Spymaster

CHAPTER 32

It was never a good thing to be unexpectedly summoned to the White House. It was even worse when you had been out drinking.

Lydia Ryan didn’t need to defend her behavior to her former boss. He had worked with enough spies on both sides of the Iron Curtain (before and after its collapse) to know how much alcohol was part of the espionage business.

“We’ll keep it informal,” Bob McGee, Director of Central Intelligence, said. “I’ll ask President Porter to see us in the Residence. In the meantime, start hitting the black coffee.”

“You know that coffee doesn’t counteract booze, right?”

“Do it,” McGee instructed. “And leave your car where it is. Grab a taxi. I’ll have another cup waiting for you when you get here. Use the East Executive Avenue Gate.”

When she arrived, McGee was on the other side of security waiting. In one hand was a coffee and in the other was his briefcase. After hanging her badge around her neck, she joined him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, as he handed her the coffee.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be here.”

“You’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

“This isn’t professional.”

“Relax, Lydia,” he said. “Do you have any idea how many times advisors have been summoned to the White House after hours? Tons. They’ve had to leave dinner parties, birthday parties, you name it. You’re not the first person to have set foot on the grounds after having had a couple of cocktails.

“Look at it this way. When you eventually write your memoir, this’ll make for one hell of a chapter. All I ask is that you wait until I’m retired before you publish.”

Ryan grinned. “Deal,” she said as she fished a tin of Altoids from her purse and popped two into her mouth.

Together they entered via the East Wing and proceeded to the Residence. President Paul Porter was waiting for them on the second floor in the Treaty Room, just down the hall from the master bedroom.

The Treaty Room functioned as a less formal office for the President. Near the windows was a large, leather-topped rectangular desk stacked with briefing books. At the other end of the room a large television hung on the wall, tuned to a cable news channel, but with the volume muted.

A fireplace with a white marble mantel occupied the room’s west wall. Above it hung an enormous gilded mirror.

Reflected in the mirror was the sitting area on the other side of the room — a pair of leather club chairs, a coffee table, and a very long couch. Hanging over the couch was a vibrant expressionistic oil painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware by American artist Steve Penley. The pops of color and splatters of paint gave the room a much more modern feeling than was present in the rest of the White House.

As Ryan and McGee were shown into the room, President Porter stood up from behind his desk and walked over to greet them.

“Bob, Lydia,” he said, shaking their hands. “Thank you for coming.”

Porter was a lean, rugged outdoorsman with a perpetual tan. Glossy profile pieces often compared him to Teddy Roosevelt. He enjoyed entertaining heads of state at Camp David, where he took pride in showing off the hiking trails he had helped clear.

The President showed his two guests to the seating area, where he had them sit on the couch while he took one of the chairs.

He wasted no time getting to the point. “How sure are we that the Russians were behind the bombing tonight in Rome?”

“Il Manifesto is a small Italian newspaper, but ideologically aligned with what the People’s Revolutionary Front claims to represent,” said McGee. “If they’re looking to gin up support for an anti-NATO movement, there are a lot of fellow travelers in Il Manifesto’s readership. It makes good sense to make the claim of responsibility there first.”

“First?” said Porter. “Who else have they contacted?”

Removing a folder from his briefcase, McGee replied, “As of right now, La Repubblica and La Stampa newspapers, as well as RAI and Sky Italia Television.”

“Where does the death toll stand?”

McGee flipped to another page. “The restaurant was very crowded. Right now they have more than thirty-five dead and more than a hundred injured.”

“Do we know anything about the bomb?”

“Not yet, but the FBI has dispatched a team to help assist the Italians in their investigation.”

“And this Giovanni Lorenzo?” asked Porter. “Have we confirmed yet if he was present during the attack or what his status is?”

“We believe so. One of the paparazzi outside filed photographs with his press agency of Lorenzo arriving shortly before the bomb went off.”

The President took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and then looked at Ryan. “Could we have prevented this?”

“No, sir,” she said. “We had no idea, no advance warning that Lorenzo, or anyone from the NATO Defense College or the Foundation, was actively being targeted.”

“Three diplomats have been murdered, then the Norway incident, and now Rome. Can you honestly sit there and tell me that we should still be quiet about this? That we shouldn’t expose the Russians and bring holy hell down on them?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” she replied.

“Why not?”

“First, we don’t have enough concrete evidence that we could release to the media. It would be our word against the Russians’. They would spin it as a wild conspiracy theory. Fake news. Perhaps even claim it is a plot by us to discredit them. As we discussed before, if we can’t completely control the narrative, we don’t want it out there.”

“And, if I might add,” injected McGee, “putting the story out there might not change anything. All we’d be doing is tipping our hand to Moscow. We should stick with Harvath’s plan.”

“It’s turning into a bloodbath,” stated the President. “We have to do something.”

“We are doing something,” Ryan reassured him. “We’re actively targeting their propaganda apparatus, as well as the PRF itself. Director McGee is right. We need to stick to the plan.”

“But can you assure me that it’s working?”

“Yes. It’s working.”

Pointing at the coverage on his television, Porter replied, “Because that doesn’t look like it’s working to me.”

“Mr. President,” said McGee, “the Russians were always going to have a head start on us. We had no idea where or when the starting gun was going to go off. Now that it has, we’re right on their heels.”

Porter looked at Ryan. She was the one in charge of the ground operation. “Is that true?” he asked. “Are we right on their heels?”

No, it wasn’t true and Ryan knew it. In fact, they had taken a huge step backward. Losing Lars Lund had been a terrible blow to their progress. Harvath was working in a ridiculously tight window, and it was all but impossible to make up the ground Lund had covered before the Swedish police stepped in and froze them out.

Nevertheless, she had to give him a chance, carve out a little breathing room that might allow him to make up that lost ground. If anyone could pull it off, it would be Harvath.

What was more, this wasn’t the time for the President to be having second thoughts. Ryan abhorred the loss of life, too. She would have given everything to have prevented one drop of blood from being spilled. But the fact was, America and her allies weren’t spilling the blood. The Russians were.

Coming out publicly wasn’t the answer. McGee was absolutely right. They’d only be tipping their hand to the Russians. Moscow would very likely see it as a sign of weakness, which might even embolden them further. It was better for America to keep its cards to itself and push on. The challenge, though, was in convincing Porter to stay the course.

If not for the liquor in her bloodstream, Ryan might not have had the courage to say what she said next.

“Mr. President, with all due respect, you gave us this mission. You said, and I quote, ‘No matter what the cost, prevent an Article 5.’ ” Drawing his attention to the TV, she said, “This is the cost, and it is terrible. Those are allies and innocents being maimed and killed. But it pales in comparison to what another world war would look like.

“You made the right decision. Now, please, trust us to do our jobs. I promise you, we can do this.”

Porter knew she was right. They had to see this through. It didn’t make it any easier, though, to watch unfold. Nor did it ease his mind about what might come next.

Which brought him to the other item he wanted to discuss. Pausing, he said, “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do regarding Matterhorn.”