he gets, that part we make unpredictable.”
“Not without merit, Mr. President. Sounds like a nice subject for a weekend up at Camp David.” Both men stopped talking when the helicopter came down on the pad. “There’s my driver. Got your statement?”
“Yeah, and about as dramatic as a weather report on a sunny day.”
“That’s how the game is played, Jack,” Adler pointed
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out. He reflected that Ryan was hearing a lot of that song. No wonder he was bridling at it.
“I’ve never run across a game where they never change the rules. Baseball went to a designated hitter to liven things up,” POTUS remarked casually.
Designated hitter, SecState wondered on his way out the door. Great choice of words. . .
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Ryan watched the helicopter lift off. He’d done the handshake for the cameras, made his brief statement for the cameras, looked serious but upbeat for the cameras. Maybe C-SPAN had covered it live, but nobody else would. Were it to be a slow news day–Friday in Washington often was– it might get a minute and a half on one or two of the evening news shows. More likely not. Friday was their day to summarize the week’s events, recognize some person or other for doing something or other, and toss in a fluff story.
“Mr. President!” Jack turned to see TRADER, his Secretary of the Treasury, walking over a few minutes early.
“Hi, George.”
“That tunnel between here and my building?”
“What about it?”
“I took a look at it this morning. It’s a real mess. You have any beefs about cleaning it up?” Winston asked.
“George, that’s a Secret Service function, and you own them, remember?”
“Yeah, I know, but it does come to your house, and so I thought I ought to ask. Okay, I’ll get it taken care of. Might be nice for when it rains.”
“How’s the tax plan coming?” Ryan asked, on his way to the door. An agent yanked it open and held it for him. Such things still made Jack uncomfortable. A man had to do some things for himself.
“We’ll have the computer models done next week. I really want the case tight on this one, revenue-neutral, easier on the little guy, fair on the big guy, and I have my
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people jumping through hoops on the administrative savings. Jesus, Jack, was I wrong about that!”
“What do you mean?” They turned the corner for the Oval Office.
“I thought I was the only guy pissing money away to work the tax code. Everybody does. It’s a huge industry. It’ll put a lot of people out of work–”
“I’m supposed to be happy about that?”
“They’ll all find honest work, except for the lawyers, maybe. And we’ll save the taxpayers a few billion dollars by giving them a tax form they can figure out from fourth-grade math. Mr. President, the government doesn’t insist that people buy buggy whips, does it?”