“And so, what conclusion did you reach?”
“You would have been a good president, Senator, but losing your wife and kids was a big hit. We were all busted up about that. Mom really liked your wife. Please excuse me for bringing it up, sir. That’s why you left politics, but I think you’re too much of a patriot to forget about your country, and I think Hendley Associates is your way of serving your country—but off the books, like. I remember Dad and Mr. Clark talking over drinks upstairs one night—my senior year of high school, it was. I didn’t catch much of it. They didn’t want me there, and so I went back to watching the History Channel. Coincidence, they had a show about SOE that night, the British Special Operations Executive from World War Two. They were mostly bankers. ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan recruited lawyers to start up the OSS, but the Brits used bankers to screw over people. I wondered why, and Dad said bankers are smarter. They know how to make money in the real world, whereas lawyers aren’t quite as smart—that’s what Dad said, anyway. I guess he figured that’s what he did. With his trading background, I mean. But you’re a different sort of pirate, Senator. I think you’re a spook, and I think Hendley Associates is a privately funded spook shop that works off the books—completely outside the federal budget process. So, you don’t have to worry about senators and congress-critters snooping around and leaking stuff because they think you do bad things. Hell, I did a Google search and there’s only six mentions of your company on the Internet. You know, there’s more pieces than that about my mom’s hairstyle. Women’s Wear Daily used to like clobbering her. Really pissed Dad off.”
“I remember.” Jack Ryan, Sr., had once cut loose in front of reporters on that issue, and paid the price of being laughed at by the chattering classes. “He talked to me about how Henry VIII would have given the reporters some special haircuts for that”
“Yeah, with an ax at the Tower of London. Sally used to laugh about it some. She needled Mom about her hair, too. I guess that’s one nice thing about being a man, eh?”
“That and shoes. My wife didn’t like Manolo Blahniks. She liked sensible shoes, the sort that didn’t make her feet hurt,” Hendley said, remembering, and then running into a concrete wall. It still hurt to talk about her. It probably always would, but at least the pain did affirm his love for her, and that was something. Much as he loved her memory, he could not smile in public about her. Had he remained in politics, he’d have had to do that, pretend that he’d gotten over it, that his love was undying but also unhurtful. Yeah, sure. One more price of political life was giving up your humanity along with your manhood. And it was not worth that price. Even to be President of the United States. One of the reasons why he and Jack Ryan, Sr., had always gotten along was that they were so alike.
“You really think this is an intelligence agency?” he asked his guest as lightly as the situation allowed.
“Yes, sir, I do. If NSA, say, pays attention to what the big central banks are doing, you are ideally located to take advantage of the signals-intelligence they gather and cross-deck to Langley. Must give your currency-trading troops the best sort of insider information, and if you play your cards carefully—that is, if you don’t get greedy—you can make a ton of long-term money without anybody really noticing. You do that by not attracting investors. They’d talk way too much. So, that activity funds the things you do here. Exactly what it is you do, that I have not speculated on very much.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes, sir, that is a fact.”
“You haven’t talked to your father about this?”
“No, sir.” Jack Jr. shook his head. “He’d just blow it off. Dad told me a lot when I asked, but not stuff like this.”
“What did he tell you?”
“People stuff. You know, dealing with politicians, which foreign president likes little girls or little boys. Jeez, a lot of that going around, especially overseas. What sort of people they were, how they think, what their individual priorities and eccentricities are. Which country took good care of its military. Which country’s spook services were good, and which ones were not. A lot of things about the people on The Hill. The sort of stuff you read in books or the papers, except what Dad told me was the real shit. I knew not to repeat it anywhere,” the young Ryan assured his host.
“Even in school?”
“Nothing I didn’t see in the Post first. The papers are pretty good about finding stuff out, but they’re too quick to repeat damaging things about people they don’t like, and they frequently don’t publish stuff about people they do like. I guess the news business is pretty much the same as women trading gossip over the phone or the card table. Less a matter of hard facts than sniping at people you don’t care for.”
“They’re as human as everybody else.”
“Yes, sir, they are. But when my mom operates on somebody’s eyes, she doesn’t care if she likes the person or not. She swore an oath to play her game by the rules. Dad’s the same way. That’s how they raised me to be,” John Patrick Ryan, Jr., concluded. “Same thing every dad tells every son: If you’re going to do it, do it right or don’t do it at all.”
“Not everybody thinks that way anymore,” Hendley pointed out, though he’d told his two sons, George and Foster, exactly the same thing.
“Maybe so, Senator, but that’s not my fault”
“What do you know about the trading business?” Hendley asked.
“I know the basics. I can talk the talk, but I haven’t learned the nitty-gritty enough to walk the walk.”
“And your degree from Georgetown?”
“History, strong minor in economics, kinda like Dad. Sometimes I’d ask him about his hobby—he still likes to play the market, and he has friends in the business, like George Winston, his Secretary of the Treasury. They talk a lot. George has tried and tried to get Dad to come inside his company, but he won’t do anything more than go in and schmooze. They’re still friends, though. They even hack away at golf together. Dad’s a lousy golfer.”
Hendley smiled. “I know. Ever try it yourself?”
Little Jack shook his head. “I already know how to swear. Uncle Robby was pretty good. Jeez, Dad really misses him. Aunt Sissy still comes to the house a lot. She and Mom play piano together.”
“That was pretty bad.”
“That redneck racist fuck,” Junior observed. “Excuse me. Robby was the first guy I ever knew who got murdered.” The amazing thing was that his murderer had been taken alive. The Secret Service detail had been half a second behind the Mississippi State Police in getting to him, but some civilian had tackled the bastard before anyone could get a round off, and so he’d gone to jail alive. That fact had at least eliminated any conspiracy nonsense. It had been a Ku Klux Klan member, sixty-seven years old, who just couldn’t abide the thought that Ryan’s retirement had brought his black Vice President to the position of President of the United States. His trial, conviction, and sentencing had gone off with startling speed—the assassination had all been on videotape, not to mention there’d been six witnesses all within two yards of the killer. Even the Stars and Bars atop the State House in Jackson had flown at half-staff for Robby Jackson, to the dismay and disgust of some. “Sic volvere Parcas,” Jack observed.
“What’s that?”
“The Fates, Senator. One spins the thread. One measures the thread. And one cuts the thread. ‘So spin the Fates,’ the Roman adage is. I never saw Dad so broken up about anything. Mom handled it better, really. I guess docs are used to people dying. Dad—well, he just wanted to whack the guy himself. It was pretty tough.” The news cameras had caught the President weeping at the funeral service at the Naval Academy Chapel. Sic volvere Parcas. “So, Senator, how does my fate spin out here?”
It didn’t catch Hendley short. He’d seen this question coming a quarter mile away, but it was not an especially easy question even so. “What about your father?”
“Who says he has to know? You have six subsidiary corporations that you probably use to hide your trading activities.” Finding that out hadn’t been all that easy, but Jack knew how to dig.
“Not ‘hide,'” Hendley corrected. “‘Disguise,’ maybe, but not ‘hide.'”
“Excuse me. As I told you, I used to hang out with spooks.”
“You learned a lot.”
“I had some pretty good teachers.”