The Bear and the Dragon - By Tom Clancy Page 0,224

pretty much the same way because the human body was the same everywhere, and a treatment regimen that worked at Johns Hopkins in east Baltimore worked just as well in Berlin or Moscow or Tokyo, even if the people looked and talked different—and if that was true, why couldn’t people all over the world think the same way? Their damned brains were the same, weren’t they? Now it was her turn to grumble, as her husband did often enough.

“Jack?” she said, as she put her notebook down.

“Yeah, Cathy?”

“What are you thinking about now?”

Mainly how I wish Ellen Sumter was here with a cigarette, he couldn’t say. If Cathy knew he was sneaking smokes in the Oval Office, she didn’t let on, which was probably the case, since she didn’t go around looking for things to fight over, and he never ever smoked in front of her or the kids anymore. Cathy allowed him to indulge his weaknesses, as long as he did so in the utmost moderation. But her question was about the cause for his yearning for some nicotine.

“China, babe. They really stepped on the old crank with the golf shoes this time, but they don’t seem to know how bad it looked.”

“Killing those two people—how could it not look bad?” SURGEON asked.

“Not everybody values human life in the same way that we do, Cath.”

“The Chinese doctors I’ve met are—well, they’re doctors, and we talk to each other like doctors.”

“I suppose.” Ryan saw a commercial start on the TV show he was pretending to watch, and stood to walk off to the upstairs kitchen for another whiskey. “Refill, babe?”

“Yes, thank you.” With her Christmas-tree smile.

Jack lifted his wife’s wineglass. So, she had no procedures scheduled for the next day. She’d come to love the Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay they’d first sampled at Camp David. For him tonight, it was Wild Turkey bourbon over ice. He loved the pungent smell of the corn and rye grains, and tonight he’d dismissed the upstairs staff and could enjoy the relative luxury of fixing his own—he could even have made a peanut butter sandwich, had he been of such a mind. He walked the drinks back, touching his wife’s neck on the way, and getting the cute little shiver she always made when he did so.

“So, what’s going to happen in China?”

“We’ll find out the same way as everybody else, watching CNN. They’re a lot faster than our intelligence people on some things. And our spooks can’t predict the future any better than the traders on Wall Street.” You’d be able to identify such a man at Merrill Lynch easily if he existed, Jack didn’t bother saying aloud. He’d be the guy with all the millionaires lined up outside his office.

“So, what do you think?”

“I’m worried, Cath,” Ryan admitted, sitting back down.

“About what?”

“About what we’ll have to do if they screw things up again. But we can’t warn them. That only makes it certain that bad things are going to happen, because then they’ll do something really dumb just to show us how powerful they are. That’s how nation-states are. You can’t talk to them like real people. The people who make the decisions over there think with their ...”

“... dicks?” Cathy offered with a half giggle.

“Yep,” Jack confirmed with a nod. “A lot of them follow their dicks everywhere they go, too. We know about some foreign leaders who have habits that would get them tossed out of any decent whorehouse in the world. They just love to show everybody how tough and manly they are, and to do that, they act like animals in a goddamned barnyard.”

“Secretaries?”

“A lot of that.” Ryan nodded. “Hell, Chairman Mao liked doing twelve-year-old virgins, like changing shirts. I guess old as he was, it was the best he could do—”

“No Viagra back then, Jack,” Cathy pointed out.

“Well, you suppose that drug will help civilize the world?” he asked, turning to grin at his physician wife. It didn’t seem a likely prospect.

“Well, maybe it’ll protect a lot of twelve-year-olds.”

Jack checked his watch. Another half hour and he’d be turning in. Until then, maybe he could actually watch the TV for a little while.

Rutledge was just waking up. Under his door was an envelope, which he picked up and opened, to find an official communique from Foggy Bottom, his instructions for the day, which weren’t terribly different from those of the previous day. Nothing in the way of concessions to offer, which were the grease of dealing with