“Convoy — what do you mean? Convoy defending against what?” Qati asked.
“Not a real convoy,” Russell explained. “More like a, uh, a motorcade. The fans from Minnesota have a big deal laid on. Tell you what, let's get a motel room for us. One close to the airport. When's our flight?” He paused, “Jesus, I really haven't been thinking very clear, have I?”
“What do you mean?” Ghosn asked again.
“Weather,” Russell replied. “This is Colorado, and it is January. What if we get another snowstorm?” He scanned the page. Uh-oh…
“For driving, you mean?”
“That's right. Look, what we ought to do is get rooms reserved, one of the motels right by the airport, say. We can go down the night before… or I'll get the rooms for two — no, three nights, so there won't be any suspicion. Christ, I hope there's vacancies.” Russell walked to the phone and flipped open the Yellow Pages right next to it. It took him four tries to find a room with twin doubles in a little independent place a mile from the airport. This he had to guarantee with a credit card that he'd managed not to use until now. He didn't like having to do that. One more bit of paper for his trail.
“Good morning, Liz.” Ryan walked into the office and sat down. “How are you today?”
The National Security Advisor didn't like being baited any more than the next person. She'd had a little battle with this bastard's wife — in front of reporters! — and taken her lumps publicly. Whether Ryan had had anything to do with it or not, he must have had a good laugh about it last night. Worse than that, what that skinny little bitch had said also went after Bob Fowler, didn't it? The President had thought so on being told last night.
“You ready for the brief?”
“Sure am.”
“Come on.” She'd let Bob handle this.
Helen D'Agustino watched the two officials enter the Oval Office. She'd heard the story, of course. A Secret Service agent had heard the whole thing, and the vicious putdown administered to Dr. Elliot had already been the subject of a few discreet chuckles.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” she heard Ryan say, as the door closed.
“Morning, Ryan. Okay, let's hear it.”
“Sir, what we plan to do is actually fairly simple. Two CIA officers will be in Mexico, at the airport, covered as airline maintenance personnel. They'll do the normal stuff, emptying ashtrays, cleaning the johns. Before they leave they will place fresh flower arrangements in the upstairs lounge. Concealed in the arrangements will be microphones like this one.” Ryan pulled the plastic spike from his pocket and handed it over. These will transmit what they pick up to a second transmitter, concealed in a bottle. That device will broadcast a multi-channel EHF — that's extremely high frequency — signal out of the aircraft. A series of three other aircraft will fly parallel courses with the 747 to receive that signal. An additional receiver with a tape-recorder attached will be concealed on the 747, both as a backup to the air-to-air links and as a cover for the operation. If it's located, the bugs will seem to be something done by the news people accompanying the Prime Minister. We don't expect that, of course. We'll have people at Dulles to recover our gadgets. In either case, the electronic transmission will be processed and the transcripts presented to you a few hours after the aircraft lands.'
“Very well. What are the chances for success?” Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm asked. He had to be there, of course. This was more an exercise in politics than statecraft. The downside political risk was serious, just as the reward for success would be more than noteworthy.
“Sir, there are no guarantees for operations of this kind. If something is said, it is likely that we'll know what it is, but he might not even discuss the matter at all. The equipment has all been tested. It works. The field officer running this operation is well experienced. He's done touchy ones before.”
“Like?” van Damm asked.
“Like getting Gerasimov's wife and daughter out a few years ago.” Ryan explained on for a minute or so.
“Is the operation worth the risk?” Fowler asked.
That surprised Ryan quite a bit. “Sir, that decision is yours to make.”
“But I asked you for an opinion.”
“Yes, Mr. President, it is. The take we've been getting from NIITAKA shows a considerable degree of arrogance on their part. Something like this might have the net effect of shocking them into playing honest ball with us.”
“You approve of our policy of dealing with Japan?” van Damm asked, just as surprised as Ryan had been a moment earlier.
“My approval or disapproval is beside the point, but the answer to your question is, yes.”
The Chief of Staff was openly amazed. “But the previous administration — how come you never told us?”
“You never asked, Arnie. I don't make government policy, remember? I'm a spook. I do what you tell me to do, as long as it's legal.”
“You're satisfied on the legality of the operation?” Fowler asked, with a barely suppressed smile.
“Mr. President, you're the lawyer, not me. If I do not know the legal technicalities — and I don't — I must assume that you, as an officer of the court, are not ordering me to break the law.”
“That's the best dance number I've seen since the Kirov Ballet was in the Kennedy Center last summer,” van Damm observed, with a laugh.
“Ryan, you know all the moves. You have my approval,” Fowler said, after a brief pause. “If we get what we expect, then what?”
“We have to go over that with the State Department guys,” Liz Elliot announced.
“That is potentially dangerous,” Ryan observed. “The Japanese have been hiring a lot of the people from the trade-negotiation section. We have to assume that they have people inside.”
“Commercial espionage?” Fowler asked.
“Sure, why not? NIITAKA has never given us hard evidence of that, but if I were a bureaucrat looking to leave government service and make half a mill' a year representing them — like a lot of them do — how would I present myself to them as a potentially valuable asset? I'd do it the same way a Soviet official or spook presents bonafides to us. You deliver something juicy up-front. That's illegal, but we're not devoting any assets to looking at the problem. For that reason, wide dissemination of the information from this operation is very dangerous. Obviously you'll want the opinion of Secretary Talbot and a few others, but I'd be really careful how much farther you spread it. Also, remember that if you tell the PM that you know what he said — and if he knows he only said it in one place — you run the risk of compromising this intelligence-gathering technique.” The President accepted that without anything more than a raised eyebrow.
“Make it look like a leak in Mexico?” van Damm asked.
“That's the obvious ploy,” Ryan agreed.
“And if I confront him with it directly?” Fowler asked.
“Kind of hard to beat a straight flush, Mr. President. And if this were ever to leak, Congress would go ballistic. That's one of my problems. I'm required to discuss this operation with Al Trent and Sam Fellows. Sam will play ball, but Al has political reasons to dislike the Japanese.”
“I could order you not to tell him…”
“Sir, that's one law I may not break for any reason.”
“I might have to give you that order,” Fowler observed.
Ryan was surprised again. Both he and the President knew what the consequences of that order would be. Just what Cathy had in mind. It might, in fact, be a fine excuse to leave government service.
“Well, maybe that won't be necessary. I'm tired of playing patty-cake with these people. They made an agreement, and they're going to keep it or have to deal with a very irate President. Worse than that, the idea that someone can suborn the President of a country in so venal a way is contemptible. God damn it! I hate corruption.”
“Right on, boss,” van Damm commented. “Besides, the voters will like it.”
“That bastard,” Fowler went on, after a moment. Ryan couldn't tell how much of this was real and how much feigned. “He tells me he's coming over to work out a few details, get acquainted some more, and what he's really planning is to welsh on a deal. Well, we'll see about that. I guess it's time he learned about hardball.” The discourse
