The Bear and the Dragon

which was the whole point of having a clandestine service in the first place.

“Okay, Ben,” Ryan said, leaning back in his chair and flipping through the PDB pages. “What’s interesting?”

“Mary Pat has something happening in China. Not sure what it is, though. She’s keeping these cards pretty close. The rest of today’s document you can get on CNN.”

Which was, depressingly, not infrequently the case. On the other hand, the world was fairly sedate, and penetrating information wasn’t all that necessary … or apparently so, Ryan corrected himself. You could never tell. He’d learned that one at Langley, too.

“Maybe I’ll call her about it,” POTUS said, flipping the page. “Whoa!”

“The Russian oil and gold?”

“Are these numbers for real?”

“It appears so. They track with what TRADER’S been feeding us from his sources, step for step.”

“Ummhmm,” Ryan breathed, looking over the resulting forecasts for the Russian economy. Then he frowned with some disappointment. “George’s people did a better evaluation of results.”

“Think so? CIA’s economics troops have a pretty decent track record.”

“George lives in that business. That’s better than being an academic observer of events, Ben. Academia is fine, but the real world is the real world, remember.”

Goodley nodded. “Duly noted, sir.”

“Throughout the ’80s, CIA overestimated the Soviet economy. Know why?”

“No, I don’t. What went wrong?”

Jack smiled wryly. “It wasn’t what was wrong. It was what was right. We had an agent back then who fed us the same information the Soviet Politburo got. It just never occurred to us that the system was lying to itself. The Politburo based its decisions on a chimera. Their numbers were almost never right because the underlings were covering their own asses. Oops.”

“Same thing in China, you suppose?” Goodley asked. “They’re the last really Marxist country, after all.”

“Good question. Call Langley and ask. You’ll get an answer from the same sort of bureaucrat the Chinese have in Beijing, but to the best of my knowledge we don’t have a penetration agent in Beijing who can give us the numbers we want.” Ryan paused and looked at the fireplace opposite his desk. He’d have to have the Secret Service put a real fire in it someday … “No, I expect the Chinese have better numbers. They can afford to. Their economy is working, after a fashion. They probably deceive themselves in other ways. But they do deceive themselves. It’s a universal human characteristic, and Marxism doesn’t ameliorate it very much.” Even in America, with its free press and other safeguards, reality often slapped political figures in the face hard enough to loosen some teeth. Everywhere, people had theoretical models based on ideology rather than facts, and those people usually found their way into academia or politics, because real-world professions punished that sort of dreamer more than politics ever did.

“Morning, Jack,” a voice said from the corridor door.

“Hey, Robby.” POTUS pointed to the coffee tray. Vice President Jackson got himself a cup, but passed on the croissants. His waistline looked a little tight. Well, Robby had never looked like a marathoner. So many fighter pilots tended to have thick waists. Maybe it was good for fighting g-forces, Jack speculated.

“Read the PDB this morning. Jack, this Russian oil and gold thing. Is it really that big?”

“George says it’s even bigger. You ever sit down with him to learn economics?”

“End of the week, we’re going to play a round at Burning Tree, and I’m reading Milton Friedman and two other books to bone up for it. You know, George comes across as pretty smart.”

“Smart enough to make a ton of money on The Street-and I mean if you put his money in hundred-dollar bills and weigh them, it is a fucking ton of money.”

“Must be nice,” breathed a man who’d never made more than $130,000 in a year before taking on his current job.

“Has its moments, but the coffee here’s still pretty good.”

“It was better on Big John, once upon a time.”

“Where?”

“John F. Kennedy, back when I was an O-3, and doing fun work, like driving Tomcats off the boat.”

“Robby, hate to tell you, my friend, but you’re not twenty-six anymore.”

“Jack, you have such a way of brightening up my days for me. I’ve walked past death’s door before, but it’s safer and a hell of a lot more fun to do it with a fighter plane strapped to your back.”

“What’s your day look like?”

“Believe it or not, I have to drive down to the Hill and preside at the Senate for a few hours, just to show I know what the Constitution says I’m supposed to do. Then a dinner speech in Baltimore about who makes the best brassieres,” he added with a smile.

“What?” Jack asked, looking up from the PDB. The thing about Robby’s sense of humor was that you never really knew when he was kidding.

“National meeting of artificial fiber manufacturers. They also make bulletproof vests, but bras get most of their fibers, or so my research staff tells me. They’re trying to make a few jokes for the speech.”

“Work on your delivery,” the President advised the Vice President.

“You thought I was funny enough way back when,” Jackson reminded his old friend.

“Rob, I thought I was funny enough way back when, but Arnie tells me I’m not sensitive enough.”

“I know, no Polish jokes. Some Polacks learned to turn on their TVs last year, and there’s six or seven who know how to read. That doesn’t count the Polish gal who doesn’t use a vibrator because it chips her teeth.”

“Jesus, Robby!” Ryan almost spilled his coffee laughing. “We’re not even allowed to think things like that anymore.”

“Jack, I’m not a politician. I’m a fighter jock. I got the flight suit, the hackwatch, and the dick to go along with the job title, y’dig?” the Vice President asked with a grin. “And I am allowed to tell a joke once in a while.”

“Fine, just remember this isn’t the ready room on the Kennedy. The media lacks the sense of humor enjoyed by naval aviators.”

“Yeah, unless they catch us in something. Then it’s funnier ’n hell,” the retired Vice Admiral observed.

“Rob, you’re finally catching on. Glad to see it.” Ryan’s last sight of the departing subordinate was the back of a nicely tailored suit, accompanied by a muttered vulgarity.

So, Mishka, any thoughts? ”Provalov asked.

Reilly took a sip of his vodka. It was awfully smooth here. “Oleg, you just have to shake the tree and see what falls out. It could be damned near anything, but ‘don’t know’ means ‘don’t know’. And at the moment, we don’t know.” Another sip. “Does it strike you that two former Spetsnaz guys are a lot of firepower to go after a pimp?”

The Russian nodded. “Yes, of course, I’ve thought of that, but he was a very prosperous pimp, wasn’t he, Mishka? He had a great deal of money, and very many contacts inside the criminal establishment. He had power of his own. Perhaps he’d had people killed as well. We never had his name come up in a serious way in any murder investigations, but that doesn’t mean that Avseyenko was not a dangerous man in his own right, and therefore worthy of such high-level attention.”

“Any luck with this Suvorov guy?”

Provalov shook his head. “No. We have a KGB file for him and a photograph, but even if that is for the right person, we haven’t found him yet.”

“Well, Oleg Gregoriyevich, it looks as though you have a real head-scratcher on your hands.” Reilly lifted his hand to order another round.

“You are supposed to be the expert on organized crime,” the Russian lieutenant reminded his FBI guest.

“That’s true, Oleg, but I ain’t no gypsy fortune-teller, and I ain’t the Oracle of Delphi either. You don’t know who the real target was yet, and until you learn that, you don’t know jack shit. Problem is, to find out who the target was, you have to find somebody who knows something about the crime. The two things are wrapped up together, bro. Get one, get both. Get neither, get nothing.” The drinks arrived. Reilly paid and took another hit.