Dead or Alive

The transition period had been even worse, if that was possible. The funeral, held at Jackson’s father’s Baptist church in Mississippi, was one of Jack’s worst-ever memories. The media had sneered at his display of emotion. Presidents were supposed to be robots, after all, but Ryan had never been one of those.

And with good damned reason, Ryan thought.

Right here, right here in this very room, Robby had saved his life, and his wife’s, and his daughter’s, and his as yet unborn son’s. Jack had rarely known rage in his life, but this was one subject that caused it to erupt like Mount Vesuvius on a particularly bad day. Even Robby’s father had preached forgiveness on the subject, proof positive that the Reverend Hosiah Jackson was a better man than he would ever be. So what fate suited Robby’s killer? A pistol round in the liver, perhaps… might take five or ten minutes for the bastard to bleed out, screaming all the way to hell…

Worse still, rumor had it the current President was contemplating a blanket commutation of every death sentence in America. His political allies were already lobbying for him in the media, planning a public mercy demonstration on the Washington Mall. Mercy for the victims of the killers and kidnappers was something they never quite addressed, of course, but for all that it was for them a deeply held principle, and Ryan actually respected it.

The former President took a calming breath. He had his work to do. He was two years into his memoirs and in the home stretch. The work had gone quicker than he’d expected, so much so that he’d also written a confidential annex to his autobiography that would not see the light of day until twenty years after his death.

“Where are you?” Cathy asked, thinking of her schedule for the day. She had four laser procedures scheduled. Her Secret Service detail had already checked out the patients, lest one come into the OR with a pistol or knife, an event so unlikely to happen that Cathy had long ago stopped thinking about it. Or maybe she had stopped thinking about it because she knew her detail was worrying about it.

“Huh?”

“In the book,” his wife clarified.

“The last few months.” His tax and fiscal policy, which had actually worked until Kealty had applied a flamethrower to it.

And now the United States of America was muddling along under the presidency-or reign-of Edward Jonathan Kealty, a silver-spooned member of the aristocracy. In time it would be fixed one way or another, the people would see to that. But the difference between a mob and a herd was that a mob had a leader. The people didn’t really need that. The people could do without it-because a leader usually came along somehow or other. But who chose the leader? The people did. But the people chose a leader from a list of candidates, and they had to be self- selected.

The phone rang. Jack got it.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Jack.” The voice was familiar enough. Ryan’s eyes lit up.

“Hi, Arnie. How’s life in academia?”

“As you might expect. See the news this morning?”

“The Marines?”

“What do you think?” Arnie van Damm asked.

“Doesn’t look very good.”

“I think it’s worse than it looks. The reporters aren’t telling the whole story.”

“Do they ever?” Jack wondered sourly.

“No, not when they don’t like it, but some of them have integrity. Bob Holtzman at the Post is having a conscience attack. He called me. Wants to talk to you about your views- off the record, of course.”

Robert Holtzman of The Washington Post was one of the few reporters Ryan almost trusted, partially because he’d always been straight with Ryan and partially because he was a former naval officer-a 1630, the code the Navy used to designate an intelligence officer. While he was at odds with Ryan on most political issues, he was also a man of integrity. Holtzman knew things about Ryan’s background that he’d never published, despite the fact that they would have made juicy stories, perhaps even career-making stories. But then again, maybe he was just saving them for a book. Holtzman had written a few of those, one a bestseller, and had made decent money from the effort.

“What did you tell him?” Jack asked Arnie.

“I told him I’d ask, but you’d probably say not just no but hell, no.”

“Arnie, I do like the guy, but a former President can’t trash his successor…”

“Even if he’s a worthless piece of shit?”

“Even then,” Jack confirmed sourly. “Maybe especially then. Hold on. I thought you liked him. What happened?”

“Maybe I hung around you too much. Now I have this crazy notion that character counts for something. It’s not all political maneuvering.”

“He’s damned good at that, Arnie. Even I have to grant him that. Arnie, you want to come down for a talk?” Ryan asked. Why else would he call on a Friday morning?

“Yeah, okay, so I’m not exactly subtle.”

“Fly on down. You’re always welcome in my house, you know that.”

Cathy asked sotto voce, “What about Tuesday? Dinner.”

“How about Tuesday for dinner?” Jack asked Arnie. “You can stay the night. I’ll tell Andrea to expect you.”

“Do that. I’m always half worried that woman’s going to shoot me, and as good as she is, I doubt it’d be a flesh wound. See you around ten.”

“Great, Arnie, see ya.” Jack set the phone back down and stood up to walk Cathy to the garage. Cathy had moved up in class. Now she drove a two-seat Mercedes, though she’d recently admitted she missed the helicopter into Hopkins. On the upside, now she got to play race-car driver, with her Secret Service agent, Roy Altman, former captain in the 82nd Airborne, holding on for dear life in the passenger seat. A serious guy. He was standing by the car, jacket unbuttoned, paddle holster visible.

“Morning, Dr. Ryan,” he greeted.

“Hi, Roy. How are the kids?”

“Just fine, thank you, ma’am.” He opened the car door.

“Have a productive day, Jack.” And the usual morning kiss.

Cathy settled in, buckled her seat belt, and started up the twelve-cylinder beast that lived under the hood. She waved and backed out. Jack watched her disappear down the driveway, out to where the lead and chase cars were waiting, then turned back to the kitchen door.

“Good morning, Mrs. O’Day,” he said in greeting.

“And to you, Mr. President,” said Special Agent Andrea Price-O’Day, Jack’s principal agent. She had a two- plus-year-old boy of her own, named Conor, and a handful he was, Jack knew. Conor’s dad was Patrick O’Day, Major Case Inspector for FBI Director Dan Murray, another of Jack’s government appointments that Kealty couldn’t mess with, because the FBI wasn’t allowed to be a political football-or least it wasn’t supposed to be.

“How’s the little one?”

“Just fine. Not quite sure about the potty yet, though. He cries when he sees it.”

Jack laughed. “Jack was the same way. Arnie is coming down Tuesday, about ten in the morning,” he told her. “Dinner, then overnight.”

“Well, we don’t have to check him out very thoroughly,” Andrea replied. But they’d still run his Social Security number through the National Crime Information Computer, just to be sure. The Secret Service trusted few-even in its own ranks, since Aref Raman had gone bad. That had caused a major bellyache for the Service. But her own husband had helped to settle that one down, and Raman would be in the Florence, Colorado, federal prison for a long, long time. The grimmest of all federal penitentiaries, Florence was as max as a maximum-security prison got, dug as it was into hard bedrock and entirely belowground. The guests of Florence mostly saw sunlight on black- and-white TV.

Ryan walked back into the kitchen. He could have asked more. The Service kept lots of secrets. He could have gotten an answer, however, because he, too, had been a sitting President, but that was something he just didn’t want to do.