18
Jack Ryan Sr. stepped over to a full-length mirror on the wall between two sets of lockers. Tonight’s presidential debate at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University was being held in the Emerson Physical Education Center to accommodate the huge crowd. It was also known as the Veale Center, and Ryan had no trouble picturing this venue hosting a basketball game. Around him on the walls of the locker room that had been converted into a dressing room for the presidential candidate, big Spartan silhouettes looked back at him. The adjacent bathroom set aside for Ryan’s needs had a dozen showers.
He’d needed none. He’d showered at the hotel.
Tonight’s debate was the second of three scheduled between himself and Kealty, and this was the one of the three Jack had insisted on. Just one moderator asking questions of the two men, seated at a table. Almost like a friendly conversation. It was to be less formal, less stiff. Kealty had objected at first, saying it was also less presidential, but Jack had held firm, and the backroom dealing of Jack’s campaign manager, Arnie van Damm, had won the day.
The theme of tonight’s debate would be foreign affairs, and Jack knew he had Kealty beat on the subject. The polls said so, so Arnie agreed, too. But Jack was not relaxed. He looked into the mirror again and took another sip of water.
He liked these all-too-brief moments of solitude. Cathy had just left the dressing room; right now she would be finding her seat in the front row. Her last words to him before leaving chimed in his ears as he looked at himself in the mirror.
“Good luck, Jack. And don’t forget your happy face.”
Along with Arnie and his speechwriter Callie Weston, Cathy had been his closest confidante on this campaign. She did not get into policy discussions very often, unless the subject of health care came up, but she had watched her husband closely during his hundreds of television appearances, and she gave him her opinions on how he conveyed himself to the public.
Cathy considered herself supremely qualified for the role. No one in the world knew Jack Ryan better than she did. She could look into his eyes or listen to the sound of his voice and know everything about his mood, his energy, even whether or not he’d snuck an afternoon cup of coffee that she did not permit when they were traveling together.
Normally Jack did great in front of a camera. He was natural, not stiff at all; he came off just like the man he was. A decent, intelligent guy who was, at the same time, strong-willed and motivated.
But occasionally Cathy saw things that she did not think helped him get his point across. Of particular concern to her was the fact that, in her opinion, whenever he talked about one of Kealty’s policies or comments that he did not agree with — which was essentially everything that came out of Kealty’s White House — Jack’s face had a tendency to turn dark.
Cathy had recently sat in bed with her husband on one of the almost nonexistent nights that found him taking a quick break at home from the campaign trail. For nearly an hour she held the remote control for td t and on he flat-screen TV on the wall. That would have been hell enough for Jack Ryan, even if his mug was
In each clip she showed him, every time a Kealty policy was brought up, Jack Ryan’s face changed. It wasn’t a sneer, and for that Jack felt he should get a damn medal, as incensed as he was by, literally, every last decision of importance by the Kealty administration. But Cathy was right, Jack could not deny it. Whenever an interviewer brought up a Kealty policy, Jack’s eyes narrowed slightly, his jaw tightened just perceptibly, and often his head shook back and forth, just once, as if to say “No!”
Cathy had tracked back for a moment to show Jack at a barbecue in Fort Worth, with a paper plate of brisket and corn on the cob in one hand and an iced tea in the other. A C-SPAN camera crew following him picked up an exchange where a middle-aged woman mentioned Kealty’s recent push for more regulation on the oil and gas industries.
While the woman relayed the hardships her family was enduring, Jack’s jaw tightened and he shook his head. There was empathy relayed in his body language, but only after his initial recoil of anger. His first reaction, that first flash of rage, locked into a still frame when Cathy pressed the pause button, was unmistakable.
As they sat in bed together Jack Ryan tried to lighten the moment. “I think I deserve partial credit on that one for not tossing up the baked beans I’d just eaten. I mean, we
Cathy smiled, shook her head. “Partial credit isn’t going to get you the highest office in the land this time, Jack. You are winning, but you haven’t won yet.”
Jack nodded. Chastened. “I know. I’ll work on it, I promise.”
And now, in the locker room at Case Western Reserve, Jack worked on it. He tried out his happy face on the empty room, while thinking back to that poor woman’s family unable to find work in an environment that stifled the entire industry in which she sought employment.
Chin up, a slight nod, eyes relaxed, no squinting.
He sighed. He realized, not for the first time, that if it feels unnatural, then that means Cathy was right, and he had been making faces ever since he’d thrown his hat into the ring.
He worried now that debating foreign policy in person with Ed Kealty would be a tremendous challenge to his self-control.
Jack spent one more moment practicing the happy face. Thought about Cathy watching this debate from the audience.
He smiled unnaturally at the mirror. Did it again. A third time.
The fourth smile on his lips was real. He almost laughed. He couldn’t help it. A grown man making faces into a mirror.
He snorted out a laugh now. Politics, when you drilled right down into it, was ultimately so goddamn ridiculous.
Jack Ryan Sr. shook his head and stepped to the door. One more lor. to ng sigh, one more affirmation to himself that he could pull off the happy face, and then he turned the knob.
Outside in the hall, his people began moving. Andrea Price-O’Day stepped up to his shoulder. The rest of his security team formed in a diamond around him for the walk to the stage.
“Swordsman is moving,” Price-O’Day said into her cuff mike.
19
Ed Kealty and Jack Ryan stepped out from opposite wings onto a stage awash in television lighting. There was polite applause from a crowd of students, media, and Clevelanders who’d managed to secure tickets. They met in the middle. Jack had a quick mental image of the men touching gloves, but instead they just shook hands. Ryan smiled and nodded, said “Mr. President,” and Kealty himself nodded, reached behind Ryan and patted him on the back with his right hand as both men stepped forward to the round table.
Ryan knew that Ed Kealty wished he had a switchblade in that hand.
The two men sat at the small conference table. In front of them sat
