“Good morning, Mr. President.” Bailey raised a mug of peppermint tea as if to offer a toast. He canted his head to one side, giving Ryan a narrow eye, probing like a CT scan. “A little extra bounce in your step this morning.”
“Is that so?” Ryan shrugged, trying to keep a straight face as he thought about Cathy. The presidency really was a fishbowl.
Ryan hung a right when he got off the elevator, stepping outside to continue his morning commute past the Rose Garden and along the colonnade to the Oval Office. He looked forward to the minute or two of fresh air and breeze. The Secret Service agent opened the door and stepped aside, posting outside the door.
Ryan’s principal secretary buzzed the intercom the moment he sat down at his desk.
“Good morning, Betty,” he said, waiting a beat. She usually gave him a minute or two to settle in, so something had to be up.
“SAIC Montgomery is here. He’d like a few minutes before your nine o’clock.”
“By all means,” Ryan said, scooting back from the Resolute desk and rising to his feet. Normally people stood when he came into the room, but Gary Montgomery was the Special Agent in Charge of the Secret Service Presidential Protection Division — the hundreds of men and women who kept Ryan and his family safe. If Ryan was going to defer to anyone, it would be Montgomery.
The SAIC of PPD came through the door. He was forty-eight years old, six-three, and built like a linebacker. His dark suit was on the expensive side, cut loose to allow for the SIG Sauer pistol and extra magazines on his belt. No desk-jockey boss, he had to be just as prepared as the most junior post-stander on the protective detail — maybe more so. Montgomery had boxed at the University of Michigan and, apart from any athletic competition involving Ohio State, was generally mild mannered. He possessed what Ryan’s father had called “quiet hands” and moved with the confident demeanor of a person whose abilities had been severely tested and found equal to the task. Competent. Calm. Unflappable.
And he wasn’t smiling.
Ryan motioned to one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Morning, Gary.”
“Good morning, Mr. President,” Montgomery said, remaining on his feet and getting straight to the point. “As you know, Secret Service Protective Intelligence has search-engine alerts set up on you, your family, and key members of your administration.”
“That’s gotta be a load of fun to read,” Ryan said, shaking his head.
Montgomery glanced at his watch, the kind of glance that said he was in no mood for lighthearted banter. “A little over an hour ago, no fewer than seven different websites calling themselves news organizations put up what are essentially four slightly different versions of the exact same—”
Betty buzzed the intercom again. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. President, but DNI Foley just arrived, along with Secretaries Burgess and Dehart. The attorney general telephoned to say he is on his way.”
The Oval’s west door all but exploded off its hinges as Arnie van Damm burst in. He wore a suit, but his bald head was flushed and sweating, as if he’d just stepped off an exercise bike. It took a lot to rattle him, a savvy political operative.
He shot a hard look at Montgomery. “I assume you are here about—”
“I am,” the agent said.
Jack Ryan leaned back in his chair and steepled his hands on his chest, index fingers pointing at his chin. He was the only one in the room sitting down, and judging from the way everyone else shuffled their feet, that wasn’t about to change anytime soon.
“You all know Gary Montgomery, the agent in charge of my Secret Service detail,” Ryan said. “He was just about to brief me on some information his protective intelligence division has come up with.”
The director of national intelligence looked at Montgomery. “That crap on the Internet?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Montgomery said.
Fiercely loyal, Mary Pat Foley was one of Ryan’s closest confidantes and friends, and, as such, was prone to being a bit of a mother hen. She’d moved up next to his desk as soon as she’d come into the Oval, as if to cover him with her wing. As director of national intelligence, Foley provided an umbrella of communication over the sixteen intelligence agencies of the United States. She’d been a case officer at CIA when Ryan was still an analyst, earning a well-deserved reputation as a crack intelligence operative, unafraid of getting her hands dirty with calculated risks. She gave the Secret Service agent a long look, sighed, and then took a half-step back from the desk, literally yielding the floor.
“Sir,” Montgomery said, picking up the offered baton and running with it. “An hour ago, several quasi-news sites put up a video purported to be of you talking to a small group of supporters in a Washington hotel.”
“Purported?” Ryan mused.
“Yes, sir,” Montgomery continued. “The voice and image sound and look like you, but it’s definitely not you.”
“The Secret Service would be in a position to know,” Ryan said. “What am I purported to be saying?”
“You’re assuring those present that you are saving enough flu vaccine for those in your innermost circle, including the people you are addressing. The video is just a snippet, only twenty-four seconds long, but most of the websites quote unnamed sources that say more damning videos will be released soon.” Montgomery blinked hard, as if he had a bad tooth. “The sites go on to accuse you of turning a blind eye to the flooding in Louisiana and the cholera outbreak there that they—”
Ryan sat up straighter. “I’m going to stop you there, Gary.” He looked at Homeland Security Secretary Dehart. “Cholera outbreak?”
“That’s why I’m here, Mr. President. “Three cases as of five a.m. Central Time.”
Bob Burgess, the secretary of defense, grimaced. “Cholera? I thought we eradicated that in the U.S.?”
“Doesn’t happen often,” Dehart said. “Not since we figured out how to keep our water supply and sewage separate. That said, every major flood or hurricane poses some risk. The area where these cases hit is extremely poor, with a lot of folks still using well water and outhouses.”
Burgess turned up his nose. “Outhouses can’t still be a thing.”
“You’d be surprised,” Dehart said, turning to Ryan. “FEMA personnel out of Baton Rouge are at the hospital now. A CDC team is en route. I’ll have information for you within the hour.”
“But no one has died?” Ryan asked.
“Not yet,” Dehart said, his mouth set in a grim line. “But two of the cases are children. The prognosis isn’t good.”
Ryan closed his eyes. “A cholera outbreak…”
“Not an outbreak,” van Damm said, glaring at Montgomery. “Three cases.”
“I used the websites’ language, sir,” Montgomery said.
“Go on,” Ryan said. “What else does the website language say?”
“More accusations,” Montgomery said. “You supposedly have a team of personal assassins to carry out extrajudicial killings pursuant to the Ryan Doctrine. There’s a lot of discussion about what they are calling a ‘callous unwillingness’ to support the students in Iran against their oppressive regime. But the vaccine video is the most problematic, as far as the Secret Service is concerned.”