Debt of Honor jr-6 Read online

  "Mind if I join you?" Betsy Fleming stuck her head in the door. She was one of the old hands, soon to be a grandmother, who'd actually started as a secretary at DIA. Self-taught in the fields of photoanalysis and rocket engineering, her experience dated back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Lacking a formal degree, her expertise in this field of work was formidable.

  "Sure." Scott didn't mind the intrusion. Betsy was also the office's designated mom.

  "Our old friend the SS-19," she observed, taking her seat. "Wow, I like what they did with it."

  "Ain't it the truth?" Scott observed, stretching to shake off his post-lunch drowsiness.

  What had once been quite ugly was now rather beautiful. The missile bodies were polished stainless steel, which allowed a better view of the structure. In the old Russian green, it had looked brutish. Now it looked more like the space launcher it was supposed to be, sleeker somehow, even more impressive in its purposeful bulk.

  "NASA says they've saved a whole lot of weight on the body, better materials, that sort of thing," Scott observed. "I really believe it now."

  "Shame they couldn't do that with their g'ddamn' gas tanks," Mrs. Fleming observed. Scott grunted agreement. He owned a Cresta, and now his wife refused to drive in it until the tank was replaced. Which would be a couple of weeks, his dealer had informed him. The company was actually renting a car for him in their vain effort to curry public goodwill. That had meant getting a new parking sticker, which he would have to scrape off before returning the rental to Avis.

  "Do we know who got the shots?" Betsy asked.

  "One of ours, all I know." Scott flipped to another slide. "A lot of changes. They almost look cosmetic," he observed.

  "How much weight are they supposed to have saved?" He was right, Mrs. Fleming thought. The steel skin showed the circular patterns of the polishing rushes, almost like jeweling on a rifle bolt…

  "According to NASA, over twelve hundred pounds on the missile body…" Another click of the remote.

  "Hmph, but not there," Betsy noted.

  "That's funny."

  The top end of the missile was where the warheads went. The SS-19 was designed to carry a bunch of them. Relatively small and heavy, they were dense objects, and the missile's structure had to account for it. Any intercontinental missile accelerated from the moment its flight began to the moment the engines finally stopped, but the period of greatest acceleration came just before burnout. At that point, with most of the fuel burned off, the rate at which speed increased reached its maximum, in this case about ten gees. At the same time, the structural rigidity lent to the missile body by the quantity of fuel inside its tanks was minimal, and as a result, the structure holding the warheads had to be both sturdy and massive so as to evenly distribute the vastly increased inertial weight of the payloads.

  "No, they didn't change that, did they?" Scott looked over at his colleague.

  "I wonder why? This bird's supposed to orbit satellites now…"

  "Heavy ones, they say, communications birds…"

  "Yeah, but look at that part…"

  The foundation for the warhead "bus" had to be strong across its entire area. The corresponding foundation for a communications satellite was essentially a thin steel annulus, a flat, sturdy donut that invariably looked too light for its job. This one was more like an unusually heavy wagon wheel.

  Scott unlocked a file drawer and removed a recent photo of an SS-19 taken by an American officer on the verification team in Russia. He handed it over to Mrs. Fleming without comment.

  "Look here. That's the standard structure, just what the Russians designed in, maybe with better steel, better finish. They changed almost everything else, didn't they?" Fleming asked. "Why not this?"

  "Looked that way to me. Keeping that must have cost them—what? A hundred pounds, maybe more?"

  "That doesn't make sense, Chris. This is the first place you want to save weight. Every kilo you save here is worth four or five on the first stage."

  Both stood and walked to the screen. "Wait a minute…"

  "Yeah, this fits the bus. They didn't change it. No mating collar for a satellite. They didn't change it at all." Scott shook his head.

  "You suppose they just kept the bus design for their trans-stage?"

  "Even if they did, they don't need all this mass at the top end, do they?"

  "It's almost like they wanted it to stay the way it was."

  "Yeah. I wonder why."

  14—Reflections

  "Thirty seconds," the assistant director said as the final commercial rolled for the Sunday-morning audience. The entire show had centered on Russia and Europe, which suited Ryan just fine.

  "The one question I can't ask." Bob Holtzman chuckled before the tape started rolling again. "What's it like to be the National Security Advisor in a country with no threat to its national security?"

  "Relaxing," Ryan answered with a wary look at the three cameras. None had their telltale red lights burning.

  "So why the long hours?" Kris Hunter asked in a voice less sharp than her look.

  "If I don't show up for work," Jack lied, "people might notice how unimportant I am." Bad news. They still don't know about India, but they know something's up. Damn. He wanted to keep it quiet. It was one of those things that public pressure would hurt, not help.

  "Four! Three! Two! One!" The assistant director jerked his finger at the moderator, a television journalist named Edward Johnson.

  "Dr. Ryan, what does the Administration make of changes in the Japanese cabinet?"

  "Well, of course, that's a result of the current difficulties in trade, which is not really in my purview. Basically what we see there is an internal political situation which the Japanese people can quite easily handle without our advice," Jack announced in his earnest-statesman's voice, the one that had taken a few elocution lessons to perfect. Mainly he'd had to learn to speak more slowly.

  Kris Hunter leaned forward. "But the leading candidate to take the prime ministership is a long-standing enemy of the United States—"

  "That's a little strong," Ryan interrupted with a good-natured smile.

  "His speeches, his writings, his books are not exactly friendly."

  "I suppose," Ryan said with a dismissive wave and a crooked smile.

  "The difference between discourse among friendly nations and unfriendly ones, oddly enough, is that the former can often be more acrimonious than the latter." Not bad, Jack…

  "You are not concerned?"

  "No," Ryan said with a gentle shake of the head. Short answers on a show like this tended to intimidate reporters, he thought.

  "Thank you for coming in this morning, Dr. Ryan."

  "A pleasure as always."

  Ryan continued to smile until the camera lights blinked off. Then he counted slowly to ten. Then he waited until the other reporters removed their microphones. Then he removed his microphone and stood up and moved away from the working part of the set. And then it was safe to speak. Bob Holtzman followed Jack into the makeup room. The cosmeticians were off drinking coffee, and Ryan took a fistful of HandiWipes and passed the container to Holtzman. Over the mirror was a large slab of wood engraved on which was, IN HERE EVERYTHING IS OFF THE RECORD.

  "You know the real reason behind equal rights for women?" Holtzman asked. "It wasn't equal pay, or bras, or any of that crap."

  "Right," Jack agreed. "It was forcing them to wear makeup. We deserved everything we got. God, I hate this shit!" he added, wiping the pancake off his forehead. "Makes me feel like a cheap whore."

  "That isn't too unusual for a political figure, is it?" Kristyn Hunter asked, taking wipes to do the same.

  Jack laughed. "No, but it's kind of impolite for you to say so, ma'am."

  Am I a political figure now? Ryan asked himself. I suppose I am. How the hell did that happen?

  "Why the fancy footwork on my last question, Jack?" Holtzman asked.

  "Bob, if you know it was fancy footwork, then you know wh
y." Ryan motioned to the sign over the mirror, then decided to tap it to make sure everyone caught the message.

  "I know that when the last government fell, it was us who developed the information on the bribery scandal," Holtzman said.

  Jack gave him a look but nothing else. Even no comment would have been a substantive comment under these circumstances.

  "That killed Goto's first chance to become Prime Minister. He was next in line, remember?"

  "Well, now he's got another. His patience is rewarded," Ryan observed.

  "If he can get a coalition together."

  "Don't give me that," Hunter leaned toward the mirror to finish cleaning her nose off. "You've read the stuff he's been telling their papers, same as I have, he will get a cabinet formed, and you know what arguments he's been using."

  "Talk is cheap, especially for somebody in that business," Jack said. He still hadn't quite made the leap of imagination to include himself "in that business." "Probably just a blip, one more politician with a few too many drinks under his belt who had a bad day at the office or the track."

  "Or the geisha house," Kris Hunter suggested. She finished removing the makeup, then sat on the edge of the counter and lit a cigarette. Kristyn Hunter was an old-fashioned reporter. Though still on the sunny side of fifty, she was a graduate of Columbia's School of Journalism and had just been appointed chief foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Her voice was as dry as dust. "Two years ago that bastard put a move on me. His language would shock a Marine, and his suggestions were…shall we say, eccentric. I presume you have information on his personal habits, Dr. Ryan?"

  "Kris, never, ever, not even once will I discuss what personal stuff, if any, we have on foreign officials." Jack paused. "Wait. He doesn't speak English, does he?" Ryan closed his eyes, trying to remember what his briefing documents had said on that point.

  "You didn't know? He can when it pleases him, but he doesn't when it doesn't. That day, it didn't. And his translator that day was a female, about twenty-seven. She didn't even blush." Hunter chuckled darkly. "I sure as hell did. What does that tell you, Dr. Ryan?"

  Ryan had few doubts about the information that had come out of Operation SANDALWOOD. Despite that, it was very nice to hear this from a completely independent source. "I guess he likes blondes," Jack said lightly.

  "So they say. They also say that he has a new one now."

  "This is getting serious," Holtzman noted. "Lots of people like to fool around, Kris."

  "Goto loves to show people how tough he is. Some of the rumors about Goto are downright ugly." Kris Hunter paused. "I believe them, too."

  "Really?" Ryan asked with the utmost innocence. "Woman's intuition?"

  "Don't be sexist," Hunter warned, too seriously for the mood of the moment.

  Ryan's voice turned earnest. "I'm not. My wife has better instincts for judging people than I do. I guess it helps that she's a doc. Fair enough?"

  "Dr. Ryan, I know you know. I know the FBI has been looking very discreetly at a few things out in the Seattle area."

  "Is that so?"

  Kris Hunter wasn't buying. "You don't keep secrets about this sort of thing, not if you have friends in the Bureau like I do, and not if one of the missing girls is the daughter of a police captain whose next-door neighbor is S-A-C of the FBI's Seattle Field Division. Do I need to go on?"

  "Then why are you sitting on it?"

  Kris Hunter's green eyes blazed at the National Security Advisor. "I'll tell you why, Dr. Ryan. I was raped in college. I thought the bastard was going to kill me. I looked at death. You don't forget that. If this story comes out the wrong way, that girl and maybe others like her could end up dead. You can recover from rape: I did. You can't recover from death."

  "Thanks," Ryan said quietly. His eyes and his nod said even more. Yes, I understand. And you know that I understand.

  "And he's the next head of that country's government." Kris Hunter's eyes were even more intense now. "He hates us, Dr. Ryan. I've interviewed him. He didn't want me because he found me attractive. He wanted me because he saw me as a blond-and-blue symbol. He's a rapist. He enjoys hurting people. You don't forget the look in the eyes once you've seen it. He's got that look. We need to watch out for this guy. You tell the President that."

  "I will," Ryan said as he headed out the door.

  The White House car was waiting just outside. Jack had something to think about as it headed for the Beltway.

  "Softball," the Secret Service agent commented. "Except for after."

  "How long you been doing this, Paul?"

  "Fourteen fascinating years," Paul Robberton said, keeping an eye on things from the front seat. The driver was just a guy from the General Services Administration, but Jack rated a Secret Service bodyguard now.

  "Fieldwork?"

  "Counterfeiters. Never drew my weapon," Robberton added. "Had a few fair-sized cases."

  "You can read people?"

  Robberton laughed. "In this job, you'd better hope so, Dr. Ryan."

  "Tell me about Kris Hunter."

  "Smart and tough as nails. She's right: she was sexually assaulted in college, a serial rapist. She testified against the mutt. It was back when lawyers were a little…free with how they treated rape victims. You know—did you encourage the rat, stuff like that. It got ugly, but she rode it out and they convicted the bum. He bit the big one in prison, evidently said the wrong thing to an armed robber. Pity," Robberton concluded dryly.

  "Pay attention to what she thinks, you're telling me."

  "Yes, sir. She would have been a good cop. I know she's a pretty fair reporter."

  "She's gathered in a lot of information," Ryan murmured. Not all of it good, not yet pulled together properly, and colored by her own life experiences, but sure as hell, she had sources. Jack looked at the passing scenery and tried to assemble the incomplete puzzle.

  "Where to?" the driver asked.

  "The house," Ryan said, drawing a surprised look from Robberton. In this case, "the house" didn't mean "home." "No, wait a minute." Ryan lifted his earphone. Fortunately he knew the number from memory.

  "Hello?"

  "Ed? Jack Ryan. You guys busy?"

  "We are allowed Sunday off, Jack. The Caps play the Bruins this afternoon."

  "Ten minutes."

  "Fair enough." Ed Foley set the phone back in its place on the wall.

  "Ryan's coming over," he told his wife. Damn it.

  Sunday was the one day they allowed themselves to sleep. Mary Pat was still in her housecoat, looking unusually frowzy. Without a word she left the morning paper and walked off toward the bathroom to fix her hair. There was a knock at the door fifteen minutes later.

  "Overtime?" Ed asked at the door. Robberton came in with his guest.

  "I had to do one of the morning shows." Jack checked his watch. I'll be on in another twenty minutes or so."

  "What gives?" Mary Pat entered the room, looking about normal for an American female on a Sunday morning.

  "Business, honey," Ed answered. He led everyone to the basement recreation room.

  "SANDALWOOD," Jack said when they got there. He could speak freely here. The house was swept for bugs every week. "Do Clark and Chavez have orders to get the girl out yet?"

  "Nobody gave us the execute order," Ed Foley reminded him. "It's just about setup, but—"

  "The order is given. Get the girl out now."

  "Anything we need to know?" Mary Pat asked.

  "I haven't been comfortable with this from the beginning. I think maybe we deliver a little message to her sugar daddy—and we do it early enough to get his attention."

  "Yeah," Mr. Foley said. "I read the paper this morning, too. He isn't saying friendly stuff, but we are laying it on them pretty hard, y'know?"

  "Sit down, Jack," Mary Pat said. "Can I get you coffee or anything?'

  "No, thanks, MP." He looked up after taking a place on a worn couch.

  "A light just went off. Our friend Goto seems
to be an odd duck."

  "He does have his quirks," Ed agreed. "Not terribly bright, a lot of bombast once you get through the local brand of rhetoric, but not all that many ideas. I'm surprised he's getting the chance."

  "Why?" Jack asked. The State Department material on Goto had been typically respectful of the foreign statesman.

  "Like I said, he's no threat to win the Nobel in physics, okay? He's an apparatchik. Worked his way up the way politicos do. I'm sure he's kissed his share of asses along the way—"

  "And to make up for that, he has some bad habits with women," MP added. "There's a lot of that over there. Our boy Nomuri sent in a lengthy dispatch on what he's seen." It was the youth and inexperience, the DDO knew. So many field officers on their first major assignment reported everything, as though writing a book or something. It was mainly the product of boredom.

  "Over here he couldn't get elected dogcatcher," Ed noted with a chuckle.

  Think so? Ryan thought, remembering Edward Kealty. On the other hand, it might just turn out to be something America could use in the right forum and under the right circumstances. Maybe the first time they met, if things went badly, President Durling could make a quiet reference to his former girlfriend, and the implications of his bad habits on Japanese-American relations…

  "How's THISTLE doing?"

  Mary Pat smiled as she rearranged the Sega games on the basement TV. This was where the kids told Mario and all the others what to do. "Two of the old members are gone, one retired and one on overseas assignment, in Malaysia, as I recall. The rest of them are contacted. If we ever want to—"

  "Okay, let's think about what we want them to do for us."

  "Why?" MP asked. "I don't mind, but why?"

  "We're pushing them too hard. I've told the President that, but he's got political reasons for pushing, and he isn't going to stop. What we're doing is going to hurt their economy pretty bad, and now it turns out that their new PM has a real antipathy to us. If they decide to push back, I want to know before it happens."