Scott Adler was Secretary of State Talbot's picked man, a highly skilled professional diplomat. Talbot was also bright. President Fowler might not have been terribly impressive, but he had selected superior cabinet officers and personal advisers. Except for Elliot, Avi corrected himself. Talbot used Deputy Secretary Adler to do his important advance work. And when Talbot himself entered formal negotiations, Adler was always at his side.
The most amazing thing, of course, was that not one of the Mossad's informants had a clue what was going on. Something important in the Middle East, they said. Not sure what… I heard that Jack Ryan at the Agency had something to do with it… End of report.
It should have been infuriating, but Avi was used to that. Intelligence was a game where you never saw all the cards. Ben Jakob's brother was a pediatrician with similar problems. A sick child rarely told him what was wrong. Of course, his brother could always ask, or point, or probe…
“Jack, I must tell my superiors something,” General Ben Jakob said plaintively.
“Come on, General.” Jack turned and waved for another beer. “Tell me, what the hell happened on the Mount?”
“The man was — is deranged. In the hospital they have a suicide watch on him. His wife had just left him, he came under the influence of a religious fanatic, and…” Ben Jakob shrugged. “It was terrible to see.”
That's true, Avi. Do you have any idea the political fix you're in now?'
“Jack, we've been dealing with this problem for—”
“I thought so. Avi, you are one very bright spook, but you do not know what's happening this time. You really don't.”
“So tell me.”
“I didn't mean that, and you know it. What happened a couple days ago has changed things forever, General. You must know that.”
“Changed to what?”
“You're going to have to wait. I have my orders, too.”
“Does your country threaten us?”
“Threaten? That will never happen, Avi. How could it?” Ryan warned himself that he was talking too much. This guy is good, Jack reminded himself.
“But you cannot dictate policy to us.”
Jack bit off his reply. “You're very clever, General, but I still have my orders. You have to wait. I'm sorry that your people in D.C. can't help you, but neither can I.”
Ben Jakob changed tack yet again. “I'm even buying you a meal, and my country is not so rich as yours.”
Jack laughed at his tone. “Good beer, too, and as you say, I can't do this where you say I'm going. If that's where I'm going… ”
“Your air crew has already filed the flight plan. I checked.”
“So much for secrecy.” Jack accepted the new bottle with a smile for the waiter. “Avi, let it rest for a while. Do you really think that we'd do anything to compromise your country's security?”
Yes! the General thought, but he couldn't say that, of course. Instead he said nothing. But Ryan wasn't buying, and used the silence to change the course of the discussion himself.
“I hear you're a grandfather now.”
“Yes, my daughter added to the gray in my beard. A daughter of her own, Leah.”
“You have my word: Leah will have a secure country to grow up in, Avi.”
“And who will see to that?” Ben Jakob asked.
“The same people who always have.” Ryan congratulated himself for the answer. The poor guy really was desperate for information, and he was sad that Avi had made it so obvious. Well, even the best of us can be pushed into corners…
Ben Jakob made a mental note to have the file on Ryan updated. The next time they met, he wanted to have better information. The General wasn't a man who enjoyed losing at anything.
Dr. Charles Alden contemplated his office. He wasn't leaving quite yet, of course. It would harm the Fowler Administration. His resignation, signed and sitting on the green desk blotter, was for the end of the month. But that was just for show. As of today, his duties were at an end. He'd show up, read the briefing papers, scribble his notes, but Elizabeth Elliot would do the briefs now. The President had been regretful, but his usual cool self. Sorry to lose you, Charlie, really sorry, especially now, but I'm afraid there's just no other way… He'd managed to retain his dignity in the Oval Office despite the rage he'd felt. Even Arnie van Damm had been human enough to observe “Oh, shit, Charlie!” Though enraged at the political damage to his boss, van Damm had at least mixed a little humanity and locker-room sympathy with his anger. But not Bob Fowler, champion of the poor and the helpless.
It was worse with Liz. That arrogant bitch, with her silence and her eloquent eyes. She'd get the credit for what he had done. She knew it, and was already basking in it.
The announcement would be made in the morning. It had already been leaked to the press. By whom was anyone's guess. Elliot, displaying her satisfaction? Arnie van Damm, in a rapid effort at damage control? One of a dozen others?
The transition from power to obscurity comes fast in Washington. The embarrassed look on the face of his secretary. The forced smiles of the other bureaucrats in the West Wing. But obscurity comes only after a blaze of publicity to announce the fact: like the flare of light from an exploding star, public death is preceded by dazzling fanfare. That was the media's job. The phone was ringing off the hook. There had been twenty of them waiting outside his house in the morning, cameras at the ready, sun-like lights blazing in his face. And knowing what it had to be even before the first question.
That foolish little bitch! With her cowlike eyes and cowlike udders and broad cowlike hips. How could he have been so stupid! Professor Charles Winston Alden sat in his expensive chair and stared at his expensive desk. His head was bursting with a headache that he attributed to stress and anger. And he was right. But he failed to allow for the fact that his blood pressure was nearly double what it should have been, driven to new heights by the stress of the moment. He similarly failed to consider the fact that he had not taken his antihypertensive medication in the past week. A prototypical professor, he was always forgetting the little things while his methodical mind picked apart the most intricate of problems.
And so it came as a surprise. It started at an existing weakness in part of the Circle of Willis, the brain's own blood-beltway. Designed to get blood to any part of the brain, as a means of bypassing vessels that might become blocked with age, the vessel carried a huge amount of blood. Twenty years of high blood-pressure, and twenty years of his taking his medication only when he remembered that he had an upcoming doctor's appointment, and the added stress of seeing his career stop with a demeaning personal disgrace, culminated in a rupture of the vessel on the right side of his head. What had been a searing migraine headache became death itself. Alden's eyes opened wide, and his hands flew up to grasp his skull as though to hold it together. It was too late for that. The rip widened, allowing more blood to escape. This both deprived important parts of his brain of the oxygen needed to function and further boosted intra-cranial pressure to the point that other brain cells were squeezed to extinction.
Though paralyzed, Alden did not lose consciousness for quite some time, and his brilliant mind recorded the event with remarkable clarity. Already unable to move, he knew that death was coming for him. So close, he thought, his mind racing to outrun death. Thirty-five years to get here. All those books. All those seminars. The bright young students. The lecture circuit. The talk shows. The campaigns. All to get here. I was so close to accomplishing something important. Oh, God! To die now, to die like this! But he knew that death was here, that he had to accept it. He hoped that someone would forgive him. He hadn't been a bad man, had he? He'd tried so hard to make a difference, to make the world a better place, and now on the brink of something really important… so much the better for everyone if this had happened while he was mounted on that foolish little cow… better still, he knew in one final moment, if his studies and his intellect had been his only pass—
Alden's disgrace and de facto firing determined the fact that his death would take long to discover. Instead of being buzzed by his secretary every few minutes, it took nearly an hour. Because she was intercepting all calls to him, none were forwarded. It would not have mattered in any case, though it would cause his secretary some guilt for weeks to come. Finally, when she was ready to leave for the day, she decided that she had to tell him so. She buzzed him over the intercom, and got no response. Frowning, she paused, then buzzed him again. Still nothing. Next she rose and walked to the door, knocking on it. Finally she opened it, and screamed loudly enough that the
