Dead or Alive

you keep it secret because it wouldn’t look good on the front page of the paper. If you left anything like that behind, Kealty will make it public, through intermediaries and carefully structured leaks.”

“If it came to that, I could handle it,” Ryan said coolly. He’d never reacted well to threats and had rarely issued them, not without a lot of gun in his holster. But Kealty would never let that happen. Like too many “great” men, and like very many political figures indeed, he was a coward. Cowards were the first to resort to a show of force. It was the sort of power that some men found intoxicating. Ryan had always found it frightening, but Ryan had never had to pull that gun out of the holster without grave cause. “Arnie, I’m not afraid of anything that bastard can throw at me, if it comes to that. But why should it come to that?”

“Because the country needs you, Jack.”

“I tried to fix it. I had the best part of five years, and I failed.”

“System’s too corrupt, eh?”

“I got a decent Congress. Most of them were okay-the ones who’ve gone back home because of campaign promises. Hell, those were the honest ones, weren’t they? Congress is much improved, but the President sets the national tone, and I couldn’t change that. Christ knows I tried.”

“Callie Weston wrote you some good speeches. You might have made a good priest.” Arnie leaned back and finished his coffee. “You did make an earnest effort, Jack. But it wasn’t enough.”

“So you want me to try again. When you bash your head against a stone wall, the squishy sound gets kinda depressing after a while.”

“Have Cathy’s friends found a cure for cancer yet?”

“No.”

“Have they stopped trying?”

“No,” Jack had to admit.

“Because it’s worth doing even if it’s impossible?”

“Playing with the laws of science is easier than amending human nature.”

“Okay, you can always just sit here and watch CNN and read the paper and bitch.”

And I do a lot of that, Jack didn’t have to admit. The thing about Arnie was that he knew how to manipulate Ryan the same way a four-year-old girl could manipulate her father. Effortlessly and innocently. About as innocently as Bonnie and Clyde in a bank, of course, but Arnie knew how it was done.

“I’ll say it again, Jack. Your country-”

“And I’ll ask you again: Who sent you?”

“Why do you think somebody sent me?”

“Arnie.”

“Nobody, Jack. I mean it. I’m retired, too, remember?”

“Do you miss the action?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this: I used to think that politics was the highest form of human activity, but you cured me of that. You have to stand for something. Kealty doesn’t. He just wants to be the President of the United States because he figures he was in the line of succession, and it was his turn. At least that’s how he sees it.”

“So you’d jump with me?” Ryan asked.

“I’ll be there to help, and to advise you, and maybe you’ll listen to the voice of reason a little better this time around.”

“This terrorism thing-it’s too big a job for four years.”

“Agreed. You can reestablish your program for rebuilding the CIA. Beef up the recruitment program, get operations back on track. Kealty has crippled it, but he hasn’t completely destroyed it.”

“It would take a decade. Maybe more.”

“Then you get it back on track, step aside, and let somebody else finish it.”

“Most of my cabinet members won’t be coming back.”

“So what? Find new ones,”Arnie observed coldly. “The country’s full of talented people. Find some honest ones and work your Jack Ryan magic.”

Ryan Senior snorted at this. “It’ll be a long campaign.”

“Your first real one. Four years ago you were running for coronation, and it worked. It was disgustingly easy, flying around and giving speeches to uniformly friendly crowds-most of whom just wanted to see who they were voting for. With Kealty, it’ll be different. You’ll even have to debate him-and don’t underestimate him. He’s a skilled political operator, and he knows how to hit low,” Arnie warned. “You’re not used to that.”

Ryan sighed. “You’re a son-of-a-bitch, you know that? If you want me to commit to this, you’re going to be disappointed. I’ll have to think it over. I do have a wife and four kids.”

“Cathy will agree. She’s a lot tougher and a lot smarter than people realize,” van Damm noted. “You know what Kealty said last week?”

“What’s that?”

“On national health care. Some local TV crew in Baltimore interviewed her. She must have had a weak moment and said that she didn’t think government health care was a very good idea. Kealty’s reaction was, ‘What the hell does a doctor know about health-care issues?’”

“How come that didn’t make the papers?” It was delightfully juicy, after all.

“Anne Quinlan is Ed’s Chief of Staff. She managed to talk the Times out of putting it in print. Anne is no dummy. The managing editor up in New York is an old friend of hers.”

“How is it that they always bagged me when I put my foot in it?” Ryan demanded.

“Jack, Ed is one of them. You, on the other hand, are not. Don’t you ever cut your friends some slack? So do they. They’re human beings, too.” Arnie’s demeanor was more relaxed now. He’d won his main battle. It was time for magnanimity.

Having to think of reporters as human beings was enough of a stretch for Ryan at the moment.

26

NEARLY A QUARTER of the world’s supply of heavy-lift cranes, Badr thought, staring out over Port Rashid. Thirty thousand of the world’s 125,000 cranes, all gathered in one place and for one purpose-to turn Dubai into the jewel of the planet and a paradise for the wealthiest of its inhabitants.

From where he stood he could see offshore the Palm and World islands-vast man-made archipelagoes, one in the shape of the tree itself, the other the earth-as well as the Burj Al Arab hotel, a 1,000-plus-foot-tall spire in the shape of a giant sail.

Inland, the city was a sea of skyscrapers and crisscrossing highways and construction equipment. And in another five years, attractions would continue to pop up across the landscape: the Dubai Waterfront, a crescent extending some fifty miles into the ocean; the Hydropolis Underwater Hotel; the Sports City and ski dome complexes; Space Science World. In less than a decade, Dubai had gone from what many considered little more than a desolate backwater speck on the map to one of the world’s top resort destinations, a playground for the super-rich. Before long, Badr thought, Dubai’s amenities and attractions would outpace even those of Las Vegas. Or perhaps not, Badr reminded himself. The global economic crisis had hit the UAE as well. Many of the cranes looming over the city were, in fact, still, as construction projects had ground to a halt. Badr suspected this was the hand of Allah. Such decadence in an Arab country was unthinkable.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Badr heard behind him, and he turned around.

“My apologies for being late,” the real-estate agent said. “As you’ve probably noticed, construction can be something of a nuisance. Mr. Almasi, yes?”

Badr nodded. It was not his name, of course, and the agent probably suspected as much, but another of Dubai’s many admirable traits was a universal respect for discretion and anonymity among its army of bankers, brokers, and agents. Business was business and money was money, and each was held in greater esteem than arbitrary and wholly subjective codes of conduct.

“Yes,” Badr replied. “Thank you for meeting me.”

“Not at all. This way, please.”