The oil field was ultimately more important to his country, the general knew. Already, ships were fighting their way through the late-spring ice, shepherded by navy icebreakers like the Yamal and Rossiya, to deliver the drilling equipment needed to commence proper exploration for later production. But Bondarenko had been well briefed on this subject. This oil field was no pipe dream. It was the economic salvation of his country, a way to inject huge quantities of hard currency into Russia, money to buy the things it needed to smash its way into the twenty-first century, money to pay the workers who’d striven so hard and so long for the prosperity they and their country deserved.
And it was Bondarenko’s job to guard it. Meanwhile, army engineers were furiously at work building harbor facilities so that the cargo ships would be able to land what cargo they had. The use of amphibious-warfare ships, so that the Russian navy could land the cargo on the beaches as though it were battle gear, had been examined but discarded. In many cases, the cargo to be landed was larger than the main battle tanks of the Russian army, a fact which had both surprised and impressed the commanding general of the Far East Military District.
One consequence of all this was that most of Bondarenko’s engineers had been stripped away for one project or another, leaving him with a few battalions organically attached to his fighting formations. And he had uses of his own for those engineers, the general grumbled. There were several places on the Chinese border where a couple of regiments could put together some very useful obstacles against invading mechanized forces. But they’d be visible, and too obviously intended to be used against Chinese forces, Moscow had told him, not caring, evidently, that the only way they could be used against the People’s Liberation Army was if that army decided to come north and liberate Russia!
What was it about politicians? Bondarenko thought. Even the ones in America were the same, so he’d been told by American officers he’d met. Politicians didn’t really care much about what something did, but they cared a great deal about what it appeared to do. In that sense, all politicians of whatever political tilt all over the world were communists, Bondarenko thought with an amused grunt, more interested in show than reality.
“When will they be finished?” the general-colonel asked.
“They’ve made amazing progress,” Colonel Aliyev replied. “The routes will be fully roughed in—oh, another month or six weeks, depending on weather. The finishing work will take much longer.”
“You know what worries me?”
“What is that, Comrade General?” the operations officer asked.
“We’ve built an invasion route. For the first time, the Chinese could jump across the border and make good time to the north Siberian coast.” Before, the natural obstacles—mainly the wooded nature of the terrain—would have made that task difficult to the point of impossibility. But now there was a way to get there, and a reason to go there as well. Siberia now truly was something it had often been thought to be, a treasure house of cosmic proportions. Treasure house, Bondarenko thought. And I am the keeper of the keys. He walked back to his helicopter to complete his tour of the route being carved out by army engineers.
C H A P T E R – 36
SORGE
Reports
President Ryan awoke just before six in the morning. The Secret Service preferred that he keep the shades closed, thus blocking the windows, but Ryan had never wanted to sleep in a coffin, even a large one, and so when he awoke momentarily at such times as 3:53 he preferred to see some sort of light outside the window, even if only the taillights of a patrolling police car or a lonely taxicab. Over the years, he’d become accustomed to waking early. That surprised him. As a boy, he’d always preferred to sleep late, especially on weekends. But Cathy had been the other way, like most doctors, and especially most SURGEONs: early to rise, and get to the hospital, so that when you worked on a patient you had all day to see how he or she tolerated the procedure.
So, maybe he’d picked it up from her, and in some sort of perverse one-upmanship he’d come to open his eyes even earlier. Or maybe it was a more recently acquired habit in this damned place, Jack thought, as he slid off the bed and padded off to the bathroom as another damned day started, this one like so many others, too damned early. What the hell was the matter? the President wondered. Why was it that he didn’t need sleep as much anymore? Hell, sleep was one of the very few pure pleasures given to man on earth, and all he wanted was just a little more of it…
But he couldn’t have it. It was just short of six in the morning, Jack told himself as he looked out the window. Milkmen were up, as were paperboys. Mailmen were in their sorting rooms, and in other places people who had worked through the night were ending their working days.
That included a lot of people right here in the White House: protective troops in the Secret Service, domestic staff, some people Ryan knew by sight but not by name, which fact shamed him somewhat. They were his people, after all, and he was supposed to know about them, know their names well enough to speak them when he saw the owners thereof—but there were just too many of them for him to know. Then there were the uniformed people in the White House Military Office—called Wham-o by insiders—who supplemented the Office of Signals. There was, in fact, a small army of men and women who existed only to serve John Patrick Ryan—and through him the country as a whole, or that was the theory. What the hell, he thought, looking out the window. It was light enough to see. The streetlights were clicking off as their photoelectric sensors told them the sun was coming up. Jack pulled on his old Naval Academy robe, stepped into his slippers—he’d only gotten them recently; at home he just walked around barefoot, but a President couldn’t do that in front of the troops, could he?—and moved quietly into the corridor.
There must have been some sort of bug or motion sensor close to the bedroom door, Jack thought. He never managed to surprise anyone when he came out into the upstairs corridor unexpectedly. The heads always seemed to be looking in his direction and there was the instant morning race to see who could greet him first.
The first this time was one of the senior Secret Service troops, head of the night crew. Andrea Price-O’Day was still at her home in Maryland, probably dressed and ready to head out the door—what shitty hours these people worked on his behalf, Jack reminded himself—for the hourlong drive into D.C. And with luck she’d make it home— when? Tonight? That depended on his schedule for today, and he couldn’t remember offhand what he had happening.
“Coffee, boss?” one of the younger agents asked.
“Sounds like a winner, Charlie.” Ryan followed him, yawning. He ended up in the Secret Service guard post for this floor, a walk-in closet, really, with a TV and a coffeepot—probably stocked by the kitchen staff—and some munchies to help the people get through the night.
“When did you come on duty?” POTUS asked.
“Eleven, sir,” Charlie Malone answered.
“Boring duty?”
“Could be worse. At least I’m not working the bad-check detail in Omaha anymore.”
“Oh, yeah,” agreed Joe Hilton, another one of the young agents on the deathwatch.
“I bet you played ball,” Jack observed.
Hilton nodded. “Outside linebacker, sir. Florida State University. Not big enough for the pros, though.”
Only about two-twenty, and it’s all lean meat, Jack thought. Young Special Agent Hilton looked like a fundamental force of nature.
“Better off playing baseball. You make a good living, work fifteen years, maybe more, and you’re healthy at the end of it.”
“Well, maybe I’ll train my boy to be an outfielder,” Hilton said.
“How old?” Ryan asked, vaguely remembering that Hilton was a recent father. His wife was a lawyer at the Justice Department, wasn’t she?
“Three months. Sleeping through the night now, Mr. President. Good of you to ask.”
I wish they’d just call me Jack. I’m not God, am I? But that was about as likely as his calling his commanding general Bobby-Ray back when he’d been Second Lieutenant John P. Ryan, USMC.
“Anything interesting happen during the night?”
“Sir, CNN covered the departure of our diplomats from Beijing, but that just showed the airplane taking off.”
“I think they just send the cameras down halfway hoping the airplane’ll blow up so that they’ll have tape of it—you know, like when the chopper comes to lift me out of here.” Ryan sipped his coffee. These junior Secret Service agents were probably a little uneasy to have “The Boss,” as he was known within the Service, talking with them as if he and they were normal people. If so, Jack thought, tough shit. He wasn’t going to turn into Louis XIV just to make them happy. Besides, he wasn’t as good-looking as Leonardo DiCaprio, at least according to Sally, who thought that young actor was the cat’s ass.