Foley was in better-than-average shape for a woman in her sixties, but used the banister to haul herself up the last two steps for dramatic effect.
She shook her finger at her old friend. “I thought about having my detail bum-rush your detail so I could take the elevator.”
“I’m pretty sure my detail can take your detail,” Ryan said.
“That’s because this is your home turf,” Mary Pat groused. “My detail doesn’t have guys on the roof with sniper rifles. They’re pretty damned good, though.”
“I know they are,” Ryan said. “But next time use the elevator. Nobody’s going to stop you.”
Mary Pat grinned. “I’d rather gripe about it, Jack.” They’d been acquainted for well over thirty years, fast friends for most of that, and she customarily used his given name unless they were in the Oval Office and there were others present. She’d been here enough to know her way around, and walked toward the dining room off the West Sitting Hall without being told. “Anyway,” she said. “I could use the exercise.”
Foley could be counted on to speak her mind. Ryan liked that. He enjoyed their no-spin chats.
“Griping counts as exercise now?” Ryan chuckled, following a step behind. “I’ll have to tell that to the kids.”
“You know what I mean, wiseass,” she said, drawing a raised brow from the female Secret Service agent posted in the Center Hall, across from the elevator.
“What do you think, Tina?” Ryan said as they passed. “Could my detail take Director Foley’s detail?”
“Without question, Mr. President,” Special Agent Tina Jordan said, stone-faced. With her hands folded low and relaxed in front of her slightly rumpled gray slacks, she tipped her head cordially to Mary Pat. “Good morning, Director Foley.”
The DNI paused outside the dining room door and turned to face Ryan, sniffing the air. “Eggs and bacon, Jack? What gives?”
“Hey,” Ryan said. “The most powerful man in the world should be able to eat what he wants for breakfast.” He shot a guilty glance over his shoulder as if afraid of being caught, then showed Foley through the door. “Seriously, Cathy had an early surgery to perform. That leaves me to harden my arteries at will.”
“I’m up for some comfort food,” Foley said. “Because we need to talk about Russia — and Russia should not be discussed over something as paltry as a breakfast of seeds and whey.”
“Not China?” Ryan mused. “President Zhao and his war games are all over the PDB this morning.” The PDB was the President’s Daily Brief, prepared by Foley’s office. It fused sensitive and secret data gleaned from across the nation’s seventeen intelligence agencies and was ready for Ryan when he woke up each morning.
“Russia first,” Foley said. “I’m saving the Chinese for last.”
A steward from the White House kitchen got them both seated, while the sous-chef, a woman whose parents were from the Dominican Republic, uncovered two plates piled high with eggs Benedict — made with bacon, the way Ryan liked it, instead of ham.
“Thank you, Josey,” Ryan said to the sous-chef. “It looks fantastic.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” The woman stood fast, as if she were waiting to be dismissed.
“Was there something else?”
“There is, Mr. President,” Josey said, shuffling her feet like a child with a C on her report card. “These Benedicts turned out to perfection… Chef asked me to take a photo with you and the breakfast for the White House Instagram account…”
Ryan sighed, waving a hand over his plate as if to give her the go-ahead. Photos of his food for social media — one of the countless things you never realized about being President of the United States until you were on the job. “This has Arnie’s name written all over it,” he muttered.
“Truth be told, Mr. President,” Josey whispered, glancing toward the doors, “it was Mr. van Damm who asked Chef to get some photos.” She took a small digital camera out of her jacket pocket — personal cell phones were locked away downstairs.
Mary Pat reflexively held up an open hand in front of her face at the sight of the camera. “Just the President, if you don’t mind.” She shot a sheepish glance at Ryan. “I know, I know. My photo is all over open-source media now that I’m in this job, but old habits die hard.”
“Of course, Director Foley,” Josey said, snapping three quick photos from different angles before thanking Ryan and stepping out.
“I like her,” Foley said. “She’s honest. The kind of gal I would have tried to recruit.”
“Be my guest,” Ryan said. “She’s not likely to be here long with a brain like hers.”
As was his habit, Ryan poured his guest’s coffee before his own. Being President was a lonely job. Hell, he thought, sometimes being Jack Ryan could be a lonely job. People had come to expect a certain decorum in his actions, a measured restraint when what he wanted to do was beat some bad actor to death with a hammer. He’d proven more than once that he wasn’t beyond using the full force of the presidency with devastating effect. But the times Mary Pat had talked him off the ledge were too numerous to count.
Apart from his wife, Cathy, Mary Pat Foley was Ryan’s closest confidant. Blessed with an innate ability to read people within a few moments after meeting them, she’d been a skilled field officer with the Agency. Her husband, Ed, had been the station chief in Moscow during the turbulent eighties — when things were even worse between the U.S. and Russia than they were now — marginally. Mary Pat was well known among her cohort as a bit of a cowboy, ready to take any manner of risk for her agents — a mother hen. She’d taken Ryan under her wing early on, mentoring him, offering advice from a near peer when he was still new to the CIA and unaccustomed to the Byzantine ways. Her maiden name was Kaminsky and she spoke Russian with the colloquial ease of someone who’d grown up in a Russian household, peppering her conversation with just the right mixture of humor and resignation to the vagaries of life to make her blend in like a native. She could think in Russian — beyond just the language — which made her invaluable as the top intelligence officer for Ryan’s administration.
Ryan used the point of his knife — Cathy preferred Shun when it came to blades — to pop a poached egg. He paused for a moment, watching the yolk mix with the hollandaise and drench the English muffin in liquid gold. Ryan didn’t do Instagram, but if any food was photogenic, this was it. He savored a bite — much richer than the steel-cut oats and skim milk Cathy normally made him eat — and then took a sip of coffee before speaking over the top of the cup.
“So, what’s this about Yermilov?”
Knife in one hand, Foley used the other to gesture at Ryan with her fork. “The man is a menace, Jack. You know that? He’s shameless.”
“Talks regarding Russia are becoming quotidian,” Ryan said.
Foley chuckled. “Doing your crosswords this morning, Mr. President?”
“Keeping the language alive,” Ryan said. “At any rate, it’s not a secret Yermilov fancies himself the next tsar. This report on China…”
“I’m briefing you on Russia, Jack,” Foley said. “Seriously, why do you keep asking about the Chinese? I’m your director of national intelligence. Do you know something I don’t know?”
“Hey,” Ryan chuckled. “I read Intellipedia.”
“Of course you do.” Foley dabbed her lips with a linen napkin, leaving a trace of red lipstick, and then looked at Ryan. “In your spare time.”
Part of the government’s venture into Web 2.0, Intellipedia was an online data-sharing system overseen by Foley’s office. Much like Wikipedia, the collaborative tool allowed intelligence analysts — half of them barely thirty years old, from what Ryan had seen — from the seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies to post and share to wikis classified up to and including Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS SCI) regarding their areas of expertise. The forum was open to those with the necessary security clearance. Personal opinions were not only allowed but encouraged. In Ryan’s view, one of the best things about what his friend John Clark called Wikispook was that it was not anonymous. Submitters shared an opinion, and then had to own it. Any analyst was free to state individual views that would be shared with anyone with the appropriate clearance, but that opinion linked back to the analyst, not some nameless avatar or pseudonym.