they’d had their big scare with those damned terrorists, and with good luck and that wonderful FBI agent Andrea Price had married, they’d survived, and she didn’t expect anything like that to happen again. Her own Secret Service detail was her defense against that. Her own Principal Agent, Roy Altman, inspired the same sort of confidence at his job that she did at hers, Cathy judged.
“Here you go, Dr. Ryan,” the usher said, delivering the refilled glass.
“Thank you, George. How are the kids?”
“My oldest just got accepted to Notre Dame,” he answered proudly.
“That’s wonderful. What’s she going to major in?”
“Premed.”
Cathy looked up from her journal. “Great. If there’s any way I can help her, you let me know, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am, I sure will.” And the nice thing, George thought, was that she wasn’t kidding. The Ryans were very popular with the staff, despite their awkwardness with all the fussing. There was one other family the Ryans looked after, the widow and kids of some Air Force sergeant whose connection with the Ryans nobody seemed to understand. And Cathy had personally taken care of two kids of staff members who’d had eye problems.
“What’s tomorrow look like, Jack?”
“Speech to the VFW convention in Atlantic City. I chopper there and back after lunch. Not a bad speech Callie wrote for me.”
“She’s a little weird.”
“She’s different,” the President agreed, “but she’s good at what she does.”
Thank God, Cathy didn’t say aloud, that I don’t have to do much of that! For her, a speech was telling a patient how she was going to fix his or her eyes.
There’s a new Papal Nuncio in Beijing," the producer said. ”That’s an ambassador, like, isn’t it?"
The producer nodded. “Pretty much. Italian guy, Cardinal Renato DiMilo. Old guy, don’t know anything about him.”
“Well, maybe we can drive over and meet the guy,” Barry thought as he knotted his tie. “Got an address and phone number?”
“No, but our contact at the American Embassy can get ’em quick enough.”
“Give the guy a call,” Wise ordered gently. He and the producer had been together for eleven years, and together they’d dodged bullets and won those Emmys, which wasn’t bad for a couple of ex-Marine sergeants.
“Right.”
Wise checked his watch. The timing worked just fine. He could get a report at his leisure, upload it on the satellite, and Atlanta could edit it and show it to people for breakfast in America. That would pretty much take care of his day in this heathen country. Damn, why couldn’t they do trade conferences in Italy? He remembered Italian food fondly from his time in the Mediterranean Fleet Marine Force. And the Italian women. They’d like the United States Marine uniform. Well, lots of women did.
One thing neither Cardinal DiMilo nor Monsignor Schepke had learned to like was Chinese breakfast food, which was totally alien from anything Europeans had ever served for the early-morning meal. And so Schepke fixed breakfast every morning before their Chinese staff came in—they’d do the dishes, which was enough for both churchmen. Both had already said their morning mass, which necessitated their rising before six every morning, rather like soldiers did, the elderly Italian had often remarked to himself.
The morning paper was the International Herald Tribune, which was too American-oriented, but the world was an imperfect place. At least the paper showed the football scores, and European football was a sport of interest to both of them, and one which Schepke could still go out and play when the opportunity arose. DiMilo, who’d been a pretty good midfielder in his day, had to content himself with watching and kibitzing now.
The CNN crew had their own van, an American make that had been shipped into the PRC ages ago. It had its own miniature satellite transceiver rig, a small technical miracle of sorts that enabled instant contact with any place in the world via orbiting communications satellites. It could do anything but operate when the vehicle was moving, and someone was working on that feature, which would be the next major breakthrough, because then the mobile crews could work with little threat of interference from the gomers in whatever country they happened to be operating.
They also had a satellite-navigation system, which was a genuine miracle that allowed them to navigate anywhere, in any city for which they had a CD-ROM map. With it, they could find any address faster than a local taxi driver. And with a cell phone, they could get the address itself, in this case from the U.S.