Jack Ryan 7 - The Sum of All Fears (26 page)

“Hotel?” the Director asked, ever the investigator.

“Yeah, they identified that—that is, they know it's one of two places side by side. There were ten people with American passports who checked out that day, but they're both little places with lots of in-and-out, and they came up with nothing useful for identification purposes. The hotel staff is forgetful. That kind of a place. Who's to say that our friend even stayed there? The Greeks want us to do follow-up on the names from the hotel register,”
Murray
concluded.

Bill Shaw handed the photo back. “That's simple enough. Run with it.”

“Already being done.”

“Assuming we know that these two had anything to do with the killing. Well, you gotta go with your best guess. Okay: let the US Attorney know that our CI has paid his debt to society. It's about time we ran those 'warriors' down once and for all.” Shaw had won his spurs on counter-terrorism, and that class of criminal was still his first hate.

“Yeah, I'll play up the drug connection on that. We ought to have him sprung in two weeks or so.”

“Fair enough, Dan.”

“When's the President get into
Rome
?”
Murray
asked.

“Pretty soon. Really something, isn't it?”

“Bet your ass, man. Kenny'd better find himself another line of work soon. Peace is breaking out.”

Shaw grinned. “Who woulda thunk it? We can always get him a badge and a gun so's he can earn an honest living.”

Presidential security was completed with a discreetly located flight of four Navy Tomcat fighters that had followed the VC-25A at a distance of five miles while a radar-surveillance aircraft made sure that nothing was approaching Air Force One. Normal commercial traffic was set aside, and the environs of the military airfield being used for the arrival had not so much been combed as strained. Already waiting on the pavement was the President's armored limousine, which had been flown in a few hours earlier by an Air Force C-141B, and enough Italian soldiers and police to discourage a regiment of terrorists. President Fowler emerged from his private washroom shaved and scrubbed pink, his tie exquisitely knotted, and smiling as brightly as Pete and Daga had ever seen. As well he might, Connor thought. The agent did not moralize as deeply as D'Agustino did. The President was a man, and as most presidents were, a lonely man—doubly so with the loss of his wife. Elliot might be an arrogant bitch, but she was undeniably attractive, and if that's what it took to allay the stress and pressure of the job, then that's what it took. The President had to relax, else the job would burn him up—as it had burned others up—and that was bad for the country. So long as H
AWK
didn't break any major laws, Connor and D'Agustino would protect both his privacy and his pleasures. Pete understood. Daga merely wished that he had better taste. E.E. had left the quarters a little earlier, and was dressed in something especially nice. She joined the President in the dining area just before landing for coffee and donuts. There was no denying that she was attractive, especially this morning. Maybe, Special Agent Helen D'Agustino thought, she was a good lay. Certainly she and the President were the best-rested people on the flight. The media pukes—the Secret Service has an institutional dislike for reporters—had squirmed and fidgeted in their seats throughout the flight, and looked rumpled, despite their upbeat expressions. The most harried of all was the President's speechwriter, who'd worked through the night without pause, except for coffee and head-calls, and finally delivered the speech to Arnie van Damm a bare twenty minutes before touchdown. Fowler had run through it over breakfast and loved it.

“Callie, this is just wonderful!” The President beamed at the weary staff member, who had the literary elegance of a poet. Fowler amazed everyone in sight by giving the young lady—she was still on the sunny side of thirty—a hug that left tears in Callie Weston's eyes. “Get yourself some rest, and enjoy
Rome
.”

“A pleasure, Mr. President.”

The aircraft came to a stop at the appointed place. The mobile stairs came immediately into place. A section of red carpet was rolled in place to lead from the stairs to the longer carpet that led in turn to the podium. The President and Prime Minister of Italy moved to their appointed places, along with the US Ambassador, and the usual hangers-on, including some exhausted protocol officers who'd had to plan this ceremony literally on the fly. The door of the aircraft was opened by an Air Force sergeant. Secret Service agents looked outside suspiciously for any sign of trouble, and caught glances from other agents of the advance team. When the President appeared, the Italian Air Force band played its arrival fanfare, different from the traditional American “Ruffles and Flourishes.”

The President made his way down the steps alone, walking from reality to immortality, he reflected. Reporters noticed that his stride was bouncy and relaxed, and envied him the comfortable quarters where he could sleep in regal solitude. Sleep was the only sure cure for jetlag, and clearly the President had enjoyed a restful flight. The Brooks Brothers suit was newly pressed—Air Force One has all manner of amenities—his shoes positively sparkled, and his grooming was perfection itself. Fowler made his way to the
US
Ambassador and his wife, who conducted him to the Italian president. The band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Next came the traditional review of the assembled troops, and a brief arrival speech that only hinted at the eloquence that would soon follow. In all, it took twenty minutes before Fowler got into his car, along with the Ambassador, Dr. Elliot, and his personal bodyguards.

“First one of those I've ever enjoyed,” was Fowler's evaluation of the ceremony. There was general agreement that the Italians had handled it with elegance.

“
Elizabeth
, I want you to stay close. There are a few aspects to the agreement that we need to go over. I need to see Brent, too. How's he doing?” Fowler asked the Ambassador.

“Tired but pretty happy with himself,” Ambassador Coates replied. “The last negotiation session lasted over twenty hours.”

“What's the local press saying?” E. E. asked.

“They're euphoric. They all are. This is a great day for the whole world.” It's happening on my turf, and I'll be there to see it! Jed Coates said to himself. Not often you get to see history made.

“Well, that was nice.”

The
National
Military
Command
Center
—NMCC—is located in the D-Ring of the Pentagon near the River Entrance. One of the few such installations in government which actually looks like its
Hollywood
renditions, it is an arena roughly the size and proportions of a basketball court and two stories in height. NMCC is in essence the central telephone switchboard for the
United States
military. It is not the only one—the nearest alternate is at
Fort
Ritchie
in the
Maryland
hills—since it is far too easy to destroy, but it is the most conveniently located of its type. It's a regular stop for VIPs who want to see the sexier parts of the Pentagon, much to the annoyance of the staff for whom it's merely the place where they work.

Adjoining the NMCC is a smaller room in which one can see a set of IBM PC/AT personal computers—old ones with 5.25-inch floppy drives—that constitute the Hot Line, the direct communications link between the American and Soviet presidents. The NMCC “node” for the link was not the only one, but it was the primary down-link. That fact was not widely known in
America
, but it had been purposefully made known to the Soviets. Some form of direct communications between the two countries would be necessary even during an ongoing nuclear war, and letting the Soviets know that the only readily usable down-link was here might serve, some “experts” had judged three decades earlier, as a life-insurance policy for the area.

That, Captain James Rosselli, USN, thought, was just so much theoretician-generated horseshit. That no one had ever seriously questioned it was another example of all the horseshit that lay and stank within
Washington
in general and the Pentagon in particular. With all the nonsense that took place within the confines of Interstate 495, the Washington Beltway, it was just one more bit of data accepted as gospel, despite the fact that it didn't make a whole lot of sense. To “Rosey”
Rosselli
,
Washington
, D.C. was about 300 square miles surrounded by reality. He wondered if the laws of physics even applied inside the Beltway. He'd long since given up on the laws of logic.

Joint duty
, Rosey grunted to himself. The most recent effort of Congress to reform the military—something it was singularly unable to do for itself, he groused—had prescribed that uniformed officers who aspired to flag rank—and which of them didn't?—had to spend some of their time in close association with peers from the other uniformed services. Rosselli had never been told how hanging around with a field-artilleryman might make him a better submarine driver, but then no one else had evidently wondered about that. It was simply accepted as an article of faith that cross-pollination was good for something, and so the best and brightest officers were taken away from their professional specialties and dropped into things which they knew not the first thing about. Not that they'd ever learn how to do their new jobs, of course, but they might learn just enough to be dangerous, plus losing currency in what they were supposed to do. That was Congress's idea of military reform.

“Coffee, Cap'n?” an Army corporal asked.

“Better make it decaf,” Rosey replied. If my disposition gets any worse, I might start hurting people.

Work here was career-enhancing. Rosselli knew that, and he also knew that being here was partly his fault. He'd majored in sub and minored in spook throughout his career. He'd already had a tour at the Navy's intelligence headquarters at
Suitland
,
Maryland
, near Andrews Air Force Base. At least this was a better commute—he'd gotten official housing at Boiling Air Force Base, and the trip to the Pentagon was a relatively simple hop across I-295/395 to his reserved parking place, another perk that came with duty in the NMCC, and one worth shedding blood for.

Once duty here had been relatively exciting. He remembered when the Soviets had splashed the Korean Airlines 747 and other incidents, and it must have been wonderfully chaotic during the Iraq war—that is, when the senior watch officer wasn't answering endless calls of “what's happening?” to anyone who'd managed to get the direct-line number. But now?

Now, as he had just watched on his desk TV, the President was about to defuse the world's biggest remaining diplomatic bomb, and soon Rosselli's work would mostly involve taking calls about collisions at sea, or crashed airplanes, or some dumbass soldier who'd gotten himself run over by a tank. Such things were serious, but not matters of great professional interest. So here he was. His paperwork was finished. That was something Jim Rosselli was good at—he'd learned how to shuffle papers in the Navy, and here he had a superb staff to help him with it—and the rest of the day was mainly involved with sitting and waiting for something to happen. The problem was that Rosselli was a do-er, not a wait-er, and who wanted a disaster to happen anyway?

“Gonna be a quiet day.” This was Rosselli's XO, an Air Force F-15 pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Barnes.

“I think you're right, Rocky.” Just what I wanted to hear! Rosselli checked his watch. It was a twelve-hour shift, with five hours left to go. “Hell, it's getting to be a pretty quiet world.”

“Ain't it the truth.” Barnes turned back to the display screen. Well, I got my two MiGs over the
Persian Gulf
. At least it hasn't been a complete waste of time.

Rosselli stood and decided to walk around. The duty watch officers thought this was to look at what they were doing, to make sure they were doing something. One senior civilian ostentatiously continued doing the Post crossword. It was his “lunch” break and he preferred eating here to the mostly empty cafeterias. Here he could watch TV. Rosselli next wandered over to the left into the Hot Line room, and he was lucky for a change. A message was announced by the dinging of a little bell. The actual message received looked like random garbage, but the encryption machine changed that into cleartext Russian which a Marine translated:

"So you think you know the real meaning of fear?

Yeah, you think you do know, but I doubt it.

When you sit in a shelter with bombs falling all over.

And the houses around you are burning like torches,

I agree that you experience horror and fright.

For such moments are dreadful, for as long as they last,

But the all-clear sounds—then it's okay—

You take a deep breath, the stress has passed by,

But real fear is a stone deep down in your chest.

You hear me? A stone. That's what it is, no more.

“Ilya Selvinskiy,” the Marine lieutenant said.

“Hmph?”

“Ilya Selvinskiy, Russian poet, did some famous work during the Second World War. I know this one, Sprakh, the title is 'Fear.' It's very good.” The young officer grinned. “My opposite number is pretty literate. So . . .”
TRANSMISSION RECEIVED. THE REST OF THE POEM IS   EVEN   BETTER,   ALEKSEY
,  the lieutenant typed,
STAND  BY  FOR REPLY
.

“What do you send back?” Rosselli asked.

“Today . . . maybe a little Emily Dickinson. She was a morbid bitch, always talking about death and stuff. No, better yet—Edgar Allan Poe. They really like him over there. Hmmm, which one . . . ?” The lieutenant opened a desk drawer and pulled out a volume.

“Don't you do it in advance?” Rosselli asked.

The Marine grinned up at his boss. “No, sir, that's cheating. We used to do it that way, but we changed things about two years ago, when things lightened up. Now it's sort of a game. He picks a poem, and I have to respond with a corresponding passage from an American poet. It helps pass the time, Cap'n. Good for language skills on both sides. Translating poetry is a bitch—good exercise.” The Soviet side transmitted its messages in Russian, and the Americans in English, necessitating skilled translators at both ends.