“You’ve met him.” The Judge went on for a couple of minutes.
Jack leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. After a moment’s thought, he could see the face again. “God. And he’s getting us the information . . . But will we be able to use it?”
“He’s gotten us technical data before. Most of it we’ve put to use.”
“Do we tell the President this?” Jack asked.
“No. That’s his idea, not ours. He told us some time ago that he didn’t want the details of covert operations, just the results. He’s like most politicians—he talks too much. At least he’s smart enough to know that. We’ve had agents lost because presidents talked too much. Not to mention the odd member of Congress.”
“So when do we expect this report to come in?”
“Soon. Maybe this week, maybe as long as three—”
“And if it works, we can take what they know and add it to what we know . . .” Ryan looked out the window at the bare limbs of trees. “Ever since I’ve been here, Judge, I’ve asked myself at least once a day—what’s most remarkable about this place, the things we know or the things we don’t?”
Moore nodded agreement. “The game’s like that, Dr. Ryan. Get your briefing notes together. No reference to our friend, though. I’ll handle that if I have to.”
Jack walked back to his office, shaking his head. He’d suspected a few times that he was cleared for things the President never saw. Now he was sure. He asked himself if this was a good idea and admitted that he didn’t know. What filled his mind was the importance of this agent and his information. There were precedents. The brilliant agent Richard Sorge in Japan in 1941, whose warnings to Stalin were not believed. Oleg Penkovskiy, who’d given the West information on the Soviet military that might have prevented nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And now another. He didn’t reflect on the fact that alone in CIA, he knew the agent’s face but not his name or code name. It never occurred to him that Judge Moore didn’t know CARDINAL’s face, had for years avoided looking at the photograph for reasons that he could never have explained even to his deputy directors.
The phone rang, and a hand reached out from under a blanket to grab it. “H’lo.”
” ‘Morning, Candi,” Al Gregory said in Langley.
Two thousand miles away, Dr. Candace Long twisted around in her bed and stared at the clock. “You at the airport?”
“Still in Washington, honey. If I’m lucky, I’ll fly back later today.” He sounded tired.
“What’s happening anyway?” she asked.
“Oh, somebody ran a test, and I have to explain what it means to some people.”
“Okay. Let me know when you’re coming in, Al. I’ll come out to get you.” Candi Long was too groggy to realize that her fiancé had bent a rule of security to answer her question.
“Sure. Love ya.”
“Love you, too, honey.” She replaced the phone and re-checked the clock. There was time for another hour’s sleep. She made a mental note to ride into work with a friend. Al had left his car at the lab before flying east, and she’d ride that one out to pick him up.
Ryan got to drive Major Gregory again. Moore took General Parks in his Agency limo.
“1 asked you before: what are the chances that we’ll find out what Ivan is doing at Dushanbe?”
Jack hesitated before answering, then realized that Gregory would hear it all in the Oval Office. “We have assets that are working to find out what they did to increase their power output.”
“I’d love to know how you do that,” the young Major observed.
“No, you don’t. Trust me.” Ryan looked away from the traffic for a moment. “If you know stuff like that, and you make a slip, you could kill people. It’s happened before. The Russians come down pretty hard on spies. There’s still a story floating around that they cremated one—I mean they slid him into a crematorium alive.”
“Aw, come on! Nobody’s that—”
“Major, one of these days you ought to get out of your lab and find out just how nasty the world can really be. Five years ago, I had people try to kill my wife and kid. They had to fly three thousand miles to do it, but they came anyway.”
“Oh, right! You’re the guy—.”
“Ancient history, Major.” Jack was tired of telling the story.
“What’s it like, sir? I mean, you’ve actually been in combat, the real thing, I mean—”
“It’s not fun.” Ryan almost laughed at himself for putting it that way. “You just have to perform, that’s all. You either do it right or you lose it. If you’re lucky, you don’t panic until it’s all over.”
“You said out at the lab that you used to be a Marine . . .”
“That helped some. At least somebody bothered to teach me a little about it, once upon a time.” Back when you were in high school or so, Jack didn’t say. Enough of that. “Ever meet the President?”
“No, sir.”
“The name’s Jack, okay? He’s a pretty good guy, pays attention and asks good questions. Don’t let the sleepy look fool you. I think he does that to fool politicians.”
“They fool easy?” Gregory wondered.
That got a laugh. “Some of them. The head arms-control guy’ll be there, too. Uncle Ernie. Ernest Allen, old-time career diplomat, Dartmouth and Yale; he’s smart.”
“He thinks we ought to bargain my work away. Why does the President keep him?”
“Ernie knows how to deal with the Russians, and he’s a pro. He doesn’t let personal opinions interfere with his job. I honestly don’t know what he thinks about the issues. It’s like with a doc. A surgeon doesn’t have to like you personally. He just has to fix whatever’s wrong. With Mr. Allen, well, he knows how to sit through all the crap that the negotiations entail. You’ve never learned anything about that, have you?” Jack shook his head and smiled at the traffic. “Everybody thinks it’s dramatic, but it’s not. I’ve never seen anything more boring. Both sides say exactly the same thing for hours—they repeat themselves about every fifteen or twenty minutes, all day, every day. Then after a week or so, one side or the other makes a small change, and keeps repeating that for hours. The other side checks with its capital, and makes a small change of its own, and keeps repeating that. It goes on and on that way for weeks, months, sometimes years. But Uncle Ernie is good at it. He finds it exciting. Personally, after about a week, I’d be willing to start a war just to put an end to the negotiation process”—another laugh—”don’t quote me on that. It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry, tedious as hell, but it’s important and it takes a special kind of mind to do it. Ernie’s a dry, crusty old bastard, but he knows how to get the job done.”
“General Parks says that he wants to shut us down.”
“Hell, Major, you can ask the man. I wouldn’t mind finding out myself.” Jack turned off Pennsylvania Avenue, following the CIA limousine. Five minutes later, he and Gregory were sitting in the west wing’s reception room under a copy of the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware while the Judge was talking to the President’s national security advisor, Jeffrey Pelt. The President was finishing up a session with the Secretary of Commerce. Finally, a Secret Service agent called to them and led the way through the corridors.
As with TV studio sets, the Oval Office is smaller than most people expect. Ryan and Gregory were directed to a small sofa along the north wall. Neither man sat down yet; the President was standing by his desk. Ryan noted that Gregory appeared a little pale now, and remembered his own first time here. Even White House insiders would occasionally admit to being intimidated by this room and the power it contained.
“Hello again, Jack!” The President strode over to take his hand. “And you must be the famous Major Gregory.”
“Yes, sir.” Gregory nearly strangled on that, and had to clear his throat. “I mean, yes, Mr. President.”
“Relax, sit down. You want some coffee?” He waved to a tray on the corner of his desk. Gregory’s eyes nearly bugged out when the President got him a cup. Ryan did his best to suppress a smile. The man who’d made the presidency “imperial” again—whatever that meant—was a genius for putting people at ease. Or appearing to, Jack corrected himself. The coffee routine often made them even more uneasy, and maybe that was no accident. “Major, I’ve heard some great things about you and your work. The General says you’re his brightest star.” Parks shifted in his chair at that. The President sat down next to Jeff Pelt. “Okay, let’s get started.”