“I need to stop,” Montgomery blurted. He tried to walk but ended up bent over at the waist instead, hands braced on his knees. “How… far was that?”
“A little over four miles,” she said, grinning.
“Shit.” Montgomery coughed. “I should be able to run four miles.”
“At a seven-minute pace? Awfully fast for a sixty-year-old.”
“I’m forty-eight… thank you very much.” The spasms in Montgomery’s lungs began to subside. “Can we please get back to saving the President?”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Garcia said. “Cybercrimes has a pile of intel regarding bots and propaganda warehouses all over China, Eastern Europe, and the Persian Gulf. The Internet is the battleground for the new cold war. This audio and video manipulation is relatively new — at least the level of sophistication we’re seeing here. Five years ago, I would have told you a state actor was behind this particular video, but with computers being what they are today… this could be some middle school kid working out of his parents’ basement in Bethesda.”
Montgomery rubbed his eyes, chasing away the last of the stars. “Our protective intelligence guys told me the same thing.” He shook his head. “Wouldn’t a kid go for the laugh? This threat of hoarding a flu vaccine is killing the stock market, not to mention terrifying everyone.”
“You obviously don’t know teenagers,” Garcia said. “They find other people’s pain hilarious.” She gave a crooked, crazy-eyed smile, looking like she knew just such a child. “Anyway, I spoke to Legal first thing this morning. They’re going to run it by the U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia, but so far they don’t see a crime here. Public figures have to take a certain amount of pelting with rotten fruit.”
“I know,” Montgomery said, hangdog.
An eerily familiar voice caught his attention from the television mounted on a concrete pillar above the free-weight area. The voice was female and husky, like Anne Bancroft with a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. It took Montgomery only a second to recognize it was Michelle Chadwick, the senior senator from Arizona.
“…impossible to say if these allegations are true at this juncture, but I can assure you my office is addressing this. Sanctioned assassinations, covering up epidemics, hoarding vaccine for the elite… Any one of these is a serious breach of the public trust…”
The agents rounded the corner and stopped to watch.
The crawler on the bottom of the screen said this was a taped press conference given by the senator an hour before.
“Listen to her,” Montgomery said. “Those Internet stories are awfully damned convenient.”
Garcia looked up at him, her brow knitting over narrowed eyes. “You really think she’s behind it?”
“Probably not,” Montgomery said. “But she’s sure as shit happy about it.”
“And piling on,” Garcia said.
At forty-six, Senator Chadwick was young to be on her third term in the United States Senate. She was a bony woman, gaunt even, with high cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Auburn hair draped her head like a helmet. It was common knowledge around the Beltway watercooler that the twice-divorced senator had leapt over the bounds of propriety with a staffer named Corey Fite, deciding the #MeToo movement pertained only to powerful men and their subordinates. Fite had not complained as of yet, and Chadwick’s fellow senators didn’t want to rock the boat and screw up their own quasi-consensual relationships.
Her grandfather had made his first million as a Scottsdale real estate man when he came home from World War II. Still, she came from new money so far as the East Coast aristocrats were concerned, and the chip on her shoulder was a heavy one. Jack Ryan was rich — much richer than she was. The President came from blue-collar roots and made his money instead of inheriting it, which only served to infuriate her all the more. She consistently referred to him as a Washington blue blood, going so far as to affect a boarding-school lockjaw as if she were clenching an FDR cigarette holder in her teeth when she spoke of him.
“…past allegations of lying to Congress, an extramarital affair, insider trading, though unsubstantiated.”
“Past allegations.” Montgomery came up on his toes, ready to rip the television off the pillar. “How about exonerated,” he spat. “Unsubstantiated my ass… That’s just another way of saying he’s hiding something.”
“Let’s walk,” Garcia said.
“Hang on.”
“…allegations of silencing anyone who gets in his way, politically or otherwise, are incredibly troubling,” Chadwick went on, “but perhaps even worse is Ryan’s utter disregard for our allies in the Persian Gulf. My colleagues in the Senate and I intend to move forward with strong measures condemning the brutal crackdown of the Ayatollah against peaceful students who only want a better life.” Chadwick looked directly into the camera, working it like the actress she was. “I say to you, Mr. President, do not just sit on your hands. Do something…”
A growl erupted deep in Montgomery’s belly. “You want somebody to do something?” he said. “How about I—”
Garcia jabbed him with her elbow. “I know you weren’t about to threaten a United States senator right in front of an assistant director of the FBI.”
Montgomery forced a smile. “I plead the Fifth.”
Arnie van Damm sat down beside Mary Pat Foley on the couch in the private study just off the Oval Office, and then sprang back to his feet half a moment later, cursing at the open laptop computer on the corner of the desk. The meeting with the principals of the National Security Council was over for now, everyone having gone their respective ways, coming up with information, options, plans — tasks Ryan would need to make decisions about.
Ryan slouched in the soft chair across from the couch, legs stretched out in front of him. Cathy said slouching was decidedly unpresidential, but this was his slouching room, away from the media and the peephole into the Oval from the door to the secretaries’ suite.
This thing in Cameroon left him feeling helpless. There was still no word on the deputy chief of mission’s wife — which meant she was still likely a hostage. Hell, the embassy was surrounded by troops, which meant that for all practical purposes everyone inside was a hostage. Ryan wanted to send in a battalion of Marines and bayonet every last son of a bitch that got in their way — but that was the reason people took hostages, wasn’t it. To keep from getting bayoneted from the start. It was usually just postponing the inevitable.
Across the office, van Damm was taking a break from worrying about the hostage crisis to shake his fist at a video of Senator Chadwick’s earlier press conference. He sat down again, the veins on the side of his neck pulsing above his collar. “She’s crossing the line, Jack.”
Ryan looked up, jarred from his thoughts about Africa. “Not quite. Notice how she couches all her remarks and tweets under the guise of wanting to find the truth?”
Foley squinted at the computer like her face hurt. “Intimidation of your political opponents? Where did she get that from?”
Ryan shrugged. “Beats me.”
“What does she have against the administration?” Foley asked.
“I’m telling you,” Ryan said. “It’s me personally. For some reason, she finds me the ultimate villain that must be thwarted. Sometimes I think she’s evil — and other times, I think she truly believes I am.”
Van Damm leaned his head back, giving an exhausted sigh. “Yeah, but your own private goon squad?”
Ryan rubbed his face, suddenly very tired. “She’s not a hundred percent wrong there. I mean, they’re not goons, but you know what I mean.”