JACK JUNIOR shut his computer down and left his cubbyhole, heading out to the parking lot and his yellow Hummer H2, one of his few guilty pleasures in life. Still, with gas prices and the general state of the economy where they were, he felt a pang of guilt every time he turned the ignition key on the damned thing. He was no tree hugger, that much was certain, but maybe it was time to think about scaling back. Damn, his annoyingly eco-aware little sister was rubbing off on him. He’d heard Cadillac was making a pretty decent Escalade Hybrid. Might be worth a trip to the dealership.
He had a rare dinner with Mom and Dad scheduled for tonight. Sally would be there, too, probably full of ideas from her medical school. She had to think about picking her specialty, and for that she’d be bending Mom’s ear. And Katie would be as charming as ever, doting as she did on her big brother, which could be a pain in the ass, but SANDBOX wasn’t all that bad for a little sister. Family night, steak and spinach salad, baked potato, and corn on the cob, because that was his father’s favorite supper. Maybe a glass of wine now that he was old enough.
The life of a presidential son had its drawbacks, Jack had long ago learned. His protective detail was gone, thankfully, though he was never entirely sure that he didn’t have covert coverage on him. He’d asked Andrea about it and been told that he no longer had troops assigned, but who was to say that she was entirely truthful about it?
He parked on the street in front of his apartment, and went inside to change into slacks and a flannel shirt, then out again. Before long he was on I-97 for the ride down to Annapolis and thence to Peregrine Cliff.
His parents had built a sizable house before entering government service. The bad news was that everyone knew where it was. Cars would drive by the narrow country road and stop to stare at it, not knowing that every tag was recorded and computer checked by the Secret Service via a gaggle of concealed TV cameras. They might guess that a concealed structure within seventy yards of the main house held a minimum of six armed agents in case someone tried to pass through the gate and motor up the driveway. He knew his father found it oppressive. It was a major production even to go to the local Giant to get a loaf of bread and a quart of milk.
The prisoner in the gilded cage, Jack thought.
“SHORTSTOP, coming in,” he told the gatepost, and a camera would make sure of his identity before the gate opened. The Secret Service disliked his choice of car. The bright yellow of his Hummer was conspicuous, that much was certain.
He parked, got out, and walked to the door, beside which he found Andrea.
“Didn’t get a chance to talk to you afterward,” she said to him. “It was a hell of a thing you did, Jack. If you hadn’t caught it…”
“Then you just would’ve had a longer shot, that’s all.”
“Maybe. Still, thanks.”
“You bet. We know anything about the guy? Heard a rumor he might be URC.”
Andrea considered this for a moment. “I can neither confirm nor deny,” she said with a smile and a distinct emphasis on confirm.
So the Emir tried to take out Dad, Jack thought. Un-fucking-believable. He quashed the impulse to return to his computer at The Campus. The Emir was out there, and sooner or later he’d run out of running room; sadly, though, Jack wouldn’t be there when it happened.
“Motive?”
“Shock value, we’re thinking. Your dad might be a ‘former,’ but he’s still damned popular. Plus, the logistics are more manageable-easier to kill a retired President than a sitting one.”
“Maybe easier, but sure as hell not easy. You proved that.”
“We proved that,” Andrea said with a smile. “You want an application?”
Jack smiled at this. “I’ll let you know how the trading business goes. Thanks, Andrea.” He pushed through the door. “Hey, I’m home!” he called.
“Hi, Jack,” Jack Junior’s mom said, emerging from the kitchen with a hug and a kiss. “You look pretty good.”
“So do you, Professor-of-surgery lady. Where’s Dad?”
She pointed to his right. “Library. He’s got company. Arnie.”
Jack headed over there, up the short steps and turning left into Dad’s workplace. Dad was sitting in his swivel chair, with Arnie van Damm sprawled in a club chair nearby. “What are you guys conspiring on or for?” he asked on his way into the room.
“Conspiracies don’t work,” his father said tiredly. There’d been a lot of that talk during his presidency, and his father detested all of it, though he’d once joked of having the presidential helicopter fleet painted black just to annoy the idiots who believed that nothing happened on planet earth without a dark conspiracy’s having brought it about. It didn’t help that John Patrick Ryan Sr. was both wealthy and a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, of course-a combination sure to create a conspiracy buzz, real or imagined.
“Ain’t that a shame, Pop,” Jack offered, coming over for a hug. “What’s Sally doing?”
“Went to the store for the salad fixings. Took Mom’s car. What’s new?”
“Learning currency arbitrage. It’s kinda spooky.”
“Making any moves yourself?”
“Well, no, not yet, no big ones anyway, but I advise people.”
“Theoretical accounts?”
“Yeah, I made half a million virtual dollars last week,” he said.
“You can’t spend virtual dollars, Jack.”
“I know, but you have to start somewhere, right? So, Arnie, trying to get Dad to run again?” he asked.
“Why do you say that?” van Damm asked.
Maybe it was the setting, Jack thought. His eyebrow went up a little, but he didn’t press the issue. And so everyone in the room knew something the other two didn’t know. Arnie didn’t know about The Campus and his father’s part in setting it up, didn’t know about the blank pardons, didn’t know what his father had authorized. Dad didn’t know his own son worked there. And Arnie knew more political secrets than anyone since the Kennedy administration, most of which never left his lips, even to the sitting President.
“D.C.’s a mess,” Jack offered, wondering what it might break loose.
Van Damm wasn’t buying: “Usually is.”
“Makes you wonder what people were thinking in 1914, how the country was going to hell in a basket back then-but nobody remembers that now. Is that because somebody fixed it, or was it because none of it really mattered?”
“The first Wilson administration,” Arnie responded. “War breaking out in Europe, but nobody saw how badly it would all turn out yet. Took another year before reality sank in, and by then it was too late for anyone to figure a way out of it. Henry Ford tried, but he got laughed out of town.”
“Is that because the problem was too big, or the people were too small and too dumb?” Jack wondered.
“They didn’t see it coming,” the senior Ryan said. “They were too busy dealing with the day-to-day stuff to step back and see the big historic trends.”
“Like all politicians?”
“Professional politicians tend to focus on the small issues rather than the large ones, yes,”Arnie agreed. “They try to maintain continuity because it’s easier to keep the train on the same tracks. Trouble is, what do you do when the tracks come unglued around the next turn? That’s why it’s a hard job, even for smart men.”
“And nobody saw terrorism coming, either.”
“No, Jack, we didn’t, at least not entirely,” the former President admitted. “Some did. Hell, with a better intelligence service we might have, but that damage was done thirty years ago, and nobody ever really made it right.”
“What does work?” Jack asked. “What would have made the difference?” It was a sufficiently general question that it might generate a truthful answer.
“Signals intelligence-we’re still the best at that, probably-but there’s no substitute for HUMINT-real field spooks, talking to real people and finding out what they really think.”
“And killing some?” Jack asked, just to see what would result.
“There’s not much of that,” his father responded. “At least, not outside Hollywood.”
“Not what it says in the papers.”
“They still report Elvis sightings, too,” Arnie replied.
“Heck, maybe it would be good if James Bond were real, but he isn’t,” the former President observed. It might have been the undoing of the Kennedy administration, which had started to buy in to the 007 fiction, except for an idiot named Oswald. So did history take its major turns at accidents, assassins, and bad luck? Maybe a decent conspiracy was possible once, but not anymore. Too many lawyers, too many reporters, too many bloggers and Handycams and digital cameras.
“How do we fix it?”
That caused Jack Senior’s head to look up-rather sadly, his son thought. “I tried once, remember?”
“So then why is Arnie here?”
“Since when did you become so curious?”
“It’s my job to look into stuff and figure it all out.”
“The family curse,” van Damm observed.
That’s when Sally walked in. “Well, look who showed up.”
“Finished dissecting your cadaver yet?” Junior asked.
“The hard part’s putting it back together and having it walk back out the door,” Olivia Barbara Ryan shot back. “It beats handling money-dirty stuff, money, full of germs.”
“Not when you do it by computer. Nice and clean that way.”
“How’s my number-one girl?” the former President asked.
“Well, I got the lettuce. Organic. The only way to go. Mom told me to tell you it’s time for you to grill the steaks.”
Sally didn’t approve of steak, but it remained the one thing her father knew how to cook, along with burgers. Since it wasn’t summer, he had to do it on a gas grill in the kitchen instead of outside over charcoal. It was enough to get her father to stand up and head toward the kitchen, leaving Junior and Arnie together.
“So, Mr. van Damm, is he going to do it?”
“I think he has to, whether he accepts it yet or not. The country needs him to do it. And it’s Arnie now, Jack.”
Jack sighed. “That’s one family business in which I have no interest. It doesn’t pay enough for all the heartbreak that comes along with it.”
“Maybe so, but how do you say no to your country?”
“I’ve never been asked,” Jack responded, lying to a minor degree.
“The question is always internal. And your father is hearing it now. What’s he going to do? Hell, you’re his son. You know him better than I ever will.”
“The hard part for Dad is us-Mom and the kids. I think his first loyalty is to us.”
“As it should be. Tell me: Any nice girl in your life?” van Damm asked.
“Not yet.”
This wasn’t entirely true. He and Brenda had been dating for a month or so, and she was special, but Jack wasn’t sure she was that kind of special. Bring-home-to-the-parents special.
“She’s out there, waiting to be found. The good news is that she’s looking for you right now, too.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Question is, will I be old and gray before it happens?”
“You in a hurry?”
“Not especially.”
Sally appeared in the doorway. “Dinner, for those who want to devour the flesh of some harmless and inoffensive creature, murdered in Omaha, probably.”
“Well, he had a fulfilling life,” Jack observed.
Arnie chimed in, “Oh, yeah, they brought the food right to him, lots of friends, all his own age, never had to walk too far, no wolves to worry about, good medical care to handle any diseases he might have had to worry about…”
“Just one thing,” Sally shot back, leading them down the steps. “They made him climb up a steep ramp into a one-critter cage and zapped his brains with an air hammer.”
“Has it ever occurred to you, young lady, that a head of lettuce might scream when it’s cut off the stem?”
“It’s hard to hear them,” Jack chimed in. “They have small vocal cords. We’re carnivores, Sally. That’s why we have so little enamel on our teeth.”
“In that case, we are maladapted. Cholesterol kills us as soon as we’re past reproductive age.”
“Christ, Sally, you want to run around the woods naked with a stone knife to live? What about your Ford Explorer?” Jack demanded. “And the steer that made our dinner also made the leather for your designer shoes. You can push the eco-freak stuff too far, remember?”
“It becomes religion, Jack,” Arnie warned, “and you can’t hassle a person over religion.”
“A lot of that going around. And not all of it’s expressed in words.”
“True,” Arnie conceded. “But no sense in our adding to it.”
“Okay, fine. Sally, tell us about the ozone hole,” Jack invited. He’d win that one. Sally liked having a tan too much.