“Yeah, well, when it comes time to execute that klukker retard down in Mississippi, how much you want to bet he commutes the sentence?”
“Opposition to capital punishment is a matter of principle to him,”
Hendley pointed out. “Or so he says. Some people do feel that way, and it is an honorable opinion.”
“Principle? To him that’s the nice old lady who runs a grammar school.”
“If you want to have a political discussion, there’s a nice bar and grill a mile down Route 29,” Gerry suggested.
“No, that’s not it. Sorry for the digression, sir.”
This boy is holding his cards pretty close, Hendley thought. “Well, it’s not a bad subject for one. So, what can I do for you?”
“I’m curious.”
“About what?” the former senator asked.
“What you do here,” his visitor said.
“Mainly currency arbitrage.” Hendley stretched to show his weary relaxation at the end of a working day.
“Uh-huh,” the kid said, just a slight bit dubiously.
“There’s really money to be made there, if you have good information, and if you have the nerves to act on it.”
“You know, Dad likes you a lot. He says it’s a shame you and he don’t see each other anymore.”
Hendley nodded. “Yeah, and that’s my fault, not his.”
“He also said you were too smart to fuck up the way you did.”
Ordinarily, it would have been a positively seismic faux pas, but it was obvious from looking in the boy’s eyes that he hadn’t meant it as any sort of insult but rather as a question . . . or was it? Hendley suddenly asked himself.
“It was a bad time for me,” Gerry reminded his guest. “And anybody can make a mistake. Your dad even made a few himself.”
“That’s true. But Dad was lucky to have Arnie around to cover his ass.” That left his host an opening, which he jumped at.
“How’s Arnie doing?” Hendley asked, making the dodge to maneuver for time, still wondering why the kid was here, and actually starting to get a little uneasy about it, though he was not sure why he should feel that way.
“Fine. He’s going to be the new chancellor for the University of Ohio. He ought to be good at it, and he needs a calm sort of job, Dad thinks. I think he’s right. How that guy managed not to have a heart attack is beyond me and Mom both. Maybe some people really do thrive on the action.” His eyes never left Hendley’s through the entire discourse. “I learned a lot talking to Arnie.”
“What about from your father?”
“Oh, a thing or two. Mainly, I learned things from the rest of the bunch.”
“Who do you mean?”
“Mike Brennan for one. He was my Principal Agent,” Jack Jr. explained. “Holy Cross graduate, career Secret Service. Hell of a pistol shot. He’s the guy who taught me to shoot.”
“Oh?”
“The Service has a range on the Old Post Office Building, couple of blocks from the White House. I still get to go there occasionally. Mike’s an instructor in the Secret Service Academy now, up at Beltsville. Really good guy, smart and laid-back. Anyway, you know, he was my babysitter, like, and I used to ping on him about stuff, ask him what Secret Service people do, how they train, how they think, the things they look for while they’re protecting Mom and Dad. I learned a lot from him. And all the other people.”
“Like?”
“FBI guys, Dan Murray, Pat O’Day—Pat’s the Major Case Inspector for Murray. He’s getting ready to retire. Can you believe it, he’s going to raise beef cattle up in Maine. Funny damned place to punch cattle. He’s a shooter, too, like Wild Bill Hickock with an attitude, but it’s too easy to forget he’s a Princeton grad. Pretty smart guy, Pat is. He taught me a lot about how the Bureau runs investigations. And his wife, Andrea, she’s a mind reader. Ought to be, she ran Dad’s detail during a very scary time, master’s degree in psychology from University of Virginia. I learned a shitload from her. And the Agency people, of course, Ed and Mary Pat Foley—God Almighty, what a pair they are. But you know who the most interesting one of all was?”
He did. “John Clark?”
“Oh yeah. The trick was getting him to talk. I swear, compared to him, the Foleys are Desi and Lucy. But once he trusts you, he will open up some. I cornered him when he got his Medal of Honor—it was on TV briefly, retired Navy chief petty officer gets his decoration from Vietnam. About sixty seconds of videotape on a slow news day. You know, not one reporter asked what he did after he left the Navy. Not one. Jesus, they are thick. Bob Holtzman knew part of it, I think. He was there, standing in the corner, across the room from me. He’s pretty smart for a newsie. Dad likes him, just doesn’t trust him as far as he can sling an anchor. Anyway, Big John—Clark, I mean—he’s one serious honcho. He’s been there, and done that, and he has the T-shirt. How come he isn’t here?”
“Jack, my boy, when you come to the point, you do come to the point,” Hendley said, with a touch of admiration in his voice.
“When you knew his name, I knew I had you, sir.” A briefly triumphant look in the eyes. “I’ve been checking you out for a couple of weeks.”
“Oh?” And with that, Hendley felt his stomach contract.
“It wasn’t hard. It’s all on the public record, just a question of mix and match. Like the connect-the-dots things they give to little kids in their activity books. You know, it amazes me that this place never made the news—”
“Young man, if that’s a threat—”
“What?” Jack Jr. was surprised by the interruption. “You mean, blackmail you? No, Senator, what I meant to say is that there’s so much raw information lying around out there, that you have to wonder how reporters miss it. I mean, even a blind squirrel will find an acorn once in a while, y’know?” He paused for a moment before his eyes lit up. “Oh, I get it. You handed them what they expected to find, and they ran with it.”
“It’s not that hard, but it’s dangerous to underestimate them,” Hendley warned.
“Just don’t talk to them. Dad told me a long time ago: ‘A closed mouth gathers no foot.’ He always let Arnie do the leaks. Nobody else said anything to the press without Arnie’s guidance. I swear, I think the media was scared of that guy. He’s the one who lifted a Times reporter’s White House pass and made it stick.”
“I remember that,” Hendley responded. There had been quite a stink about it, but soon enough even the New York Times realized that having no reporter in the White House Press Room hurt in a very tender spot. It had been an object lesson in manners which had lasted for almost six months. Arnie van Damm had a longer and nastier memory than the media, which was quite something in and of itself. Arnold van Damm was a serious player of five-card-draw poker.
“What’s your point, Jack? Why are you here?”
“Senator, I want to play in the bigs. This here, I think, is the bigs.”
“Explain,” Hendley commanded. Just how much had the boy put together?
John Patrick Ryan, Jr., opened his briefcase. “For starters, this is the only building taller than a private residence on the sight line from NSA Fort Meade to CIA Langley. You can download satellite photos off the Internet. I printed them all up. Here.” He handed a small binder across. “I checked with the zoning offices, and I found out that three other office buildings were planned for this area, and all were denied construction permits. The records didn’t say why, but nobody made a fuss about it. The medical center down the road, however, got really nice finance terms from Citibank on their revised plans. Most of your personnel are former spooks. Your security people are all former military police, rank E-7 or higher. The electronic security system here is better than they have at Fort Meade. How the hell did you manage that, by the way?”
“Private citizens have a lot more freedom negotiating with contractors. Go on,” the former senator said.
“You never did anything illegal. That conflict-of-interest charge that killed your Senate career was a crock of shit. Any decent lawyer could have had it tossed right out of court on a summary judgment, but you rolled over and played dead on it. I remember how Dad always liked you for your brains, and he always said you were a straight shooter. He didn’t say that about all that many people on The Hill. The senior people at CIA liked working with you, and you helped with funding for a project some other folks on The Hill had a conniption fit over. I don’t know why it is, but a lot of people there hate the intelligence services. Used to drive Dad nuts, how every time he had to sit down with senators and congressmen over that stuff, had to bribe them with pet projects for their districts and stuff. Jeez, Dad hated that. Whenever he did it, he’d grumble for a week before and after. But you helped him a lot. You used to be pretty good working inside the Capitol Building. But when you had your political problem, you just caved in. I thought it was pretty hard to believe. But what I really had trouble swallowing was how Dad never talked about it at all. He never said a single word. When I asked, he changed the subject. Even Arnie never talked about it—and Arnie answered every question I ever hit him with. So, the dogs didn’t bark, y’know?” Jack leaned back, keeping his eyes on his host at all times. “Anyway, I never said anything either, but I sniffed around during my senior year at Georgetown, and I kept talking to people, and those folks taught me how to look into things quietly. Again, it’s not all that hard.”