“So did Aldrich Ames,” Santos said. “And a pile of other assholes who spied against the United States. That’s not the question.”
“Honestly, the only person who has access to every aspect of all the projects is me. I made sure of that. We have a saying where I used to work, Trust your buddy with your life, but not your wife. Well, I feel that way about these projects. We have active interface with some very sensitive systems. Software updates and patches, things such as that. I check everything personally before it goes out. I have sole access to the passcodes needed to push updates, but even I need a second in the room with me. There have to be two people logged in for the system to work.”
“Like a nuke on board a sub or ship?” Santos observed.
“The aircraft we push software to carry nuclear armament. So yes. That’s a good analogy.”
“Think hard,” Santos prodded. “Anyone you wouldn’t want to be in a dark room with? Some member of your team you feel hairy about?”
“No.” Li leaned back in his chair. “I’m sorry.”
“There is one other thing,” Santos said, shifting uneasily in his seat. “The FBI is going to drill down on this much harder than I have.”
“That’s their job,” Li said.
“They’re going to want every minute detail, if you get what I’m saying.”
“I can only tell them what I know.”
Santos pursed his lips, looking Li directly in the eye. “What I mean, Peter, is that they are going to want to know everything you and this woman said — and did — to each other. It could get messy.”
Li laughed out loud. “I didn’t do anything.”
Santos stood with a groan. “Well, good. Then we should have no problem.”
“Seriously,” Li said. “You keep forgetting that I called you. And anyway, I’m a little too old and too smart to bump uglies with some strange girl who propositions me at the same time she’s asking me about my top-secret government project.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Santos said. “It’s simple biology. A man will follow an erection into places he wouldn’t venture with a loaded shotgun.”
“Well,” Li said. “Not me.”
Santos chuckled. “Says the fifty-four-year-old guy who’s having a kid.”
23
As usual, reporters lined up behind the barricade, waiting for Ryan to walk out to Marine One. Jakarta was a long way away, even on Air Force One, and there was no point in going before his advance team and all the vehicles arrived. In any case, Ryan still had a country to run, which included a trip to address members of the North Atlantic Council visiting the United Nations in New York from NATO headquarters in Belgium. NATO countries usually had Russian aggression on their minds, but Ryan intended to keep his ears open for anything to do with China. There was always scuttlebutt, if one knew where to look. The UN was sovereign ground, but it was anything but neutral.
Van Damm stopped him in the Oval as he was getting ready to leave. As a rule, he liked to be empty-handed when he walked to the White Top. He was certain the media gaggle had a pool on when he’d turn to wave and fall on his face. There was a divot in the South Lawn, small, but large enough to catch the toe of his shoe if he wasn’t careful. His body man had his briefcase, and he, along with Gary Montgomery and the other agents who were traveling with him, were already on board Marine One. Ryan would be the last to board.
“What’s going on here, Arnie?” he asked. “You and I both know Pat West is an innocent pawn in some Chinese scheme to get their hands on some AI technology. I’m ready to kick the shit out of Chairman Zhao and let the chips fall where they may.”
“Are you done?” van Damm asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s okay to feel that way, but you need to get it out of your system before you walk past that pack of reporters. They are ravenous for a bloody story — and half of them would prefer it was your blood.”
“I have the most powerful military in the world,” Ryan said. “A military that commands the land, the air, and the sea, at my fingertips. I have sophisticated satellites to study the dimples on golf balls from high above the earth, talented spies who could inveigle the wiliest soul — and yet I sit here, unable to do anything to help my friend.”
“I know,” van Damm said. “Have a pleasant trip, Mr. President. Senator Chadwick has asked to see you again, but I told her you’re too busy at the moment.”
“No,” Ryan said, drawing a look of astonishment from his chief of staff. “Marine One to Andrews, Air Force One to Manhattan, motorcade to the UN, that’s an hour altogether. Two hours on the ground, plus the return trip. Tell her I’ll be back in four hours. In the meantime, I want an update on Father Pat’s status while I’m in the air.”
“Yes, sir,” van Damm said. “We will help him, Mr. President. It’s just going to take some time.”
“You’re damn right we’ll help him,” Ryan said. “If I have to find John Clark and walk up to the prison door with a couple of ax handles and bust him out ourselves.”
“Again,” van Damm said. “Something you might not want to mention in front of the press.”
24
The three Asian cuties were not regulars at the Boondock Bar, but neither was Major Goodloe “Oh” Schmidt, United States Marine Corps. Tucked in off Kalakaua Avenue and within spitting distance of Waikiki Bay, Boondock’s was Schmidt’s kind of water hole. It was loud, with lots of buddies to watch his back, and an abundance of handsome women. Schmidt was relatively short and completely bald at thirty-seven years old.
Major Reed “Skeet” Black, Schmidt’s classmate from the Naval Academy, stood at the bar with him, nursing a Hefeweizen. His sandy hair was cut short. A hint of a Celtic tattoo encircled his right biceps and peeked from the sleeve of his Rogue CrossFit T-shirt. Schmidt couldn’t stand wheat beer, but it was good to see his old buddy, so he kept his feelings to himself. The men had gone to flight school together, then Hornet school in Pensacola. Both had seen action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then run Tomahawk Chase — following cruise missiles after they’d been fired from Navy ships and submarines. Schmidt had gone back to Pensacola to pass on his knowledge to the new “studs”—what he and the other instructors called students — while Skeet Black rushed and won a coveted slot in the Navy’s Flight Demonstration Squadron, better known as the Blue Angels. Eventually, both men ended up in the seat of F-35B Lightnings, Schmidt testing Naval ordnance at China Lake — and Skeet working for the Marine Corps’ F-35 program out of the Pentagon.
They were both still flying airplanes when most pilots their age and rank were flying desks. That said something.
Two weeks earlier, they’d been temporarily assigned to the CVN 76, the USS Ronald Reagan, for some secret mission for which they’d yet to be briefed. Two Lockheed Martin F-35Bs, capable of short takeoff and vertical landing, STOVL, were assigned along with them. Sometimes the Marine Corps did things that way for OPSEC, or operational security, reasons.
Like Skeet would ever divulge any secret. You had to talk to do that, and Skeet Black wasn’t much of a talker. That was fine with Schmidt, because he preferred to do most of the conversing.
The problem was that the girls who were crowded around the wicker bar seemed to be even more turned on by his silence than they were by Schmidt’s war stories.
“You fly jets?” the girl nearest Schmidt asked, grinning like a gap-toothed Lucy Liu.
“I’m a pilot, yeah,” he said, giving Lucy one of his patented grins. He’d locked in on her from the beginning. She wasn’t drop-dead beautiful, but cute like a farm girl, a little bit out of her element at the bar — exactly what Schmidt preferred. She said she and her friends were college students at U of H Manoa. All of them were from California. All of them second-generation Americans from Taiwan. Flawless English with plenty of idioms — check. He’d approached her at the bar, not the other way around — check. Not too hot — check. Schmidt had a super-cool job, but his looks were more Goose than Maverick and he knew it. All that tallied up to the girls being friendlies. In truth they were a little young for him — but he was sure as hell thinking like a young man — which was to say not thinking very much at all.