What's going on? Ding asked himself. Iran gets real frisky and knocks over Iraq and starts a new country, and just as America is trying to deal with that, something else happens. An event minor in the great scheme of things, perhaps—but you never knew that until it was all over, did you? How could you tell? That was always the problem. Statesmen over the centuries had made mistakes because when you were stuck in the middle of things, you couldn't step outside and take a more detached look. That's what they were paid to do, but it was pretty hard, wasn't it? He had just finished his master's thesis, and he'd get hooded later this year, and officially proclaimed an expert in international relations. But that was a lie, Ding thought, settling back into his own seat. A flippant observation he'd once made on another long flight came back to him. All too often international relations was simply one country fucking another. Domingo Chavez, soon-to-be master in international relations, smiled at the thought, but it wasn't very funny, really. Not when people got killed. Especially not when he and Mr. C. were front-line worker-bees. Something happening in the Middle East. Something else happening with China… four thousand miles away, wasn't it? Could those two things be related? What if they were? But how could you tell? Historians assumed that people could tell if only they'd been smart enough. But historians didn't have to do the work…
"NOT HIS BEST performance," Plumber said, sipping his iced tea.
"Twelve hours, not even that much, to get a handle on something halfway 'round the world, John," Holtzman suggested.
It was a typical Washington restaurant, pseudo-French with cute little tassels on a menu listing overpriced dishes of mediocre quality—but, then, both men were on expense accounts.
"He's supposed to handle himself better," Plumber observed.
"You're complaining that he can't lie effectively?"
"That's one of the things a President is supposed to do—"
"And when we catch him at it…" Holtzman didn't have to go on.
"Who ever said it was supposed to be an easy job, Bob?"
"Sometimes I wonder if we're really supposed to make the job harder." But Plumber didn't bite.
"Where do you suppose Adler is?" the NEC correspondent wondered aloud.
"That was a good question this morning," the Post reporter granted, lifting his glass. "I have somebody looking into that."
"So do we. All Ryan had to do was say he was preparing to meet with the PRC ambassador. That would have covered things nicely."
"But it would have been a lie."
"It would have been the right lie. Bob, that's the game. The government tries to do things in secret, and we try to find out. Ryan likes this secrecy stuff a little too much."
"But when we burn him for it, whose agenda are we following?"
"What do you mean?"
"Come on, John. Ed Kealty leaked all that stuff to you. I don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Everybody knows it."
Bob picked at his salad. "It's all true, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," Holtzman admitted. "And there's a lot more."
"Really? Well, I know you had a story working." He didn't add that he was sorry to have scooped the younger man, mainly because he wasn't.
"Even more than I can write about."
"Really?" That got John Plumber's attention. Holtzman was one of the younger generation in relation to the TV correspondent, and one of the older generation for the newest class of reporters—which regarded Plumber as a fuddy-duddy even as they attended his seminars at Columbia University's journalism program.
"Really," Bob assured him.
"Like?"
"Like things that I can't write about," Holtzman repeated. "Not for a long time, anyway. John, I've been on part of this story for years. I know the CIA officer who got Gerasimov's wife and daughter out. We have a little deal. In a couple years he tells me how it was done. The submarine story is true and—"
"I know. I've seen a photograph of Ryan on the boat. Why he doesn't let that one leak is beyond me."
"He doesn't break the rules. Nobody ever explained to him that it's okay to do that—"
"He needs more time with Arnie—"
"As opposed to Ed."
"Kealty knows how the game is played."
"Yes, he does, John, maybe a little too well. You know, there's one thing I've never quite been able to figure out," Bob Holtzman remarked.
"What's that?"
"The game we're in, are we supposed to be spectators, referees, or players?"
"Bob, our job is to report the truth to our readers— well, viewers for me."
"Whose facts, John?" Holtzman asked.
"A FLUSTERED AND angry President Jack Ryan…" Jack picked up the remote and muted the CNN reporter who'd zapped him with the China question.
"Angry, yes, flustered, n—"
"Also yes," van Damm said. "You bungled the thing on China, and where Adler is—where is he, by the way?"
The President checked his watch. "He should be getting into Andrews in about ninety minutes. Probably over Canada now, I guess. He comes straight here, and then probably off again to China. What the hell are they up to?"
"You got me," the chief of staff admitted. "But that's why you have a national security team."
"I know as much as they do, and I don't know shit," Jack breathed, leaning back in his chair. "We've go? to increase our human-intelligence capability. The President can't be stuck here all the time not knowing what's going on. I can't make decisions without information, and all we have now are guesses—except for what Robby told us. That's a hard data-point, but it doesn't make sense, because it doesn't fit in with anything else."
"You have to learn to wait, Mr. President. Even if the press doesn't, you do, and you have to learn to focus on what you can do when you can do it. Now," Arnie went on, "we have the first set of House elections coming up next week. We have you scheduled to go out and make speeches. If you want the right kind of people in Congress, then that's what you have to go out and do. I have Callie preparing a couple of speeches for you."
"What's the focus?"
"Tax policy, management improvement, integrity, all your favorites. We'll have the drafts to you tomorrow morning. Time to spend some more time out among the people. Let them love you some, and you can love them back some more." The chief of staff earned himself a wry look. "I've told you before, you can't be trapped in here, and the radios on the airplane work just fine."
"A change of scenery would be nice," POTUS admitted.
"You know what would really be good now?"
"What's that?"
Arnie grinned. "A natural disaster, gives you the chance to fly out and look presidential, meet people, console them and promise federal disaster relief and—"
"God damn it!" It was so loud the secretaries heard it through the three-inch door.
Arnie sighed. "You gotta learn to take a joke, Jack. Put that temper of yours in a box and lock it the hell up. I just set you off for fun, and I'm on your side, remember?" Arnie headed back to his office, and the President was alone again.
Yet another lesson in Presidency 101. Jack wondered when they would stop. Sooner or later he'd have to act presidential, wouldn't he? But he hadn't quite made it yet. Arnie hadn't said that, exactly, and neither had Robby, but they didn't have to. He still didn't belong. He was doing his best, but his best wasn't good enough—yet, his mind added. Yet? Maybe never. One thing at a time, he thought. What every father said to every son, except they never warned you that one at a time was a luxury some people couldn't afford. Fourteen dead Americans on a runway on an island eight thousand miles away, killed on purpose probably, for a purpose he could scarcely guess at, and he was supposed to set that fact aside and get on with other things, like a trip back out to meet the people he was supposed to preserve, protect, and defend, even as he tried to figure out how he'd failed to do so for fourteen of them. What was it you needed in order to do this job? Turn off dead citizens and fix on other things? You had to be a sociopath to accomplish that, didn't you? Well, no. Others had to—doctors, soldiers, cops. And now him. And control his temper, salve his frustration, and focus on something else for the rest of the day.