Page 4 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight
It was also Hell on Earth.
3
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Jack Ryan, Jr., spooned up the last of the Burgundy beef stew, earthy and rich, scraping the bowl as he fished out the last piece of savory meat.
“More, son?” Dr. Cathy Ryan asked.
“Always, but two helpings are enough,” Jack Junior said. This was his favorite meal, and his mother made it better than anybody. It was just Jack and his parents tonight—the twins were on an ecological field trip to the Virginia wetlands for the next three days and his older sister was on ER duty at the hospital, so she couldn’t join them.
Jack and his parents were seated at the round table in the First Family’s private dining room, formerly known as the Prince of Wales guest room, before Jacqueline Kennedy converted it to its current function for her own young family. Cathy Ryan had redecorated it in a transitional Craftsman style, favoring theclean lines and sturdy functionality of an original American art form.
“I hope you saved room for the apple pie,” she said, standing.
“Are you kidding me?” Jack said. His mother’s apple pie was his all-time favorite dessert. His suspicions grew. “What’s the occasion?”
“Does a mother need a special reason to cook for her son?” she said.
“When a mother is as busy as you are, yes, she does need a special reason.”
“I haven’t had a chance to see you in forever, and you’re off to Europe soon. I knew the only way I could get you over here was to bribe you with a home-cooked meal. Besides, it’s something I love to do.” She glanced at her husband, a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, his mind buried in a file folder on the dining room table. “Isn’t that right, honey?”
Senior grunted. “What? Yeah. Dinner was great.”
Cathy fake-frowned. “Hey, bub. What’s more interesting than us?”
Senior kept staring at the file. “I’d tell you, but you don’t have the clearance.”
Cathy Ryan leaped out of her chair and plopped into her husband’s lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. She leaned in close to his ear, whispering heavily. “Vee hav vays of making you talk, Mr. President.”
Senior laughed, shut his file, and pulled off his glasses, wrapping his arms around his wife’s slender waist. The two exchanged a glance. He whispered in her ear. She giggled and swatted him. A lot of years, a lot of love. They were as steady and solid as the Stickley oak table they all sat around.
Junior watched them canoodling like a pair of frisky teenagers. The most famous power couple in the world. His father was arguably the greatest president of his generation, exercising selfless leadership on behalf of the national interest through every crisis in a town notorious for ruthless, self-aggrandizing ambition. His mother was a brilliant physician in her own right, and bore the responsibilities of being First Lady with dignity and grace. She was his father’s rock.
But to Jack, they were just Mom and Dad.
He felt like a little kid again sitting around the familiar table, but in a good way. Hard as they worked, family always came first for them. Whatever strength or honor or virtue he possessed, Jack knew, he got it from these two. He envied them. He and Yuki had to put a hold on their budding romance; their schedules and careers were both too demanding, and Skype just wasn’t cutting it. It was becoming a painfully familiar pattern in his personal life. He already felt the void of Yuki’s absence, brief though their affair had been. His mother and father were married by the time they were Jack’s age. Hell, John Clark, the eternal warrior, was married and had been for many years, and one of his daughters was married to Ding. Even Jack’s cousin Dom and Adara were together. Nobody on The Campus seemed to suffer performance-wise by being in a stable relationship.
So what was wrong with him?
All three Ryans stood and cleared the table, hauling the dishes to the kitchen. Senior made a pot of decaf coffee while Cathy served up the pie and Jack fetched the vanilla-bean ice cream out of the freezer. It was a small kitchen but perfectly adequate for the First Family on the few occasions they cooked for themselves. With some of the finest chefs in the countryavailable around the clock, and the two senior Ryans working more than full-time jobs, cooking at home was a rare luxury.
Ten minutes later, Junior scraped up the last piece of Granny Smith apple from his plate and forked it into his mouth, savoring the sweet and tangy bite—just the way he remembered it.
“I wish you’d shave that awful beard,” his mother said. “I miss your face.”
“Just keeping it real,” Jack said. He didn’t tell her that he changed his looks just to keep people guessing. He was, after all, the son of these two famous people, and because they had worked hard to keep their kids out of the limelight, he wasn’t nearly as well known as some might think.
But he wasn’t completely anonymous, either, so he took the extra step every six months or so to comb his hair in another direction or grow it out long, or let a beard or mustache do the camouflage work. Sometimes he even wore contacts to change the color of his eyes.
After the last ragged op, he thought about going for the clean-cut look of a stockbroker, which he sort of was. But no facial hair made him feel a little exposed, even if it was sometimes safest to hide in plain sight. He decided to keep the beard, but trimmed it close.
Senior’s attention was buried back in his classified file folder.
“Another piece of pie?” Cathy asked her son.
“No, thanks. I’m stuffed.” Junior smiled. “It was perfect. Thank you.” He sipped the last of his coffee and set his cup down. “Well, I need to get going. Got a plane to catch tomorrow.”
