It is not often appreciated how much intelligence services depend on the news media for their information. Part of it was functional. They were in much the same business, and the intelligence services didn’t have the brain market cornered. More to the point, Ryan reflected, the newsies didn’t pay people for information. Their confidential sources were driven either by conscience or anger to leak whatever information they let out, and that made for the best sort of information; any intelligence officer could tell you that. Nothing like anger or principle to get a person to leak all sorts of juicy
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stuff. Finally, though the media was replete with lazy people, quite a few smart ones were drawn by the better money that went with news-gathering. Ryan had learned which by-lines to read slowly and carefully. And he noted the datelines, as well. As Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he knew which department heads were strong and which were weak. The Post gave him better information, for example, than the German desk. The Middle East was still quiet. The Iraq business was finally settling out. The new arrangement over there was taking shape, at long last. Now, if we could just do something about the Israeli side … It would be nice, he thought, to set that whole area to rest. And Ryan believed it possible. The East-West confrontation which had predated his birth was now a thing of history, and who would have believed that? Ryan refilled his mug without looking, something that even a hangover allowed him to do. And all in just a brief span of years -less time, in fact, than he had spent in the Agency. Damn. Who would have believed it?
Now, that was so amazing that Ryan wondered how long people would be writing books about it. Generations, at least. The next week, a KGB representative was coming into Langley to seek advice on parliamentary oversight. Ryan had counseled against letting him in -and the trip was being handled with the utmost secrecy – because the Agency still had Russians working for it, and the knowledge that KGB and CIA had instituted official contacts on anything would terrify them (equally true, Ryan admitted to himself, of Americans still in the employ of KGB… probably). It was an old friend coming over, Sergey Golovko. Friend, Ryan snorted, turning to the sports page. The problem with the morning paper was that it never had the results of last night’s game .. .
Jack’s return to the bathroom was more civilized. He was awake now, though his stomach was even less happy with the world. Two antacid tablets helped that. And the Tylenol were working. He’d reenforce that with two more at work. By six-fifteen, he was washed, shaved, and dressed. He kissed his still-sleeping wife on the way out
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– was rewarded by a vague hmmm – and opened the front door in time to see the car pulling up the driveway. It troubled Ryan vaguely that his driver had to awaken far earlier than he to get here on time. It bothered him a little more who his driver was.
‘Morning, Doc,’ John Clark said with a gruff smile. Ryan slid into the front seat. There was more leg room, and he thought it would insult the man to sit in back.
‘Hi, John,’ Jack replied.
Tied it on again last night, eh, Doc! Clark thought. Damned fool. For someone as smart as you are, how can you be so dumb! Not getting the jogging in either, are you! he wondered, on seeing how tight the DDCI’s belt looked. Well, he’d just have to learn, as Clark had learned, that late nights and too much booze were for dumb kids. John Clark had turned into a paragon of healthy virtue before reaching Ryan’s age. He figured that it had saved his life at least once.
‘Quiet night,’ Clark said next, heading out the driveway.
‘That’s nice.’ Ryan picked up the dispatch box and dialed in the code. He waited until the light flashed green before opening it. Clark was right, there wasn’t much to be looked at. By the time they were halfway to Washington, he’d read everything and made a few notes.
‘Going to see Carol and the kids tonight?’ Clark asked as they passed over Maryland Route 3.
‘Yeah, it is tonight, isn’t it?’
‘Yep.’
It was a regular once-a-week routine. Carol Zimmer was the Laotian widow of Air Force sergeant Buck Zimmer, and Ryan had promised to take care of the family after Buck’s death. Few people knew of it – fewer people knew of the mission on which Buck had died -but it gave Ryan great satisfaction. Carol now owned a 7-Eleven between Washington and Annapolis. It gave her family a steady and respectable income when added to her husband’s pension, and, with the educational trust fund that Ryan had established, guaranteed that each of the eight would have a college degree when the time
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came – as it had already come for the eldest son. It would be a long haul to finish that up. The youngest was still in diapers.
‘Those punks ever come back?’ Jack asked.
Clark just turned and grinned. For several months after Carol took the business over, some local toughs had taken to hanging out at the store. They had objected to a Laotian woman and her mixed-race kids owning a business in the semi-rural area. Finally she had mentioned it to Clark. John had given them one warning, which they had been too dense to heed. Perhaps they’d mistaken him for an off-duty police officer, someone not to be taken too seriously. John and his Spanish-speaking friend had set things right, and after the gang leader had gotten out of the hospital, the punks had never come near the place. The local cops had been very understanding, and business had taken an immediate twenty-percent increase. / wonder if that guy’s knee ever came all the way back} Clark wondered with a wistful smile. Maybe now he’ll take up an honest trade . ..
‘How are the kids doing?’
‘You know, it’s kinda hard to get used to the idea of having one in college, Doc. A little tough on Sandy, too .. . Doc?’
‘Yeah, John?’
‘Pardon my saying so, but you look a little rocky. You want to back it off a little.’
‘That’s what Cathy says.’ It occurred to Jack to tell Clark to mind his own business, but you didn’t say that sort of thing to a man like Clark, and besides, he was a friend. And besides that, he was correct.
‘Docs are usually right,’ John pointed out.
‘I know. It’s just a little – a little stressful at the office. Got some stuff happening, and-‘
‘Exercise beats the hell out of booze, man. You’re one of the smartest guys I know. Act smart. End of advice.’ Clark shrugged, and returned his attention to the morning traffic.
‘You know, John, if you had decided to become a doc,
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you would have been very effective/ Jack replied with a chuckle.
‘How so?’
‘With a bedside manner like yours, people would be afraid not to do what you said.’
‘I am the most even-tempered man I know,’ Clark protested.
‘Right, noone’s ever lived long enough for you to get really mad. They’re dead by the time you’re mildly annoyed.’
And that was why Clark was Ryan’s driver. Jack had engineered his transfer out of the Directorate of Operations to become a Security and Protective Officer. DCI Cabot had eliminated fully twenty percent of the field force, and people with paramilitary experience had been first on the block. Clark’s expertise was too valuable to lose, and Ryan had bent two rules and outright evaded a third to accomplish this much, aided and abetted by Nancy Cummings and a friend in the Admin Directorate. Besides, Jack felt very safe around this man, and he was able to train the new kids in the SPO unit. He was even a superb driver, and as usual, he got Ryan into the basement garage right on time.
The Agency Buick slid into its spot, and Ryan got out, fiddling with his keys. The one for the executive elevator was on the end, and two minutes later, he arrived at the seventh floor, walking from the corridor to his office. The DDCI’s office adjoins the long, narrow suite accorded the DCI, who was not at work yet. A small, surprisingly modest place for the number-two man in the country’s premier intelligence service, it overlooked the visitor-parking lot, beyond which was the thick stand of pines that separated the Agency compound from the George Washington Parkway and the Potomac River valley beyond. Ryan had kept Nancy Cummings from his previous and brief stint as Deputy Director (Intelligence). Clark took his seat in that office, going over dispatches that pertained to his duties, in preparation for the morning SPO conference – they concerned themselves with which terrorist group was making noise at