Power and Empire

43

President Ryan sat in the Oval Office, waiting, mulling over what he was about to say. An eight-by-ten color photograph of a smiling sailor with rosy cheeks looked up at him. The twenty-year-old sailor sat in front of an American flag, wearing enlisted “crackerjack” blues and a white Dixie cup hat. It was one of those boot-camp graduation portraits that proud grandpas and nervous parents keep on the mantel. Petty Officer 3rd Class Stephen Ridgeway had helped save a life — a woman under attack from pirates, no less. Parents would want to know that. Wouldn’t they? Ryan would want to know, if something happened to one of his children. That was the thing about death. It was always personal. Somebody else’s kid died and you immediately thought of your own, how fickle life was, how incredibly easy it was to snuff out the spark that made someone alive — no matter how brightly it burned.

Betty Martin’s sure voice came over the intercom.

“Mr. President, the White House operator has Randy and Lois Ridgeway on the line.”

“Thank you, Betty.” Ryan took a deep breath, attempting to settle himself. Best not to think about things like this for too long. It made the speeches sound canned. Truth was, he thought about it all the time. He couldn’t help it.

“Mr. and Mrs. Ridgeway,” he said, “this is Jack Ryan. I am so very sorry for your loss…”

The condolence call lasted four minutes. There was not much he could say, at least nothing worthwhile. The Ridgeways already knew what sort of man their son was. They didn’t need the President of the United States to remind them to be proud of him. Ryan looked at Stephen Ridgeway’s portrait for another full minute while he thought over his next course of action. At length, he moved it reverently to the side and centered a yellow notepad on his desk.

He pushed the intercom button.

“It’s a Saturday night, Betty,” he said. “You shouldn’t even be here. Go ahead, take off.”

“Right away, Mr. President.” It was what Betty Martin said when she wouldn’t commit to leaving. Her husband probably sat at home sticking pins in a Jack Ryan doll for all the time she spent at the White House.

“Seriously,” Ryan pressed. “I just have one more call to make.”

“I’ll get the party on the line for you.”

“Go home,” Ryan said. “That’s an order from your commander in chief. I’ll make the call myself.”

“There are protocols, Mr. President,” Betty said.

“Very well.” He read back the number written on his notepad and then said, “Now will you go home?”

“Right away, Mr. President,” she said.

The Watermelon Park Campground wasn’t exactly roughing it, but compared to the bustle of downtown Arlington, Virginia, the picnic tables, drop toilets, and fire pits overlooking the Shenandoah River were a blissful wilderness. It had taken Dr. Ann Miller all the way to Leesburg just to calm down the night before after her command performance at the White House. Her boyfriend was getting sick of hearing the story.

Miller wore the same red-and-black buffalo-plaid shirt that she’d worn to the meeting, but she and Eric had spent the day canoeing, so she’d traded the long pants for a pair of swimming shorts. She was strictly a yogurt-and-blueberries girl back in civilization, but she’d opted to splurge with s’mores tonight. She hunkered shoulder to shoulder with Eric, toasting marshmallows over a snapping fire. It was marvelously dark beyond the chestnut trees, just cool enough to make the heat of the fire against her bare knees feel perfect.

She teased at Eric’s toasting stick with hers, pushing it out of her way.

He chuckled, letting his marshmallow catch on fire, and watched it burn. “I guess people who get summoned to the White House should have the prime coal areas.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Ann said smugly.

“You know,” Eric said, casting a glance at the tent, “you being in such demand by the highest officials in the land is a real turn-on…”

She scoffed. “Eric Jordan, a leaf falling off one of those red oaks would turn you on.”

Eric moved his eyebrows up and down. “Depends on where it fell. But seriously, getting called to the White House is a big friggin’ deal.”

Miller’s phone began to play “The Ride of the Valkyries” in her jacket pocket. She’d sealed it in a Ziploc bag in the event they swamped the canoe, and it took her a couple seconds to dig it out.

“Wonder who that could be?” Eric teased. “Ten Downing Street, mayhaps?”

She waved him away and put the phone to her ear.

“Hello.”

It was a woman’s voice, straight to the point.

“Dr. Ann Miller?”

“This is she.”

“Dr. Miller, please hold for the President of the United States.”

Miller stood at once, dropping her stick into the fire. It was stupid, she realized, but she remained there anyway. Eric looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

An instant later: “Dr. Miller, Jack Ryan here. I apologize for calling so late, but I have some things I’d like you to look over. Would you mind coming by my office tomorrow morning?”

Eric moved in closer now and pressed his ear to hers, listening.

“Of course, Mr. President.”

“Very well,” Ryan said. “I’ll send a car for you.”

“No, no,” she stammered. “I mean, that won’t be necessary, sir. We’re in the Shenandoah right now. My boyfriend can drop me off.”

“Shall we say nine o’clock tomorrow morning, then?”

Eric feigned a pout after she’d hung up. “Should I be jealous?”

She laughed, draining off nervous energy. “I don’t know,” she said. “He is pretty cool. Maybe a little.”

She picked up a camp chair and headed to the car.

“What are you doing?” Eric said.

“Going home,” she said. “A girl can’t wear flannel to the White House twice in a row.”

Ryan hung up the phone at the same moment Arnie van Damm burst in through the door from the secretaries’ suite.

“What’s Betty doing here on a Saturday night?” He waved his hand before Ryan could answer. “Never mind. You need to get to a television. Something’s going on in Buenos Aires.”

Ryan groaned, moving toward his private study off the Oval. Arnie never wanted him to watch TV when good news was breaking.

“Some kind of bombing,” van Damm continued.

Ryan’s stomach tightened at the word. “Any of our people?” It was always his first question.

Van Damm shook his head. “A meeting of agricultural ministers, I guess. No U.S. representatives were present.” The CoS scratched his bald head. “I’m not sure why, but Foreign Minister Li was there. It’s unspooling even as we speak. Unconfirmed number of dead.”

Arnie followed Ryan into the small study down a short hall off the Oval Office. He picked up the remote because God forbid Ryan should have to turn on his own television.

They stood together in silence for a time and watched live reports of shaky cell phone footage. The plate-glass windows in the front of what looked like a restaurant had been shattered. Uniformed men and women appeared to be moving in all directions. Two fire trucks were parked out front, their lights pulsing in the evening darkness, causing the video footage to flare dramatically. Ambulances rolled up on scene, motioned forward by the uniforms. The commentary was in Spanish, and an American news anchor did her best to repeat a whole lot of nothing over and over again. What else could she do? Nothing was precisely what everyone in the United States knew at this point.

Arnie asked, “Shall I round up the NSC? The Principal Committee, at least?”

The Principal Committee was an abbreviated version of the National Security Council — consisting of the DNI, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, D/CIA, and a handful of cabinet secretaries. They could convene in the Situation Room, but the number was small enough that they could meet in his office.

Ryan thought over the value of calling in even the abbreviated committee on a Saturday evening. “No Americans are involved?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Arnie said.

“But China again…”

“Yep.”

Ryan watched two Argentine firefighters carry a body out of the restaurant in a bag. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Let’s just get Mary Pat on the line for now. I want to run a couple things by her.”

Van Damm sat down at the small desk in the cramped study and went to work getting in touch with the DNI while Ryan sat back on one of the two tufted leather chairs to watch the coverage from Buenos Aires. The news crawl along the bottom of the screen carried the BREAKING NEWS message, but with nothing but amateur video coming in, there was little to report. The crawl repeated headlines from the last few hours, including news of Typhoon Catelyn gathering strength two hundred nautical miles east of Okinawa. He’d already been briefed on what was then Tropical Storm Catelyn when it narrowly missed the U.S. Naval base on Guam. Now the damn thing had turned north toward Yokosuka, Japan.

“I have MP,” Arnie said. “Want me to put her on speaker?”

Ryan shook his head. “On second thought, go ahead and patch in Bob Burgess, too. I’d like to get a sitrep on the safety of the Seventh Fleet while we’re at it.”