Adam Fitzroy Dear Mister Pres

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Lake Champlain would probably have a chance of succeeding. If Mitch and Brent hadn t decided to
fly back with us last night, I might have been a little worried about our chances of getting home
safely.
But that would mean & Berry? The agents?
Berry, repeated Kearney. The agents. You too. You d have been collateral damage. But we
lived, Chad, all of us, to fight another day.
You re saying that after going to all that trouble, keeping Berry out of the way so that she
wouldn t overhear anything & ?
They d have let her die along with the rest of us? No doubt at all about it. I don t suppose it
would have been McArdle s first choice, but he s a ruthless and dedicated man and you ve got to
break the eggs to make the omelette. We re all hostages to fortune, Chad. I just want to survive with
my life intact and the lives of the people I care about. This job is about as safe as going for a stroll
in a minefield.
Hmmm. Mitch warned me when I started working here; he said everybody who got close to you
had enemies. I thought he meant the Vice President but he didn t, did he?
Kearney laughed, a raw, painful sound. He probably, did but like him or hate him Howard s our
guy all the way. No, it s not the enemy you can see that you need to worry about. You re a military
man, you should know that as well as I do.
I m no tactician, came the quiet protest. I never had to fight. I spent my working days
designing and operating imaging systems.
I ve never fought anyone in earnest either, but it s pretty much the same with fires. You think
you ve got them under control but they burn around behind you, in the wall paneling or above the
ceiling and the next thing you know, there s no way out.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don t? whispered Ryan.
Better by far, was the assurance. You can deal with the devil you know.
Yeah. And in the silence that fell, the quiet susurration of the pool water became the clamor of
a full orchestra.
We killed two birds with one stone when we destroyed Holofernes, continued Kearney. We
killed over a thousand birds, if it comes to that.
Nobody gets the benefit of the doubt any more, do they?
That s right. We can t afford it.
But the tone in Kearney s voice was colder than it had been, and suddenly he was no longer
talking about a threat that had been averted but about one that was still real and ever-present, and
had only been temporarily postponed.
Doug? What exactly did they have down there? It can t have been just warheads, it must have
been something more. Something & worse?
I can t tell you. And I m not sure I d want to, even if I could; I d like you to be able to sleep at
nights. This time we stopped them before they could deploy it, but believe me, Chad, they ll start up
again more or less immediately. If they haven t already, of course. The price of freedom is eternal
vigilance.
It s just one great big global game of chess, isn t it? They move, we move. Armies, weapons,
fortifications, we push them around the world in response to one another without ever considering
that there are people attached. There s a line from a poem about a checkerboard?
The words came with an alacrity suggesting that they were never far from Kearney s mind.
Tis all a Checkerboard of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, andslays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays .[3]
That s it, acknowledged Ryan. A game of chess, with live pawns.
I won t pretend there aren t consequences, was the rejoinder. You don t reshape a thing
without damaging it first. But if you imagine I didn t think about those guys, Chad, every single one
of them, you re very much mistaken. I wouldn t want it not to be a struggle and neither would you;
I wouldn t want to just flip a switch and have people stop existing. The people who died in
Holofernes had families; they went to school, they had friends and first crushes and zits and were
afraid of the dark. Every life has a story. Every story leaves a ghost.
Even George?
Especially George. He s going to be haunting me for the rest of my life. The man was my
friend, or I thought he was. I don t want to start distrusting people by default but when somebody
you rely on for your own safety and that of the country turns out to be working for the enemy and
not even out of idealism but because he just can t let go of something in his own past it makes you
wonder if you re ever going to be able to depend on anyone else again. And then, he continued, his
mood softening, you realize that the person you ve known for ten minutes means more to you than
the one you ve been working with for ten years, and that if the world s inevitably going to come
crashing down around your ears he s the one you want to have beside you when it does.
Thank you.
Some things are just right, honey. You and me, we re right. We re going to go on being right,
whatever happens.
I know. A steadying hand landed on the President s shoulder, but instead of closing in to kiss
him Ryan used the leverage to push himself to his feet. He pulled his shirt off over his head,
shucked out of his jeans and underwear in a single movement, stood poised on the edge of the pool
utterly naked in the dazzling glare of the lights.
What? asked Kearney, in confusion.
Misuse of Government facilities. Even if everybody knows exactly what we re doing down
here, it doesn t make me want to stop doing it. I don t care any more, Doug. What s the worst that
can happen? A moment later, he was in the water.
Re-election, grumbled Kearney, scrambling upright and following suit.
They found each other somewhere out in the middle of the pool, in a confusion of wet arms and
legs, amidst brightness and shouting echoes, sliding together with no attempt at concealment and
almost in defiance of anyone who might eavesdrop on their privacy, their mouths hungry and their
limbs and bodies tangling in a way that was becoming not so much familiar as absolutely essential.
I m going to have to stand up at that bastard s funeral and lie through my teeth, Kearney
groaned, kissing his way down Ryan s neck and across his collarbone, and the juxtaposition of love
and politics no longer seemed even remotely strange. I m going to have to say what a great guy he
was and how much this country will miss him, and all the time he was threatening the people I love.
I m the world s highest-paid hypocrite.
The people you love? Somehow Ryan had managed not to make any connection between [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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