'He is gone. I am very sorry.' He might have added that for Ebola this death had been merciful, or so the books and articles said. This was his first direct experience with the virus, and it had been quite dreadful enough.
The parents took it well. They'd known for more than a day, long enough to accept, short enough that the shock hadn't worn off. They would go and pray, which was entirely proper.
The body of Benedict Mkusa would be burned, and the virus with it. The telex from Atlanta had been very clear on that. Too bad.
RYAN FLEXED HIS hand when the line finally ended. He turned to see his wife massaging hers and taking a deep breath. 'Get you something?' Jack asked.
'Something soft. Two procedures tomorrow morning.' And they still hadn't come up with a convenient way of getting Cathy to work. 'How many of these things will we have to do?' his wife asked.
'I don't know,' the President admitted, though he knew that the schedule was set months in advance, and that most of the program would have to be adhered to regardless of his wishes. As each day passed, it amazed him more and more that people sought.after this job—the job had so many extraneous duties that it could scarcely be done. But the extraneous duties in a real sense were the job. It just went round and round. Then a staffer appeared with soft drinks for the President and First Lady, summoned by another who'd heard what Cathy had said. The paper napkins were monogrammed—stamped, whatever the process was called—with the image of the White House, and under it the words, THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. Husband and wife both noticed that at the same moment, then allowed their eyes to meet.
'Remember the first time we took Sally to Disney World?' Cathy asked.
Jack knew what his wife meant. Just after their daughter's third birthday, not long before their trip to England… and the beginning of a journey which, it seemed, would never end. Sally had fixed on the castle in the center of the Magic Kingdom, always looking to see it no matter where they were at the time. She'd called it Mickey's House. Well, they had their own castle now. For a while, anyway. But the rent was pretty high. Cathy wandered over to where Robby and Sissy Jackson were speaking with the Prince of Wales. Jack found his chief of staff.
'How's the hand?' Arnie asked.
'No complaints.'
'You're lucky you're not campaigning. Lots of people think a friendly handshake is a knuckle-buster—man- toman and all that. At least these people know better.' Van Damm sipped at his Perrier and surveyed the room. The reception was going well. Various chiefs of state and ambassadors and others were engaged in friendly conversation. There were a few discreet laughs at the exchange of jokes and pleasantries. The mood of the day had changed.
'So, how many exams did I pass and fail?' Ryan asked quietly.
'Honest answer? No telling. They all looked for something different. Remember that.' And some of them really didn't give a damn, having come for their own domestic political reasons, but even under these circumstances it was impolitic to say so.
'Kinda figured that out on my own, Arnie. Now I circulate, right?'
'Hit India,' van Damm advised. 'Adler thinks it's important.'
'Roger.' At least he remembered what she looked like. So many of the faces in the line had turned immediately into blurs, just as happened at an over-large party of any sort. It made Ryan feel like a fraud. Politicians were supposed to have a photographic memory for names and faces. He did not, and wondered if there were some sort of training method to acquire one. Jack handed his glass off to an attendant, wiped his hands with one of the special napkins, and headed off to see India. Russia stopped him first.
'Mr. Ambassador,' Jack said. Valeriy Bogdanovich Lermonsov had been through the receiving line, but there hadn't been time then for whatever he wanted to say. They shook hands again anyway. Lermonsov was a career diplomat, popular in the local community of his peers. There was talk that he'd been KGB for years, but that was hardly something Ryan could hold against him.
'My government wishes to ask if an invitation to Moscow could be entertained.'
'I have no objection to it, Mr. Ambassador, but we were just over a few months ago and my time has many demands on it right now.'
'I have no doubt of that, but my government wishes to discuss several questions of mutual interest.' That code phrase made Ryan turn his body fully to face the Russian.
'Oh?'
'I feared that your schedule would be a problem, Mr. President. Might you then receive a personal representative for a quiet discussion of issues?'
That could only be one person, Jack knew. 'Sergey Nikolay'ch?'
'Would you receive him?' the Ambassador persisted.
Ryan had a brief moment of, if not panic, then disquiet. Sergey Golovko was the chairman of the RVS—the reborn, downsized, but still formidable KGB. He also was one of the few people in the Russian government who had both brains and the trust of the current Russian president, Eduard Petravich Grushavoy, himself one of the few men in the world with more problems than Ryan had. Moreover, Grushavoy was keeping Golovko as close as Stalin had kept Beriya, needing a counselor with brains, experience, and muscle. The comparison wasn't strictly fair, but Golovko would not be coming over to deliver a recipe for borscht. 'Items of mutual interest' usually meant serious business; coming directly to the President and not working through the State Department was another such indicator, and Lermonsov's persistence made things seem more serious still.
'Sergey's an old friend,' Jack said with a friendly smile. All the way back to when he had a pistol in my face. 'He's always welcome in my house. Let Arnie know about the scheduling?'
'I will do that, Mr. President.'
Ryan nodded and moved off. The Prince of Wales had the Indian Prime Minister in a holding pattern, awaiting Ryan's appearance.
'Prime Minister, Your Highness,' Ryan said with a nod.
'We thought it important that some matters be clarified.'
'What might those be?' the President asked. He had an electrical twitch under his skin, from knowing what had to be coming now.
'The unfortunate incident in the Indian Ocean,' the Prime Minister said. 'Such misunderstandings.'
'I'm—glad to hear that…'
EVEN THE ARMY takes days off, and the funeral of a President was one such day. Both Blue Force and OpFor had taken a day to stand down. That included the commanders. General Diggs's house was on a hilltop overlooking a singularly bleak valley, but for all that it was a magnificent sight, and the desert was warm that day from Mexican winds, which allowed a barbecue on his walled and hedged back yard.
'Have you met President Ryan?' Bondarenko asked, sipping an early-afternoon beer.
Diggs shook his head as he flipped the burgers and reached for his special sauce. 'Never. Evidently he had a piece of getting the 10th ACR deployed to Israel, but, no. I know Robby Jackson, though. He's J-3 now. Robby speaks very well of him.'
'This is American custom, what you do?' The Russian gestured to the charcoal burner.
Diggs looked up. 'Learned it from my daddy. Could you pass my beer over, Gennady?' The Russian handed the glass to his host. 'I do hate missing training days, but…' But he liked a day off as much as the next guy.
'This place you have here is amazing, Marion.' Bondarenko turned to survey the valley. The immediate base area looked typically American, with its grid of roads and structures, but beyond that was something else. Scarcely anything grew, just what the Americans called creosote bushes, and they were like some sort of flora from a distant planet. The land here was brown, even the mountains looked lifeless. Yet there was something magnificent about the desert—and it reminded him of a mountaintop in Tajikistan. Maybe that was it.
'So, exactly how did you get those ribbons, General?' Diggs didn't know all the story. His guest shrugged.
'The Mudjeheddin decided to visit my country. It was a secret research facility, since closed down—it's a separate country now, as you know.'
Diggs nodded. 'I'm a cavalryman, not a high-energy physicist. You can save the secret stuff.'
'I defended an apartment building—the home for the scientists and their families. I had a platoon of KGB
