said similar things himself, but in Jack's case, he'd always hung his hat on one of the options.
'Scott?' Jack asked the acting SecState.
'The son of a bitch is dead as yesterday's fish,' Adler replied.
'Disagreement?' President Ryan asked the others in the room. Nobody contradicted the assessment, giving it a sort of blessing. Even the NIO would not disagree with the collective opinion. He'd delivered his assessments, after all. Any mistakes now were the Secretary of State's problem. Perfect.
'Who was the shooter?' Andrea Price asked. The answer came from CIA's Iraq-desk officer.
'Unknown. I have people running tapes of previous appearances just to make sure that he's been around before. Look, from all appearances it was a senior member of his protection detail, with the rank of an army colonel, and—'
'And I damned well know everybody on my detail,' Price concluded the statement. 'So, whoever it was, he belonged there, and that means whoever pulled this off managed to get somebody all the way inside, close enough to make the hit, and committed enough to pay the price for it. It must have taken years.' The continuation of the tape—they'd watched that only five times—showed the man crumble after a cavalcade of pistol shots at point-blank range. That struck Agent Price as odd. You damned well wanted to bag such people alive. Dead men still didn't tell any tales, and executions could always be arranged. Unless he'd been killed by other members of a conspiracy. But how likely was it that more than one assassin had made it that far? Price reflected that she could ask Indira Gandhi that someday. Her whole detail had turned on her one afternoon in a garden. For Price that was the final infamy, killing the person you were sworn to defend. But, then, she hadn't sworn to defend such people as that. One other thing on the tape got her attention: 'Did you notice the body language?'
'What do you mean?' Ryan asked.
'The way the gun came up, the way he took the shot, the way he just stood there and watched. Like a golfer, it's called follow-through. He must have waited a long time for the chance. He damned sure thought about it for a long, long time. He must have dreamed about it. He wanted the moment to be perfect. He wanted to see it and enjoy it before he went down.' She shook her head slowly. 'That was one focused, dedicated killer.' Price was actually enjoying herself, chilling though the subject of the meeting was. More than one President had treated the Secret Service agents as if they were furniture, or at best nice pets. It wasn't often that big shots asked their opinion of much more than narrow professional areas, like where a bad guy might be in a particular crowd.
'Keep going,' CIA said.
'He must have been from outside, a guy with a totally clean record, no connection at all with anybody who made noise in Baghdad. This wasn't a guy getting even for somebody taking his mother out, okay? It was somebody who worked his way up the system, slow and careful all the way.'
'Iran,' CIA said. 'Best guess, anyway. Religious motivation. No way he'd walk away from the hit, so it had to be somebody who didn't care. That could also mean straight revenge, but Ms. Price is correct: his people were clean in that respect. Anyway, it wasn't the Israelis, wasn't the French. The Brits don't do this anymore. The domestic angle is probably taken out by their vetting procedures. So it wasn't for money. It wasn't for personal or family motives. I think we can discount political ideology. That leaves religion, and that means Iran.'
'I can't say I'm familiar with all the intelligence side, but from looking at the tape, yeah,' Andrea Price agreed. 'It's like he was saying a prayer, the way he killed the guy. He just wanted the moment to be perfect. He didn't care about anything else.'
'Somebody else to check that out?' Ryan asked.
'FBI, their Behavioral Sciences people are pretty good at reading minds. We work with them all the time,' Price responded.
'Good idea,' CIA agreed. 'We'll rattle the bushes to ID the shooter, but even if we can get good information, it might not mean anything.'. 'What about the timing?'
'If we can stipulate that the shooter was there for a while—we have enough tapes of public appearances to determine that—then timing is an issue,' CIA thought.
'Oh, that's just great,' the President opined. 'Scott, now what?'
'Bert?' SecState said to his desk officer. Bert Vasco was the State Department senior desk officer for that country. Rather like a specialist in the trading industry, he concentrated his efforts on learning everything he could about one particular country.
'Mr. President, as we all know, Iraq is a majority Shi'a Muslim country ruled by a Sunni minority through the Ba'ath political party. It has always been a concern that the elimination of our friend over there could topple—'
'Tell me what I don't know,' Ryan interrupted.
'Mr. President, we simply do not know the strength of any opposition group that may or may not exist. The current regime has been very effective at cutting the weeds down early. A handful of Iraqi political figures has defected to Iran. None are top-quality people, and none ever had the chance to develop a firm political base. There are two radio stations that broadcast from Iran into Iraq. We know the names of the defectors who use those transmitters to talk to their countrymen. But there's no telling how many people listen and pay attention. The regime isn't exactly popular, we know that. We do not know the strength of the opposition, or what sort of organization exists to make use of an opportunity such as this one.'
CIA nodded. 'Bert's right. Our friend was awfully good at identifying potential enemies and taking them out of play. We tried to help during and after the Persian Gulf War, but all we really managed to do was get people killed. For sure nobody over there trusts us.'
Ryan sipped at his coffee and nodded. He'd made his own recommendations back in 1991, and they hadn't been exercised. Well, he'd still been a junior executive then.
'Do we have any options to play?' the President asked next.
'Honestly, no,' Vasco answered.
CIA agreed: 'No assets in place. What few people we have operating in that country are tasked to coverage of weapons development: nuclear, chemical, and so forth. Nobody on the political side. We actually have more people in Iran looking at the political side. We can rattle those bushes some, but not in Iraq.'
Fabulous, Jack thought, a country may or may not go down in one of the most sensitive areas of the world, and the world's most powerful nation could do nothing more than watch television coverage of the event. So much for the power of the American presidency.
'Arnie?'
'Yes, Mr. President,' the chief of staff replied.
'We bumped Mary Pat off the schedule a couple days ago. I want her in today if we can work the schedule.'
'I'll see what we can do on that, but—'
'But when something like this happens, the President of the United States is supposed to have more than his dick in his hand.' Ryan paused. 'Is Iran going to make a move?'
10 POLITICS
PRINCE ALI BIN SHEIK HAD been ready to fly home on his personal aircraft, an aging but beautifully appointed Lockheed L1011, when the call came in from the White House. The Saudi embassy was located close to the Kennedy Center, and the ride correspondingly short in his official limousine, accompanied by a security force almost as large as Ryan's and made up of American Diplomatic Protection Service personnel, plus the Prince's own detail, composed of former members of Britain's Special Air Service. The Saudis, as always, spent a lot of money and bought quality with it. AH was no stranger to the White House, or to Scott Adler, who met him at the door and conducted him upstairs and east into the Oval Office.
'Mr. President,' His Royal Highness said, walking in from the secretaries' room.
'Thank you for coming over on such short notice.' Jack shook his hand and waved him to one of the room's two sofas. Some thoughtful person had started a fire in the fireplace. The White House photographer snapped a few shots, and was dismissed. 'I imagine you've seen the news this morning.'
Ali managed a worried smile. 'What does one say? We will not mourn his passing, but the Kingdom has serious concerns.'
