She tapped the photo with her index finger, driving home her point. “Yesterday would not be too soon. Enucleation — removal of the eye — may be the only option if the tumor has advanced far enough.”
Ryan’s wife often gave him a fresh perspective and, since she knew him so well, pointed out instances where his personal biases might be clouding his judgment. She didn’t have the nuclear codes, but she knew what made Ryan tick. In the great scheme of things, that was almost the same thing. The problem was, right now, he didn’t want to be calmed down.
He’d just finished a BLUF — bottom line up front — briefing about recent events, including Father West’s text and the feuding Chinese generals. He saved the folder with photographs of General Song’s granddaughter for last, ending with the proposed surgery at Kellogg Eye Center.
“I should assist,” Cathy said. “Dan Berryhill is a brilliant surgeon, but I can help him.”
Ryan resisted the urge to pound the table at the notion. “Well, that’s out of the question.”
“Why? This is my expertise, Jack. Let me help.”
“That’s not… It’s not on the table,” Ryan said. “Mary Pat is formulating a plan as we speak.”
“To talk to the general?” Cathy asked.
“Best we don’t discuss specifics,” Ryan said. “But yes, that’s about the size of it. Someone from CIA will make contact, see if the general is interested in giving us anything.”
“Here am I,” Cathy said. “Send me.”
“Quoting Isaiah doesn’t help your cause.”
Cathy fumed quietly, studying her plate as though the answer to her problems was in her sea bass. The only sounds in the dining room were the clink of silverware and the pulse from Ryan’s growing headache pounding in his ears. For a time, it looked like he might get away with ignoring his wife’s suggestion — a behavior which almost always came at his peril.
No such luck.
“I’m serious about this, Jack,” she launched in. “Dan Berryhill and I did our ophthalmology residency at Johns Hopkins together. He’s the logical choice at Kellogg to do the surgery. I’ll go in undercover and assist.”
Ryan closed his eyes, trying — and failing — to hide the stricken look that crossed his face. “Undercover?”
“You know what I mean,” Cathy said. “I can go in without all the fuss that follows you around. Maureen and the rest of my Secret Service detail will be with me, but few people need know I’m even there. I’ll be gowned up with a surgical bonnet and mask.”
“And then what?” Ryan asked.
“Then I get close to General Song when he comes in to check on his granddaughter in recovery — and I ask for his help. You said it yourself; your source thinks he’s ripe to turn. This way, I talk to him and you don’t burn a valuable asset in the PRC.”
“How do you know all that?” Ryan said, looking pained. “Am I talking in my sleep now?”
“Hon.” His wife gave him a reassuring — if a little condescending — pat on the arm. “You do a lot of talking on the phone when I’m right here. I know you think I’m a potted plant—”
“You know better than that.” Ryan rolled his eyes. “But this plan of yours, it sounds too much like—”
“Like what?” She cut him off. “The right thing to do? What’s that Edmund Burke saying—For evil to triumph, it’s only necessary for good women to do nothing…”
Ryan raised a professorial brow. “I’d be careful there. That’s misattributed to Burke. He did, however, say: Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.”
“Leave it to you to remember that little tidbit,” Cathy snapped.
“Yeah, because I’m so overbearing.”
Cathy threw her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Listen,” she said. “This has us both about to lose our minds. Pat West is my friend, too. I have to do something to help find out what’s going on.”
“The risks here are enormous. There’s a high likelihood that General Song doesn’t even know.”
“I understand that,” Cathy said. “But he’s a Chinese general involved in war-gaming scenarios — and the Chinese are somehow behind Pat’s arrest in Indonesia, which, according to his text, has something to do with a video-gaming technology. It’s not that much of a leap to think there may be a connection. He’s bound to know something.”
Ryan sighed. “I really do talk in my sleep.” He groaned, his brain working in overdrive. There had to be a way to talk his wife out of this, short of a presidential order — which carried slightly less weight than a mere suggestion with Cathy. He’d been friends with Pat West since they were in high school, and then later when they were both at CIA. That friendship had naturally carried over to the Ryan family. A quiet soul, West was generally a loner. Cathy had felt it was her duty to mother him, seeing him as someone who needed to be looked after. His arrest was particularly difficult for her.
As it turned out, Jack wasn’t the only one thinking strategically. Cathy backed off her plan to go to Michigan for a moment.
“So what do you plan to do?” she asked, pushing away her plate.
“In other news,” Ryan said, attempting to change the subject but keeping up his guard, “Senator Chadwick has decided she wants to be my new best friend.”
Cathy gasped, momentarily deterred. “Tell me you don’t trust her.”
“No,” Ryan said. “Well, yes. I mean, I trust her to be Michelle Chadwick. She needs my support for a literacy bill aimed at Native American kids.”
“There has to be something else,” Cathy said.
“Oh.” Ryan chuckled. “There definitely is—”
“That woman hates you with a passion. It’s evident every time she opens her mouth on television. Pretty sure she’d rather see you crash and burn than help a Native kid learn to read.”
Ryan shrugged. “Maybe so.”
“So I suppose you have a plan to get Pat out?”
“Believe me,” Ryan said. “I’d like nothing more than to lead a Marine expeditionary brigade into Jakarta and break Father Pat out of prison. But there’s that pesky little problem of Indonesia’s national sovereignty we have to deal with.”
“What does President Gumelar say?”
“He admits the charges are false but says his hands are tied.”
“Of course he does,” Cathy said. She’d always considered him a bit weak-kneed.
“Indonesia appears to be subject to the rule of mob,” Ryan said, “rather than the rule of law. If the populace believes Father Pat has been preaching Christianity to Muslims, then he has been preaching Christianity to Muslims — no matter what the truth and common sense say. Gumelar had a Chinese Christian finance minister who made a comment that the masses thought was blasphemy against Islam. He is the president’s close friend — and he’s still in jail eighteen months after the fact. I have Adler and his people at State looking into some inducements that can help President Gumelar sell a release plan to his people, but I have to be careful not to give away the farm for a personal friend.”
“I suppose,” Cathy said, unconvinced. “I guess there are other wrongly accused Americans locked up around the world.”
“One or two,” Ryan said.
She studied his face, eyes narrowing. “But you’re really going?”
“Of course.”
“But no battalion of Marines.”
“Gumelar is an important ally,” Ryan said. “Sadly enough. We’ve been planning a trip for months. This just moves up the timetable.”
“People will see it as—”