Jack Ryan 7 - The Sum of All Fears (70 page)

Jack saw Carol leaning over the bathtub. Jacqueline was crying in the piteous monotone of a child who knows that she has misbehaved. There was a pile of kid's clothes on the tile floor, and the air positively reeked of crushed flowers. “What happened?”

“Jackie think my perfume is same as her toy perfume, pour whole bottle.” Carol looked up from scrubbing.

Ryan lifted the little girl's shirt. “You're not kidding.”

“Whole bottle—expensive! Bad girl!”

Jacqueline's crying increased in pitch. She'd probably had her backside smacked already. Ryan was just as happy not to have seen that. He disciplined his own kids as necessary, but didn't like to see other people smack theirs. That was one of several weak spots in his character. Even after Carol lifted her youngest out of the tub, the smell had not gone away.

“Wow, it is pretty strong, isn't it?” Jack picked Jackie up, which didn't mute her crying very much.

“Eighty dollar!” Carol said, but her anger was now gone. She had ample experience with small children, and knew that they were expected to do mischief. Jack carried the little one out to the living room. Her attitude changed when she saw the stack of presents.

“You too nice,” her mother noted.

“Hey, I just happened to be doing some shopping, okay?”

“You no come here Christmas, you have you own family.”

“I know, Carol, but I can't let Christmas go by without stopping in.” Clark came in with a final pile. These were his, Jack saw. Good man, Clark.

“We have nothing for you,” Carol Zimmer said.

“Sure you do. Jackie gave me a good hug.”

“What about me?” John asked.

Jack handed Jackie over. It was funny. Quite a few men were wary of John Clark on the basis of looks alone, but the Zimmer kids thought of him as a big teddy bear. A few minutes later, they drove away.

“Nice of you to do that, John,” Ryan said as they drove off.

“No big deal. Hey, man, you know how much fun it was to shop for little kids? Who the hell wants to buy his kid a Bali bra—that's what Maggie wanted, put it on her list—a sexy bra, for Christ's sake. How the hell can a father walk into a department store and buy something like that for his own daughter?”

“They get a little big for Barbie dolls.”

“More's the pity, Doc, more's the pity.”

Jack turned and chuckled. “That bra—”

“Yeah, Jack, if I ever find out, he's dog meat.”

Ryan had to laugh at that, but he knew he could afford to laugh. His little girl wasn't dating yet. That would be hard, watching her leave with someone else, beyond his protective reach. Harder still for a man like John Clark.

“Regular time tomorrow?”

“Yep.”

“See ya' then, Doc.”

Ryan walked into his house at
8:55
. His dinner was in its usual place. He poured his usual glass of wine, took a sip, then removed his coat and hung it in the closet before walking upstairs to change clothes. He caught Cathy going the other way and smiled at her. He didn't kiss her. He was just too tired. That was the problem. If he could only get time to relax. Clark was right, just a few days off to unwind. That's all he needed, Jack told himself as he changed.

Cathy opened the closet door to get some medical files she'd left in her own topcoat. She almost turned away when she noticed something. Not sure what it was, Cathy Ryan leaned in, puzzled, then caught it. Where was it? Her nose searched left and right in a way that might have appeared comical except for the look on her face when she found it. Jack's camel-hair coat, the expensive one she'd gotten for him last year.

It wasn't her perfume.

— 26 —

INTEGRATION

The assembly had begun with the purchase of additional instruments. An entire day was spent attaching one heavy block of spent uranium to the inside of the far end of the case.

“This is tedious, I know,” Fromm said, almost apologetically. “In
America
and elsewhere there are special jigs, specially designed tools, people assemble many individual weapons of the same design, all advantages that we do not have.”

“And here everything must be just as exact, Commander,” Ghosn added.

“My young friend is correct. The physics are the same for all of us.”

“Then don't let us stop you,” Qati said.

Fromm went immediately back to work. Part of him was already counting the money he'd receive, but most concerned itself with the job at hand. Only half of the machinists had actually worked on the bomb's physics package itself. The rest had been employed entirely with manufacturing other fittings, most of which could be called cradles. These would hold the bomb components in place, and were mainly made from stainless steel for strength and compactness. Each was set in place according to a precise sequence, as the bomb was more complex than most machines, and required assembly according to a rigid set of instructions. Here again the process was made simpler by the quality of the design and the precision of the machine tools. Even the machinists were amazed that the parts all fit, and they murmured among themselves that whatever Fromm might be—and on this subject their speculation had been wide-ranging and colorful—he was an inhumanly skilled designer. The hardest part was installing the various uranium blocks. Installation of the lighter and milder materials went much more smoothly.

“The procedure for the tritium transfer?” Ghosn asked.

“We'll leave that for last, of course,” Fromm said, backing off from checking a measurement.

“Just heat the battery to release the gas, correct?”

“Yes,” Fromm said with a nod. “But—no, no, not that way!”

“What did I do wrong?”

“This must twist in,” Fromm told the machinist. He stepped forward to demonstrate. “Like that, do you see?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“The elliptical reflectors hang on these—”

“Yes, thank you, I know.”

“Very good.”

Fromm waved to Ghosn. “Come over here. You see how this works now?” Fromm pointed to two series of elliptical surfaces which nested together one after the other—there was a total of nineteen—each made of a different material. The energy off the Primary impacts of these surfaces, destroying each in its turn, but in the process . . ."

“Yes, it is always more clear to see the physical model than to extract it from a sheet of figures.” This portion of the weapon derived its utility from the fact that light waves had no mass but did carry momentum. They were not “light” waves at all, technically speaking, but since the energy was all in the form of photons the same principle held. The energy would immolate each of the elliptical surfaces, but in the process each surface would transfer a small but reliable percentage of the energy in another direction, adding to the energy already headed that way from the Primary itself.

“Your energy budget is lavish, Herr Fromm,” Ghosn observed not for the first time.

The German shrugged. “Yes, it must be. If you cannot test, you must over-engineer. The first American bomb—the one used on
Hiroshima
—was an untested design. It was wasteful of materials and disgustingly inefficient, but it was over-engineered. And it did work. With a proper test program . . .” With a proper test program he could measure the empirical effects, determine exactly what the necessary energy budget was, and how well he managed it, determine the exact performance of each component, improve those that needed improvement, and reduce the size of those which were too large or too massive for the task at hand, just as the Americans, and Russians, and British, and French had done over a period of decades, constantly refining their designs, making them more and more efficient, and because of that, smaller, lighter, simpler, more reliable, less expensive. This, Fromm thought, was the ultimate engineering discipline, and he was immeasurably grateful that he had finally gotten the chance to try his hand at it. This design was crude and heavy, no masterpiece of design. It would function—of that he was certain—but with time he could have done so much better . . .

“Yes, I see. A man of your skill could reduce this entire unit to the size of a large bucket.”

It was a vast compliment. “Thank you, Herr Ghosn. Probably not that small, but small enough for the nose of a rocket.”

“If our Iraqi brothers had taken the time . . .”

“Indeed, there would be no
Israel
. But they were foolish, were they not?”

“They were impatient,” Ibrahim said, silently cursing them for it.

“One must be cold and clear-headed about such things. Such decisions must be made on the basis of logic, not emotion.”

“Indeed.”

Achmed was feeling very poorly indeed. He'd made his excuses and taken his leave, heading off to see the Commander's own physician, as per orders from Qati. Achmed had little experience of doctors. It was, he thought, something to be avoided if possible. He'd seen combat action and seen death and wounds, but never to himself. Even that was preferable to his current situation. One could understand injury from a bullet or a grenade, but what had made him ill so quickly and unexpectedly?

The doctor listened to his description of his condition, asked a few questions that were not entirely foolish, and noted that Achmed was a smoker—that had earned the fighter a head-shake and a cluck, as though cigarettes had anything to do with his situation. What rubbish, Achmed thought. Didn't he run six kilometers each day—or had, until very recently?

The physical examination came next. The doctor placed a stethoscope on his chest and listened. Instantly, Achmed noted, the doctor's eyes became guarded in a way not unlike the expression of a courageous fighter who didn't wish to betray his feelings.

“Breathe in,” the physician ordered. Achmed did so. “Now, out slowly.”

The stethoscope moved. “Again please.” The procedure was repeated six more times, front and back.

“Well?” Achmed asked, when the examination was finished.

“I don't know. I want to take you to see someone who understands these lung problems better.”

“I have no time for that.”

“You have time for this. I will talk to your Commander, if necessary.”

Achmed managed not to grumble. “Very well.”

It was a measure of Ryan's own situation that he took no note of it, or more correctly that he was grateful for the diminished attention his wife accorded him. It helped. It took some of the pressure off. Maybe she understood that he just needed to be left alone for a while. He'd make it up to her, Jack promised himself. He sure as hell would, when he got it all back together. He was sure of that, or told himself that he was, though a distant part of his mind was less sure and announced the fact to a consciousness that preferred not to listen. He tried to cut back on the drinking, but with the reduced demands he could, he decided, get a little more sleep, and the wine helped him sleep. In the spring, when things warmed up, he'd get back into a healthier routine. Yeah, that was it. He'd jog. He'd take the time at work, at lunch he'd get outside with the rest of the local sweat squad and run around the perimeter road inside the CIA enclosure. Clark would be a good trainer for this. Clark was a rock. Better him than Chavez, who was disgustingly fit and singularly unsympathetic to those who failed to keep in good shape—doubtless a carryover from his time in the infantry, Ryan thought. Ding would learn as he got closer to thirty. That number was the great equalizer, when you stopped being young and had to face the fact that everything had limits.

Christmas could have gone better, he thought, sitting at his desk. But it had been in the middle of the week, which meant that the kids were home two full weeks It also meant that Cathy had to miss time at work, and that was a little hard on her. She liked her work, and as much as she loved the kids, and as fine a mother as she was, she resented the time away from Hopkins and her patients. Strictly speaking, it wasn't fair for her, Jack admitted to himself She, too, was a professional and a fine one, despite which she was the one who always got tapped with kid duty while he never got relief from his work. But there were thousands of eye surgeons, and even a few hundred professors of eye surgery, but there was only one DDCI, and that was that. Not fair, perhaps, but a fact.

So much the better if he were able to accomplish something, Ryan told himself. Letting Elizabeth Elliot handle that damned newsie had been a mistake Not that he'd expected much else from Marcus Cabot. The man was a drone. It really was that simple. He enjoyed the prestige that went with his post, but he didn't do anything. Ryan got most of the work, none of the credit, and all of the blame. Maybe that would change. He had the Mexican operation fully in hand, had taken that over entirely from the Directorate of Operations, and, by God, he'd get the credit for this. Maybe then things would get better. He pulled out the file for the operation and decided that he'd go over every detail, check every possible contingency. This one would work, and he'd make those White House bastards respect him.

“Go to your room!” Cathy shouted at Little Jack. Both an order and an admission of failure. Then she walked out of the room, tears in her eyes. She was acting stupidly, shouting at the kids when she should be confronting her own husband. But how! What could she say? What if—what if it were true? Then what? She kept telling herself that it couldn't be, but that was too hard to believe. How else to explain it? Jack had never failed at anything in his life. She remembered with pride the fact that he'd risked his life for her and the children. She'd been terrified, the breath frozen in her throat, walking along the beach, watching her man advance towards men with guns with his life and others in the balance. How could a man who had done that betray his own wife? It didn't make any sense.

But what other explanation was there? Didn't he find her exciting anymore? If so, why not? Wasn't she pretty enough? Didn't she do everything—and more—that a wife could? The simple rejection was bad enough—but to be set aside, to know that his energy and vigor was serving some other, unknown woman with cheap perfume was more than she could bear.