Free Jack Ryan 12 - The Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy

behind the Mississippi State Police in getting to him, but some civilian had tackled the bastard before anyone could get a round off, and so he'd gone to jail alive. That fact had at least eliminated any conspiracy nonsense. It had been a Ku Klux Klan member, sixty-seven years old, who just couldn't abide the thought that Ryan's retirement had brought his black Vice President to the position of President of the
    
    
     United States
    
    
    . His trial, conviction, and sentencing had gone off with startling speed—the assassination had all been on videotape, not to mention there'd been six witnesses all within two yards of the killer. Even the Stars and Bars atop the State House in
    
    
     Jackson
    
    
     had flown at half-staff for Robby Jackson, to the dismay and disgust of some. “Sic volvere
     Parcas,” Jack observed.
    “What's that?”
    “The Fates, Senator. One spins the thread. One measures the thread. And one cuts the thread. 'So spin the Fates,' the Roman adage is. I never saw Dad so broken up about anything. Mom handled it better, really. I guess docs are used to people dying. Dad—well, he just wanted to whack the guy himself. It was pretty tough.” The news cameras had caught the President weeping at the funeral service at the Naval Academy Chapel. Sic volvere
     Parcas. “So, Senator, how does my fate spin out here?”
    It didn't catch Hendley short. He'd seen this question coming a quarter mile away, but it was not an especially easy question even so. “What about your father?”
    “Who says he has to know? You have six subsidiary corporations that you probably use to hide your trading activities.” Finding that out hadn't been all that easy, but Jack knew how to dig.
    “Not 'hide,'” Hendley corrected. “'Disguise,' maybe, but not 'hide.'”
    “Excuse me. As I told you, I used to hang out with spooks.”
    “You learned a lot.”
    “I had some pretty good teachers.”
    Ed and May Pat Foley, John Clark, Dan Murray, and his own father. Damned Skippy, he's had some pretty good teachers,
    
    Hendley thought.
    “What exactly do you think you'd do here?”
    “Sir, I'm pretty smart, but not that smart. I'll have to learn a lot. I know that. So do you. What do I want to do? I want to serve my country,” Jack said evenly. “I want to help get things done that need doing. I don't need money. I have trust funds set up from Dad and Granddad—Joe Muller, Mom's dad, I mean. Hell, if I wanted, I could get a law degree and end up like Ed Kealty, working my way toward the White House on my own, but my dad isn't a king and I'm not a prince. I want to make my own way and see how things play out.”
    “Your dad can't know about this, at least not for a while.”
    “So? He kept a lot of secrets from me.” Jack thought that was pretty funny. “Turnabout is fair play, isn't it?”
    “I'll think about it. You have an e-mail address?”
    “Yes, sir.” Jack handed across a card.
    “Give me a couple of days.”
    “Yes, sir. Thanks for letting me in to see you.” He stood, shook hands, and made his way out.
    The boy had grown up in a hurry, Hendley thought. Maybe having a Secret Service detail helped with that—or hurt, depending on what sort of person you happened to be. But this boy had come from good stock, as much from his mother as his father. And clearly he was smart. He had a lot of curiosity, usually a sign of intelligence.
    And intelligence was the only thing there was never enough of, anywhere in the world.
     
     
    “SO?”
    
    
    
    Ernesto asked.
    “It was interesting,” Pablo replied, lighting a Dominican cigar.
    “What do they want of us?” his boss asked.
    “Mohammed began by talking about our common interests, and our common enemies.”
    “If we tried to do business over there, we would lose our heads,” Ernesto observed. With him, it was always business.
    “I pointed that out. He replied that theirs is a small market, hardly worth our time. They merely export raw materials. And that is