4

PROMISED LAND

The U.S. Air Force’s Ramstein air base is set in a German valley, a fact which Ryan found slightly unsettling. His idea of a proper airport was one on land that was flat as far as the eye could see. He knew that it didn’t make much of a difference, but it was one of the niceties of air travel to which he’d become accustomed. The base supported a full wing of F-16 fighter-bombers, each of which was stored in its own bombproof shelter which in its turn was surrounded by trees—the German people have a mania for green things that would impress the most ambitious American environmentalists. It was one of those remarkable cases in which the wishes of the tree-huggers coincided exactly with military necessity. Spotting the aircraft shelters from the air was extremely difficult, and some of the shelters—French—built—had trees planted on top of them, making camouflage both aesthetically and militarily pleasing. The base also housed a few large executive aircraft, including a converted 707 with “The United States of America” painted on it. Resembling a smaller version of the President’s personal transport, it was known locally as “Miss Piggy,” and was assigned to the use of the commander of USAF units in Europe. Ryan could not help but smile. Here were over seventy fighter aircraft tasked to the destruction of Soviet forces which were now drawing back from Germany, housed on an environmentally admirable facility, which was also home to a plane called Miss Piggy. The world was truly mad.

On the other hand, traveling Air Force guaranteed excellent hospitality and VIP treatment worthy of the name, in this case at an attractive edifice called the Cannon Hotel. The base commander, a full colonel, had met his VC-20B Gulfstream executive aircraft and whisked him off to his Distinguished Visitor’s quarters where a slide-out drawer contained a nice collection of liquor bottles to help him to conquer jet lag with nine hours of drink-augmented sleep. That was just as well, because the available television service included a single channel. By the time he awoke at about six in the morning, local, he was almost in synch with the time zones, stiff and hungry, having almost survived another bout with travel shock. He hoped.

Jack didn’t feel like jogging. That was what he told himself. In fact he knew that he couldn’t have jogged half a mile with a gun to his head. And so he walked briskly. He soon found himself being passed by early-morning exercise nuts, many of whom had to be fighter pilots, they were so young and lean. Morning mist hung in the trees that were planted nearly to the edge of the blacktopped roads. It was much cooler than at home, with the still air disturbed every few minutes by the discordant roar of jet engines—“the sound of freedom”—the audible symbol of the military force that had guaranteed the peace of Europe for over forty years—now resented by the Germans, of course. Attitudes change as rapidly as the times. American power had achieved its goal and was becoming a thing of the past, at least as far as Germany was concerned. The inner-German border was gone. The fences and guard towers were down. The mines were gone. The plowed strip of dirt that had remained pristine for two generations to betray the footprints of defectors was now planted with grass and flowers. Locations in the East once examined in satellite photos or about which Western intelligence agencies had sought information at the cost of both money and blood were now walked over by camera-toting tourists, among whom were intelligence officers more shocked than bemused at the rapid changes that had come and gone like the sweep of a spring tide. I knew that I was right about this place, some thought. Or, How did we ever blow that one so badly?

Ryan shook his head. It was more than amazing. The question of the two Germanys had been the centerpiece of East-West conflict since before his birth, had appeared to be the one unchanging thing in the world, the subject of enough white papers and Special National Intelligence Estimates and news stories to fill the entire Pentagon with pulp. All the effort, all the examination of minutiae, the petty disputes—gone. Soon to be forgotten. Even scholarly historians would never have the energy to look at all the data that had been thought important—crucial, vital, worthy of men’s lives—and was now little more than a vast footnote to the end of the Second World War. This base had been one such item. Designed to house the aircraft whose task it was to clear the skies of Russian planes and crush a Soviet attack, it was now an expensive anachronism whose residential apartments would soon house German families. Ryan wondered what they’d do with the aircraft shelters like that one there.... Wine cellars, maybe. The wine was pretty good.

“Halt!” Ryan stopped cold in his tracks and turned to see where the sound had come from. It was an Air Force security policeman—woman. Girl, actually, Ryan saw, though her M-16 rifle neither knew nor cared about plumbing fixtures.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“ID, please.” The young lady was quite attractive, and quite professional. She also had a backup in the trees. Ryan handed over his CIA credentials.

“I’ve never seen one of these, sir.”

“I came in last night on the VC-20. I’m staying over at the Inn, room 109. You can check with Colonel Parker’s office.”

“We’re on security alert, sir,” she said next, reaching for her radio.

“Just do your job, miss—excuse me, Sergeant Wilson. My plane doesn’t leave till ten.” Jack leaned against a tree to stretch. It was too nice a morning to get excited about anything, even if there were two armed people who didn’t know who the hell he was.

“Roger.” Sergeant Becky Wilson switched off her radio. “The Colonel’s looking for you, sir.”

“On the way back, I turn left at the Burger King?”

“That’s right, sir.” She handed his ID back with a smile.

“Thanks, Sarge. Sorry to bother you.”

“You want a ride back, sir? The Colonel’s waiting.”

“I’d rather walk. He can wait, he’s early.” Ryan walked away from a buck sergeant who now had to ponder the importance of a man who kept her base commander sitting on the front step of the Cannon. It took ten brisk minutes, but Ryan’s directional sense had not left him, despite the unfamiliar surroundings and a six-hour time differential.

“Morning, sir!” Ryan said as he vaulted the wall into the parking lot.

“I set up a little breakfast with COMUSAFE staff. We’d like your views on what’s happening in Europe.”

Jack laughed. “Great! I’m interested in hearing yours.” Ryan walked off toward his room to dress. What makes them think I know anything more than they do? By the time his plane left, he’d learned four things he hadn’t known. Soviet forces withdrawing from what had formerly been called East Germany were decidedly unhappy with the fact that there was no place for them to withdraw to. Elements of the former East German army were even less happy about their enforced retirement than Washington actually knew; they probably had allies among ex-members of the already de-established Stasi. Finally, though an even dozen members of the Red Army Faction had been apprehended in Eastern Germany, at least that many others had gotten the message and vanished before they, too, could be swept up by the Bundeskriminalamt, the German federal police. That explained the security alert at Ramstein, Ryan was told.

The VC-20B lifted off from the airfield just after ten in the morning, headed south. Those poor terrorists, he thought, devoting their lives and energy and intellect to something that was vanishing more swiftly than the German countryside below him. Like children whose mother had died. No friends now. They’d hidden out in Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic, blissfully unaware of the coming demise of both communist states. Where would they hide now? Russia? No chance. Poland? That was a laugh. The world had changed under them, and was about to change again, Ryan thought with a wistful smile. Some more of their friends were about to watch the world change. Maybe, he corrected himself. Maybe ...

 

“Hello, Sergey Nikolayevich,” Ryan had said as the man had entered his office, a week before.

“Ivan Emmetovich,” the Russian had replied, holding out his hand. Ryan remembered the last time they’d been this close, on the runway of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Golovko had held a gun in his hand then. It had not been a good day for either, but as usual, it was funny the way things had worked out. Golovko, for having nearly, but not quite, prevented the greatest defection in Soviet history, was now First Deputy Chairman of the Committee for State Security. Had he succeeded, he would not have gone quite so far, but for being very good, if not quite good enough, he’d been noticed by his own President, and his career had taken a leap upward. His security officer had camped in Nancy’s office with John Clark, as Ryan had led Golovko into his.

“I am not impressed.” Golovko looked around disapprovingly at the painted gypsum-board drywall. Ryan did have a single decent painting borrowed from a government warehouse, and, of course, the not-exactly-required photo of President Fowler over by the clothes tree on which Jack hung his coat.

“I do have a nicer view, Sergey Nikolayevich. Tell me, is the statue of Iron Feliks still in the middle of the square?”

“For the moment.” Golovko smiled. “Your Director is out of town, I gather.”

“Yes, the President decided that he needed some advice.”

“On what?” Golovko asked with a crooked smile.

“Damned if I know,” Ryan answered with a laugh. Lots of things, he didn’t say.

“Difficult, is it not? For both of us.” The new KGB Chairman was not a professional spook either—in fact that was not unusual. More often than not, the director of that grim agency had been a Party man, but the Party was becoming a thing of history also, and Narmonov had selected a computer expert who was supposed to bring new ideas into the Soviet Union’s chief spy agency. That would make it more efficient. Ryan knew that Golovko had an IBM PC behind his desk in Moscow now.

“Sergey, I always used to say that if the world made sense, I’d be out of a job. So look what’s happening. Want some coffee?”

“I would like that, Jack.” A moment later he expressed approval of the brew.

“Nancy sets it up for me every morning. So. What can I do for you?”

“I have often heard that question, but never in such surroundings as this.” There was a rumbling laugh from Ryan’s guest. “My God, Jack, do you ever wonder if this is all the result of some drug-induced dream?”

“Can’t be. I cut myself shaving the other day and I didn’t wake up.”

Golovko muttered something in Russian that Jack didn’t catch, though his translators would when they went over the tapes.

“I am the one who reports to our parliamentarians on our activities. Your Director was kind enough to respond favorably to our request for advice.”

Ryan couldn’t resist that opening: “No problem, Sergey Nikolayevich. You can screen all your information through me. I’d be delighted to tell you how to present it.” Golovko took it like a man.

“Thank you, but the Chairman might not understand.” With jokes aside, it was time for business.

“We want a quid pro quo. ”The fencing began.

“And that is?”

“Information on the terrorists you guys used to support.”

“We cannot do that,” Golovko said flatly.

“Sure you can.”

Next Golovko waved the flag: “An intelligence service cannot betray confidences and continue to function.”

“Really? Tell Castro that next time you see him,” Ryan suggested.

“You’re getting better at this, Jack.”

“Thank you, Sergey. My government is most gratified indeed for your President’s recent statement on terrorism. Hell, I like the guy personally. You know that. We’re changing the world, man. Let’s clean a few more messes up. You never approved of your government’s support for those creeps.”

“What makes you believe that?” the First Deputy Chairman asked.

“Sergey, you’re a professional intelligence officer. There’s no way you can personally approve the actions of undisciplined criminals. I feel the same way, of course, but in my case it’s personal.” Ryan leaned back with a hard look. He would always remember Sean Miller and the other members of the Ulster Liberation Army who’d made two earnest attempts to kill Jack Ryan and his family. Only three weeks earlier, after years exhausting every legal opportunity, after three writs to the Supreme Court, after demonstrations and appeals to the Governor of Maryland and the President of the United States for executive clemency, Miller and his colleagues had, one by one, walked into the gas chamber in Baltimore, and been carried out half an hour later, quite dead. And may God have mercy on their souls, Ryan thought. If God has a strong enough stomach. One chapter in his life was now closed for good.

“And the recent incident ... ?”

“The Indians? That merely illustrates my case. Those ‘revolutionaries’ were dealing drugs to make money. They’re going to turn on you, the people you used to fund. In a few years they’re going to be more of a problem for you than they ever were for us.” That was entirely correct, of course, and both men knew it. The terrorist-drug connection was something the Soviets were starting to worry about. Free enterprise was starting most rapidly of all in Russia’s criminal sector. That was as troubling to Ryan as to Golovko. “What do you say?”

Golovko inclined his head to the side. “I will discuss it with the Chairman. He will approve.”

“Remember what I said over in Moscow a couple of years back? Who needs diplomats to handle negotiations when you have real people to settle things?”

“I expected a quote from Kipling or something similarly poetic,” the Russian observed dryly. “So how do you deal with your Congress?”

Jack chuckled. “Short version is, you tell them the truth.”

“I needed to fly eleven thousand kilometers to hear you say that?”

“You select a handful of people in your parliament you can trust to keep their mouths shut, and whom the rest of parliament trust to be completely honest—that’s the hard part—and you brief them into everything they need to know. You have to set up ground rules—”

“Ground rules?”

“A baseball term, Sergey. It means the special rules that apply to a specific playing field.”

Golovko’s eyes lit up. “Ah, yes, that is a useful term.”

“Everyone has to agree on the rules, and you may never, ever break them.” Ryan paused. He was talking like a college lecturer again, and it wasn’t fair to speak that way to a fellow professional.

Golovko frowned. That was the hard part, of course: never, ever breaking the rules. The intelligence business wasn’t often that cut and dried. And conspiracy was part of the Russian soul.

“It’s worked for us,” Ryan added.

Or has it? Ryan wondered. Sergey knows if it has or not ... well, he knows some things that I don’t. He could tell me if we’ve had major leaks on the Hill since Peter Henderson... but at the same time he knows that we’ve penetrated so many of their operations despite their manic passion for the utmost secrecy. Even the Soviets had admitted it publicly: the hemorrhage of defectors from KGB over the years had gutted scores of exquisitely planned operations against America and the West. In the Soviet Union as in America, secrecy was designed to shield failure as well as success.

“What it comes down to is trust,” Ryan said after another moment. “The people in your parliament are patriots. If they didn’t love their country, why would they put up with all the bullshit aspects of public life? It’s the same here.”

“Power,” Golovko responded at once.

“No, not the smart ones, not the ones you will be dealing with. Oh, there’ll be a few idiots. We have them here. They are not an endangered species. But there are always those who’re smart enough to know that the power that comes with government service is an illusion. The duty that comes along with it is always greater in magnitude. No, Sergey, for the most part you’ll be dealing with people as smart and honest as you are.”

Golovko’s head jerked at the compliment, one professional to another. He’d guessed right a few minutes earlier, Ryan was getting good at this. He started to think that he and Ryan were not really enemies any longer. Competitors, perhaps, but not enemies. There was more than professional respect between them now.

Ryan looked benignly at his visitor, smiling inwardly at having surprised him. And hoping that one of the people Golovko would select for oversight would be Oleg Kirilovich Kadishev, code name SPINNAKER. Known in the media as one of the most brilliant Soviet parliamentarians in a bumptious legislative body struggling to build a new country, his reputation for intelligence and integrity belied the fact that he’d been on the CIA payroll for several years, the best of all the agents recruited by Mary Pat Foley. The game goes on, Ryan thought. The rules were different. The world was different. But the game went on. Probably always would, Jack thought, vaguely sorry it was true. But, hell, America even spied on Israel—it was called “keeping an eye on things”; it was never called “running an operation.” The oversight people in Congress would have leaked that in a minute. Oh, Sergey, do you have a lot of new things to learn about!

Lunch followed. Ryan took his guest to the executive dining room, where Golovko found the food somewhat better than KGB standards—something Ryan would not have believed. He also found that the top CIA executives wanted to meet him. The Directorate chiefs and their principal deputies all stood in line to shake his hand and be photographed. Finally there was a group photo before Golovko had taken the executive elevator back to his car. Then the people from Science and Technology, and Security had swept every inch of every corridor and room Golovko and his bodyguard had traveled. Finding nothing, they had swept again. And again. And once more until it was decided that he had not availed himself of the opportunity to play his own games. One of the S&T people had lamented the fact that it just wasn’t the same anymore.

 

Ryan smiled, remembering the remark. Things were happening so goddamned fast. He settled back into the chair and tightened his seat belt. The VC-20 was approaching the Alps, and the air might be bumpy there.

“Want a paper, sir?” the attendant asked. It was a girl for a change, and a pretty one. Also married and pregnant. A pregnant staff sergeant. It made Ryan uneasy to be served by someone like that.

“What d’you have?”

“International Trib. ”

“Great!” Ryan took the paper—and nearly gasped. There it was, right on the front page. Some bonehead had leaked one of the photos. Golovko, Ryan, the directors of S&T, Ops, Admin, Records, and Intelligence, plunging through their lunches. None of the American identities were secret, of course, but even so....

“Not a real good picture, sir,” the sergeant noted with a grin. Ryan was unable to be unhappy.

“When are you due, Sarge?”

“Five more months, sir.”

“Well, you’ll be bringing your child into a much better world than the one either one of us was stuck with. Why don’t you sit down and relax? I’m not liberated enough to be waited on by a pregnant lady.”

The International Herald-Tribune is a joint venture of The New York Times and The Washington Post. The one sure way for Americans traveling in Europe to keep track of the ball scores and important comic strips, it had already broadened its distribution into what had been the Eastern Bloc to serve American businessmen and tourists who were flooding the former communist nations. The locals also used it, both as a way to hone their English skills and to keep track of what was happening in America, more than ever a fascination to people learning how to emulate something they’d been raised to hate. In addition it was as fine an information source as had ever been available in those countries. Soon everyone was buying it, and the American management of the paper was expanding operations to broaden its readership still further.

One such regular reader was Günther Bock. He lived in Sofia, Bulgaria, having left Germany—the eastern part—rather hurriedly some months before, after a warning tip from a former friend in the Stasi. With his wife, Petra, Bock had been a unit leader in the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and after that had been crushed by the West German police, in the Red Army Faction. Two near arrests by the Bundeskriminalamt had frightened him across the Czech border, and thence on to the DDR, where he had settled into a quiet semiretirement. With a new identity, new papers, a regular job—he never showed up, but the employment records were completely in Ordnung—he’d deemed himself safe. Neither he nor Petra had reckoned with the popular revolt that had overturned the government of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, but they both decided that they could survive that change in anonymity. They’d never counted on a popular riot storming into Stasi headquarters, either. That event had resulted in the destruction of literally millions of documents. Many of the documents had not been destroyed, however. Many of the rioters had been agents of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the West German intelligence agency, who’d been in the front ranks of the intruders and known exactly which rooms to savage. Within days, people from the RAF had started disappearing. It had been hard to tell at first. The DDR telephone system was so decrepit that getting phone calls through had never been easy, and for obvious security reasons the former associates had not lived in the same areas, but when another married couple had failed to make a rendezvous for dinner, Günther and Petra had sensed trouble. Too late. While the husband made rapid plans to leave the country, five heavily armed GSG-9 commandos had kicked down the flimsy door of the Bock apartment in East Berlin. They’d found Petra nursing one of her twin daughters, but whatever sympathy they might have felt at so touching a scene had been mitigated by the fact that Petra Bock had murdered three West German citizens, one quite brutally. Petra was now in a maximum-security prison, serving a life sentence in a country where “life” meant that you left prison in a casket or not at all. The twin daughters were the adopted children of a Munich police captain and his barren wife.

It was very odd, Günther thought, how much that stung him. After all, he was a revolutionary. He had plotted and killed for his cause. It was absurd that he would allow himself to be enraged by the imprisonment of his wife ... and the loss of his children. But. But they had Petra’s nose and eyes, and they’d smiled for him. They would not be taught to hate him, Günther knew. They’d never even be told who he and Petra had been. He’d dedicated himself to something larger and grander than mere corporeal existence. He and his colleagues had made a conscious and reasoned decision to build a better and more just world for the common man, and yet—and yet he and Petra had decided, also in a reasoned and conscious way, to bring into it children who would learn their parents’ ways, to be the next generation of Bocks, to eat the fruits of their parents’ heroic labor. Günther was enraged that this might not happen.

Worse still was his bewilderment. What had happened was quite impossible. Unmöglich. Unglaublich. The people, the common Volk of the DDR had risen up like revolutionaries themselves, forsaking their nearly perfect socialist state, opting instead to merge with the exploitative monstrosity crafted by the imperialist powers. They’d been seduced by Blaupunkt appliances and Mercedes automobiles, and—what? Günther Bock genuinely did not understand. Despite his inborn intelligence, the events did not connect into a comprehensible pattern. That the people of his country had examined “scientific socialism” and decided it did not work, and could never work—that was too great a leap of imagination for him to make. He’d committed too much of his life to Marxism ever to deny it. Without Marxism, after all, he was a criminal, a common murderer. Only his heroic revolutionary ethos elevated his activities above the acts of a thug. But his revolutionary ethos had been summarily rejected by his own chosen beneficiaries. That was simply impossible. Unmöglich.

It wasn’t quite fair that so many impossible things piled one upon another. As he opened the paper he’d bought twenty minutes before at a kiosk seven blocks from his current residence, the photo on the front page caught his eye, as the paper’s editor had fully intended.

CIA FETES KGB, the caption began.

“Was ist das denn für Quatsch?” Günther muttered.

“In yet another remarkable turn in a remarkable time, the Central Intelligence Agency hosted the First Deputy Chairman of the KGB in a conference concerning ‘issues of mutual concern’ to the world’s two largest intelligence empires....” the story read. “Informed sources confirm that the newest area of East-West cooperation will include information-sharing on the increasingly close ties between international terrorists and the international drug trade. CIA and KGB will work together to...”

Bock set the paper down and stared out the window. He knew what it was to be a hunted animal. All revolutionaries did. It was the path he had chosen, along with Petra, and all their friends. The task was a clear one. They would test their cunning and skill against their enemies. The forces of light against the forces of darkness. Of course, it was the forces of light that had to run and hide, but that was a side issue. Sooner or later the situation would be reversed when the common people saw the truth and sided with the revolutionaries. Except for one little problem. The common people had chosen to go another way. And the terrorist world was rapidly running out of dark places in which the forces of light might hide.

He’d come to Bulgaria for two reasons. Of all the former East Bloc countries, Bulgaria was the most backward and because of it had managed the most orderly transition from communist rule. In fact, communists still ran the country, though under different names, and the country was still politically safe, or at least neutral. The Bulgarian intelligence apparat, once the source of designated killers for KGB whose hands had finally become too clean for such activity, was still peopled with reliable friends. Reliable friends, Günther thought. But the Bulgarians were still in the thrall of their Russian masters—associates, now—and if KGB were really cooperating with CIA ... The number of safe places was being reduced by one more digit.

Giinther Bock should have felt a chill at the increased personal danger. Instead his face flushed and pulsed with rage. As a revolutionary he’d often enough bragged that every hand in the world was turned against him—but whenever he’d said that, it had been with the inner realization that such was not and would never be the case. Now his boast was becoming reality. There were still places to run, still contacts he could trust. But how many? How soon before trusted associates would bend to the changes in the world? The Soviets had betrayed themselves and world socialism. The Germans. The Poles. The Czechs, the Hungarians, the Romanians. Who was next?

Couldn’t they see? It was all a trap, some kind of incredible conspiracy of counterrevolutionary forces. A lie. They were casting away what could be—should be—was—the perfect social order of structured freedom from want, orderly efficiency, of fairness and equality. Of ...

Could that all be a lie? Could it all have been a horrible mistake? Had he and Petra killed those cowering exploiters for nothing?

But it didn’t matter, did it? Not to Günther Bock, not right now. He was soon to be hunted again. One more safe patch of ground was about to become a hunting preserve for his enemies. If the Bulgarians shared their papers with the Russians, if the Russians had a few men in the right office, with the right credentials and the right access, his address and new identity could already be on its way to Washington, and from there to BND headquarters, and in a week’s time he might be sharing a cell close to Petra’s.

Petra, with her light brown hair and laughing blue eyes. As brave a girl as any man could want. Seemingly cold to her victims, wonderfully warm to her comrades. So fine a mother she’d been to Erika and Ursel, so superior at that task as she’d been at every other she’d ever attempted. Betrayed by supposed friends, caged like an animal, robbed of her own offspring. His beloved Petra, comrade, lover, wife, believer. Robbed of her life. And now he was being driven farther from her. There had to be a way to change things back.

But first he had to get away.

Bock set the paper down and tidied up the kitchen. When things were clean and neat, he packed a single bag and left the apartment. The elevator had quit again, and he walked down the four flights to the street. Once there he caught a tram. In ninety minutes he was at the airport. His passport was a diplomatic one. In fact he had six of them carefully concealed in the lining of his Russian-made suitcase, and, ever the careful man, three of them were the numerical duplicates of others held by real Bulgarian diplomats, unknown to the Foreign Ministry office that kept the records. That guaranteed him free access to the most important ally of the international terrorist: air transport. Before time for lunch, his flight rotated off the tarmac, headed south.

 

Ryan’s flight touched down at a military airport outside Rome just before noon, local time. By coincidence they rolled in right behind yet another VC-20B of the 89th Military Airlift Wing that had arrived only a few minutes earlier from Moscow. The black limousine on the apron was waiting for both aircraft.

Deputy Secretary of State Scott Adler greeted Ryan as he stepped off with an understated smile.

“Well?” Ryan asked through the airport sounds.

“It’s a go.”

“Damn,” Ryan said as he took Adler’s hand. “How many more miracles can we expect this year?”

“How many do you want?” Adler was a professional diplomat who’d worked his way up the Russian side of the State Department. Fluent in their language, well versed on their politics, past and present, he understood the Soviets as did few men in government—including Russians themselves. “You know the hard part about this?”

“Getting used to hearing da instead of nyet, right?”

“Takes all the fun out of negotiations. Diplomacy can really be a bitch when both sides are reasonable.” Adler laughed as the car pulled off.

“Well, this ought to be a new experience for both of us,” Jack observed soberly. He turned to watch “his” aircraft prepare for an immediate departure. He and Adler would be traveling together for the rest of the trip.

They sped toward central Rome with the usual heavy escort. The Red Brigade, so nearly exterminated a few years earlier, was back in business, and even if it hadn’t been, the Italians were careful protecting foreign dignitaries. In the right-front seat was a serious-looking chap with a little Beretta squirt-gun. There were two lead cars, two chase cars, and enough cycles for a motocross race. The speedy progress down the ancient streets of Rome made Ryan wish he were back in an airplane. Every Italian driver, it seemed, had ambitions to ride in the Formula One circuit. Jack would have felt safer in a car with Clark, driving an unobtrusive vehicle on a random path, but in his current position his security arrangements were ceremonial in addition to being practical. There was one other consideration, of course....

“Nothing like a low profile,” Jack muttered to Adler.

“Don’t sweat it. Every time I’ve come here it’s been the same way. First time?”

“Yep. First time in Rome. I wonder how I’ve ever missed coming here—always wanted to, the history and all.”

“A lot of that,” Adler agreed. “Think we might make a little more?”

Ryan turned to look at his colleague. Making history was a new thought to him. Not to mention a dangerous one. “That’s not my job, Scott.”

“If this does work, you know what’ll happen.”

“Frankly, I never bothered thinking about that.”

“You ought to. No good deed ever goes unpunished.”

“You mean Secretary Talbot ... ?”

“No, not him. Definitely not my boss.”

Ryan looked forward to see a truck scuttle out of the way of the motorcade. The Italian police officer riding on the extreme right of the motorcycle escort hadn’t flinched a millimeter.

“I’m not in this for credit. I just had an idea, is all. Now I’m just the advance man.”

Adler shook his head slightly and kept his peace. Jesus, how did you ever last this long in government service?

The striped jump suits of the Swiss Guards had been designed by Michelangelo. Like the red tunics of the British Guardsmen, they were anachronisms from a bygone era when it had made sense for soldiers to wear brightly colored uniforms, and also, like the Guardsmen uniforms, they were kept on more for their attractiveness to tourists than for any practical reason. The men and their weapons look so quaint. The Vatican guards carried halberds, evil-looking long-handled axes made originally for infantrymen to unhorse armored knights—as often as not by crippling the horse the enemy might be riding; horses didn’t fight back very well, and war is ever a practical business. Once off his mount, an armored knight was dispatched with little more effort than that required to break up a lobster—and about as much remorse. People thought medieval weapons romantic somehow, Ryan told himself, but there was nothing romantic about what they were designed to do. A modern rifle might punch holes in some other fellow’s anatomy. These were made to dismember. Both methods would kill, of course, but at least rifles made for neater burial.

The Swiss Guards had rifles, too, Swiss rifles made by SIG. Not all of them wore Renaissance costumes, and since the attempt on John Paul II, many of the guards had received additional training, quietly and unobtrusively, of course, since such training did not exactly fit the image of the Vatican. Ryan wondered what Vatican policy was on the use of deadly force, whether the chief of the guards chafed at the rules imposed from on high by people who certainly did not appreciate the nature of the threat and the need for decisive protective action. But they’d do their best within their constraints, grumbling among themselves and voicing their opinions when the time seemed right, just like everyone else in that business.

A bishop met them, an Irishman named Shamus O‘Toole, whose thick red hair clashed horribly with his clothing. Ryan was first out of the car, and his first thought was a question: was he supposed to kiss O’Toole’s ring or not? He didn’t know. He hadn’t met a real bishop since his confirmation—and it had been a long time since sixth grade in Baltimore. O’Toole deftly solved that problem by grasping Ryan’s hand in a bearish grip.

“So many Irishmen in the world!” he said with a wide grin.

“Somebody has to keep things straight, Excellency.”

“Indeed, indeed!” O’Toole greeted Adler next. Scott was Jewish and had no intentions of kissing anyone’s ring. “Would you come with me, gentlemen?”

Bishop O‘Toole let them into a building whose history might have justified three scholarly volumes, plus a picture book for its art and architecture. Jack barely noticed the two metal detectors they passed through on the third floor. Leonardo da Vinci might have done the job, so skillfully were they concealed in door frames. Just like the White House. The Swiss Guards didn’t all wear uniforms. Some of the people prowling the halls in soft clothes were too young and too fit to be bureaucrats, but for all that the overall impression was a cross between visiting an old art museum and a cloister. The clerics wore cassocks, and the nuns—they were here in profusion also—were not wearing the semicivilian attire adopted by their American counterparts. Ryan and Adler were parked briefly in a waiting room, more to appreciate the surroundings than to inconvenience them, Jack was sure. A Titian madonna adorned the opposite wall, and Ryan admired it while Bishop O’Toole announced the visitors.

“God, I wonder if he ever did a small painting?” Ryan muttered. Adler chuckled.

“He did know how to capture a face and a look and a moment, didn’t he? Ready?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. He felt oddly confident.

“Gentlemen!” O’Toole said from the open door. “Will you come this way, please?” They walked through yet another anteroom. This one had two secretarial desks, both unoccupied, and another set of doors that looked fourteen feet tall.

The office of Giovanni Cardinal D’Antonio would have been used in America for balls or formal occasions of state. The ceiling was frescoed, the walls covered with blue silk, and the floor’s ancient hardwood accented with rugs large enough for an average living room. The furniture was probably the most recent in manufacture, and that looked to be at least two hundred years old, brocaded fabric taut over the cushions and gold leaf on the curved wooden legs. A silver coffee service told Ryan where to sit.

The Cardinal came toward them from his desk, smiling in the way that a king might have done a few centuries earlier to greet a favored minister. D‘Antonio was a man of short stature, and clearly one who enjoyed good food. He must have been a good forty pounds overweight. The room air reported that he was a man who smoked, something he ought to have stopped, since he was rapidly approaching seventy years of age. The old, pudgy face had an earthy dignity to it. The son of a Sicilian fisherman, D’Antonio had mischievous brown eyes to suggest a roughness of character that fifty years of service to the Church had not wholly erased. Ryan knew his background and could easily see him pulling in nets at his father’s side, back a very long time ago. The earthiness was also a useful disguise for a diplomat, and that’s what D’Antonio was by profession, whatever his vocation might have been. A linguist like many Vatican officials, he was a man who had spent thirty years practicing his trade, and the lack of military power that had crippled his efforts at making the world change had merely taught him craftiness. In intelligence parlance he was an agent of influence, welcome in many settings, always ready to listen or offer advice. Of course he greeted Adler first.

“So good to see you again, Scott.”

“Eminence, a pleasure as always.” Adler took the offered hand and smiled his diplomat’s smile.

“And you are Dr. Ryan. We have heard so many things about you.”

“Thank you, Your Eminence.”

“Please, please.” D’Antonio waved both men to a sofa so beautiful that Ryan flinched at resting his weight on it. “Coffee?”

“Yes, thank you,” Adler said for both of them. Bishop O’Toole did the pouring, then sat down to take notes. “So good of you to allow us in at such short notice.”

“Nonsense.” Ryan watched in no small amazement as the Cardinal reached inside his cassock and pulled out a cigar holder. A tool that looked like silver but was probably stainless steel performed the appropriate surgery on the largish brown tube, then D’Antonio lit it with a gold lighter. There wasn’t even an apology about the sins of the flesh. It was as though the Cardinal had quietly flipped off the “dignity” switch to put his guests at ease. More likely, Ryan thought, he merely worked better with a cigar in his hand. Bismarck had felt the same way.

“You are familiar with the rough outlines of our concept,” Adler opened.

“Sì. I must say that I find it very interesting. You know of course that the Holy Father proposed something along similar lines some time ago.”

Ryan looked up at that. He hadn’t.

“When that initiative first came out, I did a paper on its merits,” Adler said. “The weak point was the inability to address security considerations, but in the aftermath of the Iraq situation, we have the opening. Also, you realize, of course, that our concept does not exactly—”

“Your concept is acceptable to us,” D’Antonio said with a regal wave of his cigar. “How could it be otherwise?”

“That, Eminence, is precisely what we wanted to hear.” Adler picked up his coffee. “You have no reservations?”

“You will find us highly flexible so long as there is genuine goodwill among the active parties. If there is total equality among the participants, we can agree unconditionally to your proposal.” The old eyes sparkled. “But can you guarantee equality of treatment?”

“I believe we can,” Adler said seriously.

“I think it should be possible, else we are all charlatans. What of the Soviets?”

“They will not interfere. In fact, we are hoping for open support. In any case, what with the distractions they already have—”

“Indeed. They will benefit from the diminution of the discord in the region, the stability on various markets, and general international goodwill.”

Amazing, Ryan thought. Amazing how matter-of-factly people have absorbed the changes in the world. As though they had been expected. They had not. Not by anyone. If anyone had suggested their possibility ten years earlier, he would have been institutionalized.

“Quite so.” The Deputy Secretary of State set down his cup. “Now, on the question of the announcement ...”

Another wave of the cigar. “Of course you will want the Holy Father to make it.”

“How very perceptive,” Adler observed.

“I am not yet completely senile,” the Cardinal replied. “And press leaks?”

“We would prefer none.”

“That is easily accomplished in this city, but in yours? Who knows of this initiative?”

“Very few,” Ryan said, opening his mouth for the first time since sitting down. “So far, so good.”

“But on your next stop ... ?” D’Antonio had not been informed of their next stop, but it was the obvious one.

“That might be a problem,” Ryan said cautiously. “We’ll see.”

“The Holy Father and I will both be praying for your success.”

“Perhaps this time your prayers will be answered,” Adler said.

Fifty minutes later the VC-20B lifted off again. It soared upward across the Italian coast, then turned southwest to re-cross Italy on the way to its next destination.

“Jesus, that was fast,” Jack observed when the seat belt light went off. He kept his buckled, of course. Adler lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the window on his side of the cabin.

“Jack, this is one of those situations where you do it fast or it doesn’t get done.” He turned and smiled. “They’re rare, but they happen.”

The cabin attendant—this one was a male—came aft and handed both men copies of a printout that had just arrived on the aircraft facsimile machine.

“What?” Ryan observed crossly. “What gives?”

 

In Washington people do not always have time to read the papers, at least not all the papers. To assist those in government service to see what the press is saying about things is an in-house daily press-summary sheet called The Early Bird. Early editions of all major American papers are flown to D.C. on regular airline flights, and before dawn they are vetted for stories relating to all manner of government operations. Relevant material is clipped and photocopied, then distributed by the thousands to various offices whose staff members then repeat the process by highlighting individual stories for their superiors. This process is particularly difficult in the White House, whose staff members are by definition interested in everything.

Dr. Elizabeth Elliot was Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The immediate subordinate to Dr. Charles Alden, whose title was the same, but without the “Special,” Liz, also referred to as “E.E.,” was dressed in a fashionable linen suit. Current fashions dictated that women’s “power” clothing was not mannish but feminine, the idea being that since even the most obtuse of men would be able to tell the difference between themselves and women, there was little point in trying to conceal the truth. The truth was that Dr. Elliot was not physically unattractive and enjoyed dressing to emphasize the fact. Tall at five feet eight inches, and with a slender figure that long work hours and mediocre food sustained, she did not like playing second-fiddle to Charlie Alden. And besides, Alden was a Yalie. She’d most recently been Professor of Political Science at Bennington, and resented the fact that Yale was considered more prestigious by whatever authorities made such judgments.

Current work schedules at the White House were easier than those of only a few years earlier, at least in the national-security shop. President Fowler did not feel the need for a first-thing-in-the-morning intelligence briefing. The world situation was far more pacific than any of his predecessors had known, and Fowler’s main problems were of the domestic political variety. Commentary on that could readily be had from watching morning TV news shows, something Fowler did by watching two or more TV sets at the same time, something that had infuriated his wife and still bemused his staffers. That fact meant that Dr. Alden didn’t have to arrive until eight or so to get his morning briefing, after which he would brief the President at nine-thirty. President Fowler didn’t like dealing directly with the briefing officers from CIA. As a result, it was E.E. who had to arrive just after six so that she could screen dispatches and message traffic, confer with the CIA watch officers (she didn’t like them either), and their counterparts from State and Defense. She also got to read over The Early Bird, and to highlight items of interest for her boss, the estimable Dr. Charles Alden.

Like I’m a goddamned addle-brained simpering secretary, E.E. fumed.

Alden, she thought, was a logical contradiction. A liberal who talked tough, a skirt-chaser who supported women’s rights, a kindly, considerate man who probably enjoyed using her like a goddamned functionary. That he was also a distinguished observer and an amazingly accurate forecaster of events, with an even dozen books—each of them thoughtful and perceptive—was beside the point. He was in her job. It had been promised to her while Fowler had still been a longshot candidate. The compromise that had placed Alden in his West Wing corner office and her in the basement was merely another of those acts that political figures use as excuses to violate their word without anything more than a perfunctory apology. The Vice President had demanded and gotten the concession at the convention; he’d also gotten what should have been her office on the main level for one of his own people, relegating her to this most prestigious of dungeons. In return for that, the Veep was a team player, and his tireless campaigning was widely regarded as having made the difference. The Vice President had delivered California, and without California, J. Robert Fowler would still be governor of Ohio. And so she had a twelve-by-fifteen office in the basement, playing secretary and / or administrative assistant to a goddamned Yalie who appeared once a month on the Sunday talk shows and hobnobbed with chiefs of state with her as lady-in-goddamned-waiting.

Dr. Elizabeth Elliot was in her normal early-morning mood, which was foul, as any White House regular could testify. She walked out of her office and into the White House Mess for a refill of her coffee cup. The strong drip coffee only made her mood the fouler, a thought that stopped her in her tracks and forced a self-directed smile she never bothered displaying for any of the security personnel who checked her pass every morning at the west ground-level entrance. They were just cops, after all, and cops were nothing to get excited about. Food was served by Navy stewards, and the only good thing about them was that they were largely minorities, many Filipinos in what she deemed a disgraceful carryover from America’s colonial-exploitation period. The long-service secretaries and other support personnel were not political, hence mere bureaucrats of one description or another. The important people in this building were political. What little charm E.E. had was saved for them. The Secret Service agents observed her movements with about as much interest as they might have accorded the President’s dog, if he’d had a dog, which he didn’t. Both they and the professionals who ran the White House, despite the arrivals and departures of various self-inflated egos in human form, regarded her as just another of many politically elevated individuals who would depart in due course while the pros stayed on, faithfully doing their duty in accordance with their oaths of office. The White House caste system was an old one, with each regarding all the others as less than itself.

Elliot returned to her desk and set her coffee down to get a good stretch. The swivel chair was comfortable—the physical arrangements here were first-rate, far better than those at Bennington—but the endless weeks of early mornings and late nights had taken a physical toll in addition to that on her character. She told herself that she ought to return to working out. At least to walk. Many staffers took part of lunch to pace up and down the mall. The more energetic even jogged. Some female staffers took to jogging with military officers detailed to the building, especially the single ones, doubtless drawn to the short haircuts and simplistic mentalities that attached to uniformed service. But E.E. didn’t have time for that, and so she settled for a stretch before sitting down with a muttered curse. Department head at America’s most important women’s college, and here she was playing secretary to a goddamned Yalie. But bitching didn’t ever fix things, and she went back to work.

She was halfway through the Bird, and flipped to a new page as she picked up her yellow highlighting pen. The articles were unevenly set. Almost all were just crooked enough on the redacted pages to annoy, and E.E. was a pathologically neat person. At the top of page eleven was a small piece from the Hartford Courant. ALDEN PATERNITY CASE read the headline. Her coffee mug stopped in midflight.

What?

 

Suit papers will be filed this week in New Haven by Ms. Marsha Blum, alleging that her newly born daughter was fathered by Professor Charles W. Alden, former Chairman of the Department of History at Yale, and currently National Security Advisor to President Fowler. Claiming a two-year relationship with Dr. Alden, Ms. Blum, herself a doctoral candidate in Russian history, is suing Alden for lack of child support....

 

“That randy old goat,” Elliot whispered to herself.

And it was true. That thought came to her in a blazing moment of clarity. It had to be. Alden’s amorous adventures were already the subject of humorous columns in the Post. Charlie chased skirts, slacks, any garment that had a woman inside it.

Marsha Blum ... Jewish? Probably. The jerk was banging one of his doctoral students. Knocked her up even. I wonder why she just didn’t get an abortion and be done with it? I bet he dumped her, and she was so mad ...

Oh, God, he’s scheduled to fly to Saudi Arabia later today...

We can’t let that happen ...

The idiot. No warning, none. He didn’t talk to anyone about it. He couldn’t have. I would have heard. Secrets like that last about as long as they take to repeat in the lavatory. What if he hadn’t even known himself? Could this Blum girl be that angry with Charlie? That resulted in a smirk. Sure she could.

Elliot lifted her phone ... and paused for a moment. You didn’t just call the President in his bedroom. Not for just anything. Especially not when you stood to make a personal gain from what happened.

On the other hand ...

What would the Vice President say? Alden was really his man. But the VP was pretty strait-laced. Hadn’t he warned Charlie to keep a lower profile on his womanizing? Yes, three months ago. The ultimate political sin. He’d gotten caught. Not with his hand in the cookie jar either. That brought out a short bark of a laugh. Shtuping one of his seminar girls! What an asshole! And this guy was telling the President how to conduct affairs of state. That almost unleashed a giggle.

Damage control.

The feminists would freak. They’d ignore the stupidity of the Blum girl for not taking care of her unwanted—was it?—pregnancy in the feminist way. After all, what was “pro-choice” all about? She’d made her choice, period. To the feminist community it was simply a case of a male turd who had exploited a sister and was now employed by a supposedly pro-feminist President.

The antiabortion crowd would also disapprove ... even more violently. They’d recently done something intelligent, which struck Elizabeth Elliot as nothing short of miraculous. Two stoutly conservative senators were sponsoring legislation to compel “illegitimate fathers” to support their irregular offspring. If abortion was to be outlawed, it had finally occurred to those Neanderthals that someone had to do something about the unwanted children. Moreover, that crowd was on another morality kick, and they were kicking the Fowler Administration for a number of reasons already. To the right-wing nuts, Alden would just be another irresponsible lecher, a white one—so much the better—and one in an administration they loathed.

E.E. considered all the angles for several minutes, forcing herself to be dispassionate, examining the options, thinking it through from Alden’s angle. What could he do? Deny it was his? Well, a genetic testing would establish that, and that was guts-ball, something for which Alden probably didn’t have the stomach. If he admitted it ... well, clearly he couldn’t marry the girl (the article said she was only twenty-four). Supporting the child would be an admission of paternity, a gross violation of academic integrity. After all, professors weren’t supposed to bed their students. That it happened, as E.E. well knew, was besides the point. As with politics, the rule in academia was to avoid detection. What might be the subject of a hilarious anecdote over a faculty lunch table became infamy in the public press.

Charlie’s gone, and what timing ...

E.E. punched the number to the upstairs bedroom.

“The President, please. This is Dr. Elliot calling.” A pause while the Secret Service agent asked if the President would take the call. God, I hope I didn’t catch him on the crapper! But it was too late to worry about that.

The hand came off the mouthpiece at the other end of the circuit. Elliot heard the whirring sound of the President’s shaver, then a gruff voice.

“What is it, Elizabeth?”

“Mr. President, we have a little problem I think you need to see right away.”

“Right away?”

“Now, sir. It’s potentially damaging. You’ll want Arnie there also.”

“It’s not the proposal that we’re—”

“No, Mr. President. Something else. I’m not kidding. It’s potentially very serious.”

“Okay, come on up in five minutes. I presume you can wait for me to brush my teeth?” A little presidential humor.

“Five minutes, sir.”

The connection was broken. Elliot set the phone down slowly. Five minutes. She’d wanted more time than that. Quickly she took her makeup case from a desk drawer and hurried off to the nearest bathroom. A quick look in the mirror ... no, first she had to take care of the morning coffee. Her stomach told her that an antacid tablet might be a good idea, too. She did that, then rechecked her hair and face. They’d do, she decided. Just some minor repairs to her cheek highlights....

Elizabeth Elliot, Ph.D., walked stiffly back to her office and took another thirty seconds to compose herself before lifting The Early Bird and leaving for the elevator. It was already at the basement level, the door open. It was manned by a Secret Service agent who smiled good morning at the arrogant bitch only because he was inveterately polite, even to people like E.E.

“Where to?”

Dr. Elliot smiled most charmingly. “Going up,” she told the surprised agent.