Fowler thought, that's perfect.
“It's okay, Mr. President. We're all volunteers. What do you want for breakfast, sir?”
“Good morning, Mr. President!” Dr. Elliot came in behind Connor. “This is the day!”
Bob Fowler turned with a smile. “It sure as hell is! Join me for breakfast, Elizabeth?”
“Love to. I have the morning brief — it's a nice short one for a change.”
“Pete, breakfast for two… a big one. I'm hungry.”
“Just coffee for me,” Liz said to the servant. Connor caught the tone of her voice, but did not react beyond nodding before he left. “Bob, you look wonderful.”
“So do you, Elizabeth.” And so she did, in her most expensive suit, which was also serious-looking, but just feminine enough. She took her seat and did the briefing.
“CIA says the Japanese are up to something,” she said as she concluded.
“What?”
They caught a whiff, Ryan says, of something in the next round of trade negotiations. The Prime Minister is quoted as saying something unkind.'
“What exactly?”
“'This is the last time we'll be cut out of our proper role on the world stage, and I'll make them pay for this,'” Dr. Elliot quoted. “Ryan thinks it's important.”
“What do you think?”
“I think Ryan's being paranoid again. He's been cut out of this end of the treaty works, and he's trying to remind us how important he is. Marcus agrees with my assessment, but forwarded the report out of a fit of objectivity,” Liz concluded with heavy irony.
“Cabot is something of a disappointment, isn't he?” Fowler observed as he looked over the briefing notes.
“He doesn't seem very effective at telling his people who the boss is. He's being captured by the bureaucracy over there, especially Ryan.”
“You really don't like him, do you?” the President noted.
“He's arrogant. He's—”
“ Elizabeth, he has a very impressive record. I don't much care for him either as a person, but as an intelligence officer he has done a lot of things very, very well.”
“He's a throwback. He's James Bond — or thinks he is. Fine,” Elliot admitted, “he's done some important things, but that sort of thing is history. We need someone now with a broader view.”
“Congress won't go for it,” the President said, as breakfast was wheeled in. The food had been scanned for radioactives, checked for electronic devices, and sniffed for explosives — which, the President thought, put one hell of a strain on the dogs, who probably liked sausage as well as he did. “We'll serve ourselves, thanks,” the President dismissed the Navy steward before going on. They love him there, Congress loves the guy.' He didn't have to add the fact that Ryan, as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, was not merely a Presidential appointee. He'd also been through a confirmation hearing in the US Senate. Such people were not easily dismissed. There had to be a reason.
“I never have figured that out. Especially Trent. Of all the people to sign off on Ryan, why him?”
“Ask him,” Fowler suggested, as he buttered his pancakes.
“I have. He danced around the issue like the prima ballerina at the New York Ballet.” The President laughed uproariously at that.
“Christ, woman, don't ever let anybody hear you say that!”
“Robert, we both support the estimable Mr. Trent's choice of sexual preference, but he is a prissy son of a bitch and we both know it.”
“True,” Fowler had to agree. “So, what are you telling me, Elizabeth?”
“It's time for Cabot to put Ryan in his place.”
“How much of this is envy for Ryan's part in the treaty, Elizabeth?”
Elliot's eyes flared, but the President was looking at his plate. She took a deep breath before speaking, and tried to decide if it were a goad or not. Probably not, but the President wasn't the sort to be impressed by emotions in matters like this. “Bob, we've been through that. Ryan connected a few ideas that other people had already come up with. He's an intelligence officer, for God's sake! All they do is report what other people do.”
“He's done more than that.” Fowler saw where this was going, but it was fun to play games with her.
“Fine, he's killed people! Is that what's special about him? James goddamned Bond! You even let them execute the ones who—”
“ Elizabeth, those terrorists also killed seven Secret Service agents. My life depends on those people, and it would have been damned ungracious and just plain idiotic of me to commute the sentences of people who had killed their colleagues.” The President almost frowned at that — So much for strongly-held principle, eh, Bob! a voice asked him — but managed to control himself.
“And now you can't do it at all, or people will say that you failed to do it once out of personal self-interest. You allowed yourself to be trapped and out-maneuvered,” she pointed out. She had been goaded after all, Liz decided, and answered in kind, but Fowler wasn't buying.
“ Elizabeth, I may be the only former prosecutor in America who doesn't believe in capital punishment, but… we do live in a democracy, and the people support the idea.” He looked up from his meal. “Those people were terrorists. I can't say I'm happy that I allowed them to be executed, but if anyone deserved it, they did. The time wasn't right to make a statement on that issue. Maybe in my second term. We have to wait for the right case. Politics is the art of the possible. That means one thing at a time, Elizabeth. You know that as well as I do.”
“If you don't do something, you'll wake up and find that Ryan is running CIA for you. He's able, I admit, but he's something from the past. He's the wrong person for the times we live in.”
God, you're an envious woman, Fowler thought. But we all have our weaknesses. It was time to stop playing with her, though. It wouldn't do to offend her too deeply.
“What do you have in mind?”
“We can ease him out.”
“I'll think about it— Elizabeth, let's not spoil the day with a discussion like this one, okay? How do you plan to break the news of the treaty terms?”
Elliot leaned back and sipped at her coffee. She reproached herself for moving too soon and too passionately on this. She disliked Ryan greatly, but Bob was right. It wasn't the time, wasn't the place. She had all the time in the world to make her play, and she knew that she had to do it with skill.
“A copy of the treaty, I think.”
“Can they read that fast?” Fowler laughed. The media was full of such illiterates.
“You should see the speculation. The lead Times piece was faxed in this morning. They're frantic. They'll eat it up. Besides, I ginned up some Cliff Notes for them.”
“However you want to do it,” the President said, as he finished off his sausage. He checked his watch. Timing was everything. There was a six-hour time difference between Rome and Washington. That meant the treaty could not be signed until two in the afternoon at the earliest, so as to catch the morning news shows. But the American people had to be prepped for the news, and that meant that the TV crews had to have the details of the treaty by three, Eastern Daylight Time, in order to absorb everything fully. Liz would break the news at nine, twenty minutes from now, he noted. “And you'll be playing up Charlie's part in it?”
“Right. It's only fair that he should get most of the credit.”
And so much for Ryan's part in the process, Bob Fowler noted without comment. Well, Charlie was the guy who really got it moving, wasn't he? Fowler felt vaguely sorry for Ryan. Though he also thought the DDCI something from the past, he'd learned all that the man had done, and was impressed. Arnie van Damm thought a lot of Ryan, also, and Arnie was the best judge of character in the administration. But Elizabeth was his National Security Advisor, and he could not have her and the DDCI at each other's throats, could he? No, he couldn't. It was that simple.
“Dazzle them, Elizabeth.”
“Won't be hard.” She smiled at him and left.
The task proved much harder than he'd expected. Ghosn thought about asking for help, but decided against it. Part of his aura in the organization was that he worked alone with these things, except for the donkey work for
