Executive Orders

"What are you saying, Ed?" the Times asked.

The gesture of frustration was done with consummate skill. "I'm standing in my own political grave here. I have nothing to gain by this, but I can't just stand by and do nothing. Even if Ryan has the entire power of our government behind him, I can't just let him and his cronies try to concentrate all of the power of our government in a few hands, increase their own ability to spy on us, load the tax system in such a way as to further enrich people who've never paid their fair share, reward the defense industry—what's next, trashing the civil rights laws? He's flying his wife to work every day, and you people haven't even remarked that that's never happened before. This is an imperial presidency like Lyndon Johnson never dreamed of, without a Congress to do anything about it. You know what we have here now?" Kealty gave them a moment. "King Jack the First. Somebody's supposed to care about that. Why is it that you people don't?"

"What do you know about the Holtzman piece?" the Boston Globe wanted to know.

"Ryan has a lively history in CIA. He's killed people."

"James fucking Bond," Kealty's chief of staff said on cue. The Post reporter then had to defend his publication's honor:

"Holtzman doesn't say that. If you mean the time the terrorists came to—"

"No, not that. Holtzman's going to write about the Moscow thing. Ryan didn't even set that up. It was Judge Arthur Moore, when he was DCI. Ryan was the front man. It's bad enough anyway. It interfered with the i

"I haven't seen the story," the Post reporter admitted. "I've only heard a few things." It was almost worthy of a smile. Kealty's sources inside the paper were better than those of the senior political reporter. "Okay, you say Ryan has killed people like James Bond. Support that," he said in a flat voice.

"Four years ago, remember the bombs in Colombia, took out some cartel members?" Kealty waited for the nod. "That was a CIA operation. Ryan went to Colombia—and that was another act of war, people. That's two that I know about."

It was amusing to Kealty that Ryan was so skillfully co

to the security of their country, and thinking that, they had to do something, didn't they? More than that, Ryan had stepped on a lot of bureaucratic toes at Langley, and now it was payback time, all the better that he was a higher target than ever before, that the sources were, after all, merely talking to the former Vice President of the United States— maybe even the real President, they could say—and not to the media, which was, after all, against the law, as opposed to a legitimate discussion of vital national policy.

"How sure of that are you?" the Globe asked.

"I have dates. Remember when Admiral James Greer died? He was Ryan's mentor. He probably set up the operation from his deathbed. Ryan didn't attend the funeral. He was in Colombia then. That's a fact, and you can check it," Kealty insisted. "Probably that's why James Cutter committed suicide—"

"I thought that was an accident," the Times said. "He was out jogging, and—"

"And he just happened to step in front of a transit bus? Look, I'm not saying that Cutter was murdered. I am saying that he was implicated in the illegal operation that Ryan was ru

"I just don't see him that way, Ed," the Globe responded, after a few seconds. "His politics are pretty far to the right, but he comes across as sincere as hell."

"What's the first rule of politics?" the Times asked with a chuckle. Then he continued: "I tell you, if this stuff about Russia and Colombia is true… whoa! It is the 50s, fucking around with other governments that way. We're not supposed to do that anymore, sure as hell not at that level."

"You never got this from us, and you can't reveal the source at Langley." The chief of staff handed out tape cassettes. "But there are enough verifiable facts here to back up everything we've told you."

"It's going to take a couple of days," the San Francisco Examiner said, fingering the cassette and looking at his colleagues. The race started now. Every reporter in the room would want to be the first to break the story. That process would start with them playing their tapes in their cars during the drive to their homes, and the one with the shortest drive had the advantage.

"Gentlemen, all I can say is, this is an important story, and you have to apply your best professional conduct to it. It's not for me," Kealty said. "I wish I could pick someone else to do this, someone with a better record—but I can't. Not for me. It's for the country, and that means you have to play it as straight as you can."

"We will, Ed," the Times promised. He checked his watch. Almost three in the morning. He'd work all day to make the ten P.M. deadline. In that time he'd have to verify, re-verify, and conference in with his assistant managing editor to make sure that he got the front page, above the fold. The West Coast papers had the advantage— three more hours because of time zones—but he knew how to beat them to the punch. The coffee cups went down on the table, and the journalists rose, tucking their personal mini-tape machines in their jacket pockets, and each holding his personal cassette in the left hand while the right fished for the car keys.