“I have a request, if that is permitted.”
“What is that, sir?”
“MR. PRESIDENT, this is not a good idea,” Price objected a few minutes later.
“Good or not, we’re going to do it. Get it organized,” Ryan told her.
“Yes, sir.” Andrea Price withdrew from the room.
Koga watched the exercise and learned something else. Ryan was a man capable of making decisions and giving orders entirely without histrionics.
The cars were still at the West Entrance, and it was simply a matter of donning coats and getting into them. A total of four Suburbans U-turned in the parking area,
135
heading south, then east toward the Hill. The motorcade this time didn’t use sirens and lights, instead proceeding almost in accord with the traffic laws–but not quite. The empty streets made it easy for them to jump lights, and soon enough they turned left onto Capitol Street, and left again toward the building. There were fewer lights now in evidence. The steps had been cleared, allowing an easy climb up once the cars had parked and the Secret Service agents deployed. Ryan led Koga upwards, and presently they were both looking down into the now-empty bowl that had been the House chamber.
The Japanese Prime Minister stood erect at first. He clapped his hands loudly, once, to garner the attention of the spirits who, his religious beliefs told him, would still be here. Then he bowed formally, and said his prayers for them. Ryan was moved to do the same. There were no TV cameras present to record the moment–actually there were still a few network cameras about, but the evening news broadcasts were over, and the instruments stood idle, their crews in the control vans drinking coffee and unaware of what was taking place a hundred yards away. It took only a minute or two in any case. When it was over, an American hand was extended, and a Japanese hand took it, and two pairs of eyes came to an understanding that ministers and treaties could never really have achieved, and in the harsh February wind, peace was finally and completely made between two countries. Standing ten feet away, Andrea Price was glad that the White House photographer had come along, and the tears she blinked away from her eyes were not from the wind. Then she conducted the two men back down the steps and into separate cars.
“WHY DID TH EY overreact so?” the Prime Minister asked, before sipping her sherry.
“Well, as you know I have not been fully briefed,” the Prince of Wales replied, first qualifying himself, since he didn’t really speak for Her Majesty’s Government. “But your naval exercises did have the appearance of a threatening act.”
136
“Sri Lanka must come to terms with the Tamils. They’ve shown a regrettable reluctance to enter into substantive negotiations, and we were trying to influence them. After all, we have our own troops deployed as peacekeepers, and we don’t want them to be held hostage to the overall situation.”
“Quite so, but then, why don’t you withdraw your peacekeepers as the government requested?”
The Indian Prime Minister sighed tiredly–it had been a long flight for her, too, and under the circumstances a little exasperation was permissible. “Your Royal Highness, if we withdraw our troops and then the situation flares up yet again, we will face difficulties with our own Tamil citizens. This is truly a most unhappy situation. We attempted to help assuage a difficult political impasse, entirely at our own expense, but then the Sri Lankan government finds itself unable to take the remedial action necessary to prevent an embarrassment to my country, and a continuing rebellion in their own. Then the Americans interfere without any real cause, and only bolster the intransigence of the Sri Lankans.”
“When does their Prime Minister arrive?” the Prince asked. The substantive reply was a shrug, followed by verbiage. “We offered the chance to fly over together so that we might discuss the situation, but he regrettably declined. Tomorrow, I think. If his aircraft doesn’t malfunction,” she added. That national-flag carrier had all manner of technical problems, not to mention a long-lived security threat.
“If you wish, the ambassador can probably arrange a quiet meeting.”
“Perhaps that would not be entirely useless,” the Prime Minister allowed. “I also wish the Americans would get the proper spin on things. They’ve always been so hopeless on our part of the world.”
Which was the point of the exercise, the Prince understood. He and President Ryan had been friends for years, and India wanted him to be the intercessor. It would hardly have been the first time for such a mission on his part, but in all such cases the Heir Apparent was con-
137
strained to seek guidance from the government, which, in this case, meant the ambassador. Someone in Whitehall had decided that His Royal Highness’s friendship with the new American President was more important than a government-to-government contact, and besides, it would make the monarchy look good at a time when such appearances were both useful and necessary. It also gave His Highness an excuse to visit some land in Wyoming which was quietly owned by the Royal Family, or “the Firm,” as it was sometimes called by insiders.
“I see,” was as substantive a reply as he could make, but Britain had to take a request from India seriously. Once the brightest diadem in a world-spanning crown, that country was still an important trading partner, bloody nuisance though it might frequently be. A direct contact between the two heads of government might be embarrassing. The American harassment of the Indian fleet was not widely publicized, falling as it had toward the end of hostilities between America and Japan, and it was in everyone’s interest that things should remain that way. President Ryan had enough on his plate, his old friend knew. The Prince hoped that Jack was getting some rest. For the people in the reception room, sleep was just a defense against jet lag. For Ryan it was necessary fuel, and he’d need plenty for the next two days.
THE LINE WAS endless, the typical cliche. It stretched well beyond the Treasury building, and the far end of it was like the ragged end of a rope, with new people forming up and tightening into the line so that it appeared to generate itself out of air, constantly replenishing as its members moved slowly forward in the cold air. They entered the building in groups of fifty or so, and the opening-closing cycle of the doors was regulated by someone with a watch, or maybe just counting slowly. There was an honor guard, an enlisted member of each uniformed service. The Detail was commanded by an Air Force captain at the moment. They and the caskets stood still while the people shuffled past.
138
Ryan examined their faces on his office TV just after he came in, again before sunrise, wondering what they thought and why they’d come. Few had actually voted for Roger Durling. He’d been the number-two man on the ticket, after all, and he’d taken over the job only with the resignation of Bob Fowler. But America embraced her presidents, and in death Roger was the recipient of love and respect that had never seemed all that close to him in life. Some of the mourners turned away from the coffins to look around at the entry hall of a building which many had probably never seen before, using their few seconds of time there strangely to look away from the reason for their having come, then to go down the steps and out the East Entrance, no longer a line, but in groups of friends or family members, or even alone, to leave the city and do their business. Then it was time for him to do the same– more properly, to head back to his family, and study up for the tasks of the following day.
WHY NOT? THEY’D decided on arriving at Dulles. Lucky enough to find a cheap motel at the end of the Metro’s Yellow Line, they’d ridden the subway into town, and gotten off at the Farragut Square station, only a few blocks from the White House so that they could take a look. It would be a first for both of them–many firsts, in fact, since neither had ever visited Washington, the cursed city on a minor river that polluted the entire country from which it sucked blood and treasure–these were favored lines of the Mountain Men. Finding the end of the line had taken time, and they’d shuffled along for several hours, with the only good news being that they knew how to dress for cold, which was more than they could say for the East Coast idiots in the line with them, with their thin coats and bare heads. It was all Pete Holbrook and Ernest Brown could do to keep from cracking their jokes about what had happened. Instead they listened to what other people in line said. That turned out to be disappointing. Maybe a lot of them were federal employees, both men thought. There were a few whimpers about how sad it all was, how