Clear and Present Danger

same sense that skydiving wasn't quite dangerous - so long as everything went according to plan.

'And when are you heading down to Bogot ?'

'Next week, sir. I've messengered a letter to the legal attach , and he'll deliver it by hand to the AG. We'll have good security for the meeting.'

'Good. I want you to be careful, Emil. I need you. I especially need your advice,' the President said kindly. 'Even if I don't always take it.'

The President has to be the world's champ at setting people down easy , Moore told himself. But part of that was Emil Jacobs. He'd been a team player since he joined the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago, lo, those thirty years ago.

'Anything else?'

'I've made Jack Ryan the acting DDI,' Moore said. 'James recommended him, and I think he's ready.'

'Will he be cleared for SHOWBOAT?' Cutter asked immediately.

'He's not that ready, is he, Arthur?' the President opined.

'No, sir, your orders were to keep this one tight.'

'Any change with Greer?'

'It does not look good, Mr. President,' Moore replied.

'Damned shame. I have to go into Bethesda to have my blood pressure looked at next week. I'll stop in to see him.'

'That would be very kind of you, sir.'

Everyone was supportive as hell, Ryan noted. He felt like a trespasser in this office, but Nancy Cummings - secretary to the DDI from long before the time Greer arrived here - did not treat him as an interloper, and the security detail that he now rated called him 'sir' even though two of them were older than Jack was. The really good news, he didn't realize until someone told him, was that he now rated a driver also. The purpose of this was simply that the driver was a security officer with a Beretta Model 92-F automatic pistol under his left armpit (there was something even more impressive under the dash), but for Ryan it meant that he'd no longer have to make the fifty- eight-minute drive himself. From now on he'd be one of those Important People who sat in the back of the speeding car talking on a secure mobile phone, or reading over Important Documents, or, more likely, reading the paper on the way into work. The official car would be parked in GIA's underground garage, in a reserved space near the executive elevator, which would whisk him directly to the seventh floor without having to pass through the customary security-gate routine, which was such a damned nuisance. He'd eat in the executive dining room with its mahogany furniture and discreetly elegant silverware.

The increase in salary was also impressive, or would have been if it had matched what his wife, Cathy, was making from the surgical practice that supplemented her associate professorship at Johns Hopkins. But there was not a single government salary - not even the President's - that matched what a good surgeon made. Ryan also had the equivalent rank of a three-star general or admiral, even though his capacity in the job was merely 'acting.'

His first task of the day, after closing the office door, had been to open the DDI safe. There was nothing in it. Ryan memorized the combination, again noting that the DDO's combination was scribbled on the same sheet of paper. His office had that most precious of government perks: a private bathroom; a high-definition TV monitor on which he could watch satellite imagery come in without going to the viewing room in the building's new north wing; a secure computer terminal over which he could communicate to other offices if he so wished - there was dust on the keys; Greer had almost never used it. Most of all, there was room . He could get up and pace if he wanted. His job gave him unlimited access to the Director. When the Director was away - and even if he were not - Ryan could call the White House for an immediate meeting with the President. He'd have to go through the Chief of Staff - bypassing Cutter, if he felt the need - but if Ryan now said, 'I have to see the President, right now!' he'd get in, right now. Of course he'd have to have a very good reason for doing so.

Jack sat in the high-backed chair, facing away from the plate-glass windows, and realized that he had gotten there. This was as far as he had ever expected to rise in the Agency. Not even forty yet. He'd made his money in the brokerage business - and the money was still growing; he needed his CIA salary about as much as he needed a third shoe - gotten his doctor's degree, written his books, taught some history, made himself a new and interesting career, and worked his way to the top. Not even forty yet. He would have awarded himself a gentle, satisfied smile except for the fatherly gentleman who was now at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, dying the lingering and painful death that had put him in this chair, in this office, in this position.

It's not worth it. It sure as hell isn't worth that , Jack told himself. He'd lost his parents to an airliner crash at Chicago, and remembered the sudden, wrenching loss, the impact that had come like a thrown punch. For all that, it had come with merciful speed. He hadn't realized it at the time, but he did now. Ryan made a point of seeing Admiral Greer three times a week, watching his body shrink, draw in on itself like a drying plant, watching the pain lines deepen in his dignified face as the man fought valiantly in a battle he knew to be hopeless. He'd been spared the ordeal of watching his parents fade away, but Greer had become a new father to him, and Ryan was now observing his filial duty for his surrogate parent. Now he understood why his wife had chosen eye surgery. It was tough, technically demanding work in which a slip could cause blindness, but Cathy didn't have to watch people die. What could be harder than this - but Ryan knew that answer. He'd seen his daughter hover near death, saved by chance and some especially fine surgeons.

Where do they get the courage? Jack wondered. It was one thing to fight against people. Ryan had done that. But to fight against Death itself, knowing that they must ultimately lose, but still fighting. Such was the nature of the medical profession.

Jesus, you're a morbid son of a bitch this morning .

What would the Admiral say?

He'd say to get on with the goddamned job .

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place. Of course, Jack admitted, CIA might seem to some a most peculiar place in which to do that, but not to Ryan, who had done some very odd but also very useful things here.

A smell got his attention. He turned to see that the coffee machine on the credenza was turned on. Nancy must have done it, he realized. But Admiral Greer's mugs were gone, and some 'generic' CIA-logoed cups sat on the silver tray. Just then came a knock on the door. Nancy's head appeared.

'Your department-head meeting starts in two minutes, Dr. Ryan.'

'Thanks, Mrs. Cummings. Who did the coffee?' Jack asked.

'The Admiral called in this morning. He said you would need some on your first day.'

'Oh. I'll thank him when I go over tonight.'

'He sounded a little better this morning,' Nancy said hopefully.

'Hope you're right.'

The department heads appeared right on schedule. He poured himself a cup of coffee, offering the same to his visitors, and in a minute was down to work. The first morning report, as always, concerned the Soviet Union, followed by the others as CIA's interests rotated around the globe. Jack had attended these meetings as a matter of routine for years, but now he was the man behind the desk. He knew how the meetings were supposed to be run, and he didn't break the pattern. Business was still business. The Admiral wouldn't have had it any other way.

With presidential approval, things moved along smartly. Overseas communications were handled, as always, by the National Security Agency, and only the time zones made things inconvenient. An earlier heads-up signal had been dispatched to the legal attaches in several European embassies, and at the appointed time, first in Bern, teletype machines operating off encrypted satellite channels began punching out paper. In the communications rooms in all the embassies, the commo-techs took note of the fact that the systems being used were the most secure lines available. The first, or register, sheet prepped the technicians for the proper one-time-pad sequence, which had to be retrieved from the safes which held the cipher keys.

For especially sensitive communications - the sort that might accompany notice that war was about to start, for example - conventional cipher machines simply were not secure enough. The Walker-Whitworth spy ring had seen to that. Those revelations had forced a rapid and radical change in American code policy. Each embassy had a special safe - actually a safe within yet another, larger safe - which contained a number of quite ordinary-looking tape cassettes. Each was encased in a transparent but color-coded plastic shrink-wrap. Each bore two numbers. One number - in this case 342 - was the master registration number for the cassette. The other - in the Bern