Ryan stood, retrieved a bound document from his desk, and handed it to Dixon. He didn’t bother to sit down.
“What’s this?” Dixon said, opening it.
“I’m sick and tired of the corruption that plagues this town. It’s corroding the confidence of the American people in their government. Trust is the glue that holds a democracy together, and you people on the Hill are destroying that trust. Far too much legislation is passed that only benefits the few at the expense of the many.
“What I just handed you is my proposed legislation to clean it all up. The sweetheart deals, the revolving doors, the family loopholes—all of it. Get this bill passed and on my desk in its present form for me to sign in the next sixty days or I’ll see you in court.”
“And if I get it done? Then what?”
“Then I memory-hole that report I handed you. And then you can resign to spend more time with your family. Whatever you decide to do after that is up to you.”
Dixon smiled a little. “You know, an anticorruption bill like this would make a great presidential platform to run on.”
Arnie was right, Ryan thought. Dixon was pure ambition, even in the face of disaster.
“You may not be on Beijing’s payroll but you killed the Poland treaty because you’re dancing to their tune. Was it all that Chinese money your husband made that flipped you, or something else?”
“Money? Don’t be ridiculous. What matters is something Sun Tzu called shi. Do you know the term?”
“Momentum, advantage . . . power.”
Dixon shook her head, incredulous. “Always the professor. Then you also know that the world’s changing, and China is the future.”
“My future is whatever we have the courage to make of it. My job as President is to create change, not follow it.”
Dixon lifted the heavy file folder. “How do I know you still won’t release that report after I get this legislation passed?”
“If everything in that report all came out, it might do more damage to the country than to you, and, frankly, you’re not worth it. More to the point, once you get that legislation passed, you have my word I won’t use anything we discussed today to sabotage you or your family, as much as that idea sickens me.”
At that moment, Dixon hated Ryan’s guts more than any person she had ever known.
But she agreed to his terms.
Because as much as she hated him, Dixon still knew that Jack Ryan was an old-fashioned patriot and, indeed, a man of his word.
EPILOGUE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
With President Ryan’s blessing and an executive order in hand, Foley put every available resource at her disposal into dismantling the Iron Syndicate, now deemed a high-priority national security threat.
Within weeks, significant Iron Syndicate assets were uncovered and identified. Foley personally contacted the heads of the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian security agencies to provide them the names of the criminal elements within their respective governments, “in order to stem the tide of illegal drugs and human trafficking around the world,” she assured them.
It was also a ploy to throw them off the scent of her recent espionage coup—perhaps the greatest in modern history.
But the cancerous tendrils of the Iron Syndicate ran deep. Removing them proved difficult and painful. Investigators raced against Iron Syndicate bosses desperate to cauterize leaks, cut away evidence, and tie off loose ends.
Both President Ryan and Foley expected unintended consequences would follow.
They did. Sooner than they’d anticipated.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
The bankruptcy judge banged her gavel.
CloudServe, the most powerful cloud company on the planet, was dead. The circling vultures would soon divide the remains among themselves.
The disappearance of Elias Dahm had raised alarm bells all over Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., though for entirely different reasons.
Locals assumed Dahm’s disappearance was connected to the suicide of Lawrence Fung, whose troubled life and financial difficulties were detailed in a poignant exposé that relied heavily on unnamed government sources.
The locals were only half right.
Despite Watson’s fervent denials, the Feds feared Dahm was somehow connected to her plot and fled the country to avoid questioning and, worse, found asylum with one of America’s strategic competitors.
Foley suspected Dahm was merely a coward, abandoning responsibility for his failed dreams.
Weeks passed before a New Zealand widow sailing solo across the Pacific Ocean sighted the wreckage of Dahm’s yacht, Prometheus. Investigators concluded it had been swamped and broken apart by a recent tropical storm.
His body was never recovered.
GDAŃSK, POLAND
The theme-cruise pirate ship sailed slowly under engine power, with tourists on deck sipping hot mulled wine and shivering