Debt of Honor

'And?'

'And, I think he believed me. Hell, I was telling the truth, wasn't I?' It was a question rather than a rhetorical expression.

'Yes, you were, Jack. Ed's going to have to handle this one himself,'

The relief on Ryan's face was so obvious as to offend the Chief Executive. 'Did you think I was really going to do this?'

'Of course not,' Ryan answered at once.

'Who knows?

'On the airplane?' van Damn asked. 'I'm sure Bob spread it around some.'

'Well, let's clobber it right now. Tish,' Durling said to his communications director, 'let's get a release put together. The Judiciary Committee's been briefed in, and I have not put any pressure on them at all.'

'What do we say about the delay?' Tish Brown asked.

'We decided jointly with the leadership that the matter deserved to have—what?' The President looked up at the ceiling. 'It deserved to have a clear field…'

'Sufficiently serious—no, it is sufficiently important to deserve a Congress undistracted by other considerations?' Ryan offered. Not bad, he thought.

'I'll make a politician out of you yet,' Durling said with a grudging smile.

'You're not going to say anything directly about the case,' van Damm went on, giving the President advice in the form of an order.

'I know, I know. I can't say anything on the facts of the matter because I can't allow myself to interfere with the proceedings or Kealty's defense, except to say that any citizen is innocent until the facts demonstrate otherwise; America is founded on…and all that stuff. Tish, write it up. I'll deliver it on the airplane before we land, and then maybe we can do what we're supposed to be doing. Anything else?' Durling asked.

'Secretary Hanson reports that everything is set up. No surprises,' Ryan said, finally getting to his own briefing. 'Secretary Fiedler has the monetary-support agreement ready for initialing, too. On that end, sir, it's going to be a nice, smooth visit,'

'How reassuring that is,' the President observed dryly. 'Okay, let me get cleaned up.' Air Force One or not, traveling in such close proximity to others was rarely comfortable. Presidential privacy was a tenuous commodity under the best of circumstances, but at least in the White House you had real walls between yourself and others. Not here. An Air Force sergeant strained at his leash to lay out Durling's clothing and shaving things. The man had already spent two hours turning the Presidential shoes from black leather into chrome, and it would have been ungracious to push the guy off. People were so damned eager to show their loyalty. Except for the ones you needed to, Durling thought as he entered the small washroom.

'We got more of 'em.'

Sanchez emerged from the head adjacent to CIC to see people gathered around the central plotting table. There were now three groups of the diamond shapes that denoted enemy surface ships. Charlotte, moreover, had position on a 'V' shape that meant an enemy submarine, and Asheville supposedly had a good sniff also. Best of all, the joint patrol line of 8-3 Viking ASW aircraft two hundred miles in advance of the battle group had identified what appeared to be a patrol line of other submarines. Two had been caught snorting, one on SOSUS and one by sonobuoys, and, using a line defined by those two positions, two others had been found. Now they even had a predictable interval between boats for the aircraft to concentrate on.

'Sunset tomorrow?' the CAG asked.

'They like the rising sun, don't they? Let's catch 'em at dinner, then.'

'Fine with me.' Sanchez lifted the phone at his place to alert his wing operations officer.

'Takes long enough,' Jones murmured.

'I seem to remember when you were able to stand watches for a real long time,' Wally Chambers told the civilian.

'I was young and dumb then.' I smoked, too, he remembered. Such good things for concentration and alertness. But most submarines didn't allow people to smoke at all. Amazing that some crews hadn't mutinied. What was the Navy coming to. 'See what I told you about my software?'

'You telling us that even you can be replaced by a computer?'

The contractor's head turned. 'You know, Mr. Chambers, as you get older you have to watch the coffee intake.'

'You two going at it again?' Admiral Mancuso rejoined them after shaving in the nearby head.

'I think Jonesy was planning to hit Banzai Beach this afternoon.' Captain Chambers chuckled, sipping at his decaf. 'He's getting bored with the exercise.'

'They do take a while,' SubPac confirmed.

'Hey, guys, we're validating my product, aren't we?'

'If you want some insider information, yeah, I'm going to recommend you get the contract.' Not the least reason for which was that Jones had underbid IBM by a good 20 percent.

'Next step, I just hired two guys from Woods Hole. That never occurred to the suits at Big Blue.'

'What do you mean?'

'We're going to decode whale talk, now that we can hear it so much better. Greenpeace is going to love us. The submarine mission for the next decade: making the seas safe for our fellow mammals. We can also track those Jap bastards who hunt them.'

'What do you mean?' Chambers asked.

'You want funding? I have an idea that'll keep it for you.'

'What's that, Jonesy?' Mancuso asked.

'The Woods Hole guys think they have the alarm calls for three species identified: for humpback, fins, and seis. They got them by listening in with hydrophones while they were hanging out with whalers. I can program that for active—it's in the freq range we transmit on. So what we can do is have subs trail along with the whalers and broadcast the call, and guess what? The whalers won't find shit. No whale in his right mind will get within twenty miles of another whale screaming that he's being mugged. Not much solidarity in the cetacean community.'

'You turning tree-hugger on us?' Chambers wondered. But he thought about it and nodded slowly.

'All those people have to tell their friends in Congress is that we're doing good scientific work. Okay? Not that they love us, not that they approve of our power plants, just that we're doing good work. What I'm giving you guys is a mission for the next ten years.' Jones was also giving his company work for at least that long, but that was beside the point. Mancuso and the submarine community needed the work. 'Besides, I used to enjoy listening to them when we were on Dallas.'

'Signal from Asheville,' a communications specialist reported from the door. 'They have acquired their target.'

'Well, they're pretty good,' Jones said, looking down at the plot. 'But we're still the big kid on the block.'

Air Force One floated into the usual soft landing at Sheremetyevo Airport one minute early. There was a collective sigh as the thrust-reversers cut in, slowing the heavy aircraft rapidly. Soon everyone started hearing the click of seat belts coming off.

'What woke you up so early?' Cathy asked her husband.

'Political stuff at home. I guess I can tell you now.' Ryan explained on, then remembered he had the fax still folded in his pocket. He handed it over, cautioning his wife that it wasn't all true.

'I always thought he was slimy.' She handed it back.

'Oh, don't you remember when he was the Conscience of Congress?'

Jack asked quietly.

'Maybe he was, but I never thought he had one of his own.'

'Just remember—'

'If anybody asks, I'm a surgeon here to meet with my Russian colleagues and do a little sightseeing.' Which was entirely true. The state trip would make considerable demands on Ryan's time in his capacity as a senior Presidential advisor. But it wasn't all that different from a normal family vacation either. Their tastes in sightseeing overlapped, but didn't entirely coincide, and Cathy knew that her husband loathed shopping in any form. It was