on at once, or will this compromise SONGBIRD?”
“That’s for somebody else to judge, sir,” Goodley said, reminding the President that he was good, but not quite that good at this business.
“Yeah, somebody other than me, too. What else?”
“The Senate Select Intelligence Committee wants to look into the Russian situation.”
“That’s nice. What’s the beef?”
“They seem to have their doubts about how trustworthy our friends in Moscow are. They’re worried that they’re going to use the oil and gold money to become the USSR again, and maybe threaten NATO.”
“NATO’s moved a few hundred miles east, last time I looked. The buffer zone will not hurt our interests.”
“Except that we are obligated to defend Poland now,” Goodley reminded his boss.
“I remember. So, tell the Senate to authorize funds to move a tank brigade east of Warsaw. We can take over one of the old Soviet laagers, can’t we?”
“If the Poles want us to. They don’t seem overly concerned, sir.”
“Probably more worried by the Germans, right?”
“Correct, and there is a precedent for that concern.”
“When will Europe get the word that peace has finally broken out for good and all?” Ryan asked the ceiling.
“There’s a lot of history, some of it pretty recent, for them to remember, Mr. President. And much of it militates in the other direction.”
“I’ve got a trip to Poland scheduled, don’t I?”
“Yes, not too far off, and they’re working out the itinerary right now.”
“Okay, I’ll tell the Polish president personally that he can depend on us to keep the Germans under control. If they step out of line—well, we’ll take Chrysler back.” Jack sipped his coffee and checked his watch. “Anything else?”
“That should do it for today.”
The President looked up slyly. “Tell Mary Pat if she sends me more of this WARBLER stuff, I want the pictures to go with it.”
“Will do, sir.” Goodley had himself a good hoot at that.
Ryan picked up the briefing papers again and read through them more slowly this time, between sips of coffee and snorts, with a few grumbles thrown in. Life had been much easier when he was the guy who prepared these briefing papers than it was now that he was the guy who had to read them. Why was that? Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? Before, he’d been the one to find the answers and anticipate the questions, but now that other people had done all that stuff for him ... it was harder. That didn’t make any sense at all, damn it. Maybe, he decided, it was because, after him, the information stopped. He had to make the decisions, and so whatever other decisions and analyses had been made at lower levels, the process came to one place and stopped cold. It was like driving a car: Someone else could tell him to turn right at the corner, but he was the guy at the wheel who had to execute the turn, and if somebody clobbered the car, he was the guy who’d get the blame. For a moment, Jack wondered if he was better suited to being a step or two down in the process, able to do the analysis work and make his recommendations with confidence ... but always knowing that someone else would always get the credit for making the right move, or the blame for making the wrong one. In that insulation from consequence, there was safety and security. But that was cowardice talking, Ryan reminded himself. If there were anyone in Washington better suited for making decisions, he hadn’t met the guy yet, and if that was arrogance talking, then so be it.
But there ought to be someone better, Jack thought, as the clock wound to his first appointment of the day, and it wasn’t his fault that there wasn’t. He checked his appointment sheet. The whole day was political bullshit ... except it wasn’t bullshit. Everything he did in this office affected the lives of American citizens in one way or another, and that made it important, to them and to him. But who had decided to make him the national daddy? What the hell made him so damned smart? The people behind his back, as he thought of it, outside the overly thick windows of the Oval Office, all expected him to know how to do the right thing, and over the dinner table or a low-stakes card game, they’d bitch and moan and complain about the decisions he’d made that they didn’t like, as though they knew better—which was easy