think. Dead bodies are generally bad for business, and dead bodies don’t tell you much. We’re in the information business now.”
“But sometimes the herd needs culling.”
“True. At Langley, the problem’s always been to get somebody to sign the order. Paper lasts forever, you know? In Vietnam, we had a real war, and orders could be verbal, but when that ended, the desk-sitters kept getting their panties in a wad, and then the lawyers raised their ugly heads, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. We can’t have government employees giving that sort of order whenever the mood strikes them. Sooner or later, person A is going to get carried away, and person B is going to have a conscience attack and rat you out for it, no matter how much the bad guy needed to meet God. It’s amazing how dangerous a conscience can be—and usually at the wrong time. We live in an imperfect world, Ding, and there ain’t no rule that says it has to make sense.”
“Well, that’s what the man said. I remember when Dr. No came out. I was in high school. The promo for the film said, ‘The double-oh means he has a license to kill who he wants, when he wants.’ That was cool back in the ’60s. Before Watergate and all that, the Kennedy administration liked the idea, too. So they initiated Operation Mongoose. It was a total fuckup, of course, but it’s never been revealed how big a fuckup it was. Politics,” Clark explained. “I guess you’ve never heard the stories.”
“Not on the syllabus down at The Farm.”
“Just as well. Who’d want to work for an agency that did dumb shit like that? Taking down a foreign chief of state is really bad juju, son. Even if one of our Presidents thought it was cool to be a sociopath. Funny how people don’t like to think things all the way through.”
“Like us?”
“Not when you take out people who don’t matter all that much.”
“What’s that shit about the Ranger?”
“Sam Driscoll,” Clark replied. Ryan had told them about Kealty’s push for the CID investigation. “Humped a few hills with Driscoll in the ’90s. Good man.”
“Anything being done to stop it?”
“Don’t know, but Jack told us about it for a reason.”
“New recruit for The Campus?”
“It sure would soften Driscoll’s fall, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, but still, to watch your career get flushed because some dickhead wants to make a point—it just ain’t right, mano.”
“In so many ways,” Clark agreed.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Chavez said, “He looks worried. Tired.”
“Who, Jack? I would be, too. Poor bastard. He just wants to write his memoirs and maybe work on his golf game, play daddy to the kids. You know, he really is a good guy.”
“That’s his problem,” Chavez pointed out.
“Sure as hell.” It was nice to know that his son-in-law hadn’t wasted his time at George Mason University. “A sense of duty can take you into some tight places. Then you have to figure your own way out.”
Back at Peregrine Cliff, Ryan found his mind drifting, fingers poised over the keyboard. Fucking Kealty . . . Prosecuting a soldier for killing the enemy. It was, he thought sadly, a perfect testament to the character of the current President.
He glanced at the multiline phone. He started reaching for it twice, only to have his hand stop, seemingly of its own accord, in contradiction to Saint Augustine’s dictum on will and resistance. But then he picked it up and punched the buttons.
“Yeah, Jack,” van Damm’s voice answered. He had caller ID on his private line.
“Okay, Arnie, pull the trigger. And God help me,” he added.
“Let me make some phone calls. Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay. See ya.” And Ryan hung up.
What the hell are you doing? he asked himself.
But he knew the answer all too well.
40
THEY HAD TO PRACTICE not being conspiratorial, to seem like ordinary people having an ordinary lunch in a Parisian café on a drizzly day, which worked in their favor. Aside from themselves, there were only two patrons, a young couple, at a nearby umbrella-covered table.
Ibrahim had told them how to dress—like middle-class Frenchmen—and to do it all the time from now on. They all spoke French, and while all were Muslims, none of them attended mosque on a regular basis, doing their daily prayers at home, and definitely not attending the sermons of the more radical and assertive imams, all of whom were