after our family was attacked by terrorists. If he hadn't done those things back then, none of us would be alive. I was pregnant with our son then, and they tried to kill me and our daughter in my car in Annapolis and—'
'Excuse me, Mrs. Ryan, but we have to take a break now.'
'This has to stop, Tom. This has to stop right now,' Ryan said forcefully. 'When people talk about field operations in the open, real people can get killed. Do you understand that?' The camera lights were off, but the tapes were still rolling.
'Mr. President, the people have a right to know, and it's my job to report the facts. Have I lied about anything?'
'I can't even comment on that, and you know it,' Ryan said, having almost snarled an accurate answer. Temper, Jack, temper, he reminded himself. A President can't have a temper, damned sure not on live TV. Damn, Marko would never cooperate with the—or would he? He was Lithuanian, and maybe he might like the idea of becoming a national hero, though Jack figured he might just talk him out of such a thing. But Gerasimov was something else. Ryan had disgraced the man, threatened him with death—at the hands of his own countrymen, but that didn't matter to a man like him—and stripped him of all his power. Gerasimov now enjoyed a life far more comfortable than anything he might have enjoyed in the Soviet Union, which he had sought to maintain and rule, but he wasn't the sort of man to enjoy comfort so much as power. Gerasimov had aspired to the sort of position Ryan now enjoyed himself, and would have felt very comfortable in this office or another like it. But those who aspired to power were most often those who misused it, which distinguished him from Jack in one more way. Not that it mattered at the moment. Gerasimov would talk. Sure as hell. And they knew where he was.
So what do I do now?
'We're back in the Oval Office with President and Mrs. Ryan,' Donner intoned for anyone who might have forgotten.
'Mr. President, you are an expert in national security and foreign affairs,' Plumber said before his colleague could speak. 'But our country faces more problems than that. You now have to reestablish the Supreme Court. How do you propose to do that?'
'I asked the Justice Department to send me a list of experienced judges from federal appeals courts. I'm going over that list now, and I hope to make my nominations to the Senate in the next two weeks.'
'Normally the American Bar Association assists the government in screening such judges, but evidently that's not being done in this case. May I ask why, sir?'
'Tom, all of the judges on the list have been through that process already, and since then all have sat on the appeals bench for a minimum often years.'
'The list was assembled by prosecutors?' Donner asked.
'By experienced professionals in the Justice Department. The head of the search group is Patrick Martin, who just took over the Criminal Division. He was assisted by other Justice Department officials, like the head of the Civil Rights Division, for example.'
'But they're all prosecutors, or people whose job it is to prosecute cases. Who suggested Mr. Martin to you?'
'It's true that I don't personally know the Department of Justice all that well. Acting FBI Director Murray recommended Mr. Martin to me. He did a good job supervising the investigation of the airplane crash into the Capitol building, and I asked him to assemble the list for me.'
'And you and Mr. Murray have been friends for a long time.'
'Yes, we have.' Ryan nodded.
'On another of those intelligence operations, Mr. Murray accompanied you, didn't he?'
'Excuse me?' Jack asked.
'The CIA operation in Colombia, when you played a role in breaking up the Medellin cartel.'
'Tom, I'm going to say this one last time: I will not discuss intelligence operations, real ones or made-up ones, at all—ever. Are we clear on that?'
'Mr. President, that operation resulted in the death of Admiral James Cutter. Sir,' Donner went on, a sincerely pained expression on his face, 'a lot of stories are coming out now about your tenure at CIA. These stories are going to break, and we really want you to have the chance to set the record straight as rapidly as possible. You were not elected to this office, and you have never been examined in the way that political candidates usually are. The American people want to know the man who sits in this office, sir.'
'Tom, the world of intelligence is a secret world. It has to be. Our government has to do many things. Not all of those things can be discussed openly. Everyone has secrets. Every viewer out there has them. You have them. In the case of the government, keeping those secrets is vitally important to the well-being of our country, and also, by the way, to the safety of the lives of the people who do our country's business. Once upon a time the media respected that rule, especially in times of war, but also in other times. I wish you still did.'
'But at what point, Mr. President, does secrecy work against our national interests?' 'That's why we have a law that mandates Congress's right to oversee intelligence operations. If it were just the Executive Branch making these decisions, yes, you would have just cause to worry. But it isn't that way. Congress also examines what we do. I have myself reported to Congress on many of these things.'
'Was there a secret operation to Colombia? Did you participate in it? Did Daniel Murray accompany you there after the death of then-FBI Director Emil Jacobs?'
'I have nothing to say on that or on any of the other stories you brought up.' And there was another commercial break.
'Why are you doing this?' To everyone's surprise, the question came from Cathy.
'Mrs. Ryan—'
'Dr. Ryan,' she said at once.
'Excuse me, Dr. Ryan, these allegations must be laid to rest.'
'We've been through this before. Once people tried to break our marriage up—and that was all lies, too, and—'
'Cathy,' Jack said quietly. Her head turned toward his.
'I know about that one, Jack, remember?' she whispered.
'No, you don't. Not really.'
'That's the problem,' Tom Donner pointed out. 'These stories will be followed up. The people want to know. The people have a right to know.'
Had the world been just, Ryan thought, he would have stood, tossed the microphone to Donner, and asked him to leave his house, but that wasn't possible, and so here he was, supposedly powerful, trapped by circumstance like a criminal in an interrogation room. Then the camera lights came back on.
'Mr. President, I know this is a difficult subject for you.'
'Tom, okay, I will say this. As part of my service with CIA, I occasionally had to serve my country in ways that cannot be revealed for a very long time, but at no time have I ever violated the law, and every such activity was fully reported to the appropriate members of the Congress. Let me tell you why I joined CIA.
'I didn't want to. I was a teacher. I taught history at the Naval Academy. I love teaching, and I had time to write a couple of history books, and I like that, too. But then a group of terrorists came after me and my family. There were two very serious attempts to kill us—all of us. You know that. It was all over the media when it happened. I decided then that my place was in the Agency. Why? To protect others against the same sort of dangers. I never liked it all that much, but it was the job I decided I had to do. Now I'm here, and you know what? I don't much like this job, either. I don't like the pressure. I don't like the responsibility. No one person should have this much power. But I am here, and I swore an oath to do my best, and I'm doing that.'
'But, Mr. President, you are the first person to sit in 'this office who's never been a political figure. Your views on many things have never been shaped by public opinion, and what is disturbing to a lot of people is that you seem to be leaning on others who have never achieved high office, either. The danger, as some people see it, is that we have a small group of people who lack political experience but who are shaping policy for our country for some time to come. How do you answer that concern?'
'I haven't even heard that concern anywhere, Tom.'
'Sir, you've also been criticized for spending too much time in this office and not enough out among the people. Could that be a problem?' Now that he'd sunk the hook, Donner could afford to appear plaintive.
'Unfortunately I do have a lot of work to do, and this is where I have to do that work. For the team I've put
