The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

stuff that Khrushchev wanted to change the system. In '58, he'd effectively
gutted the Red Army, and he was trying to reform the Party. Let's say that
Kennedy had hard stuff on that, and he was told by a little bird that if he cut
the 'Russkies a little slack, maybe we could have had a rapprochement in the
60s. Glasnost, say, thirty years early. Let's say all that happened, and the
President blew the call, decided for political reasons that it was
disadvantageous to cut Nikita a little slack . . . That would mean that, the
1960s were all a great big mistake. Vietnam, everything, all a gigantic
screwup.'
'I don't believe it. I've been through the archives. It's not consistent with
everything we know about – '
'Consistency in a politician?' Ryan interrupted. 'There's a revolutionary
concept.'
'If you're saying that really happened – '
'It was a hypothetical,' Jack said with a raised eyebrow. Hell, he thought, the
information was all out there for anyone who wanted to pull it together. That it
had never been done was just another manifestation of a wider and more troubling
problem. But the part that worried him was right in this building. He'd leave
history to historians . . . until, someday, he decided to rejoin their
professional ranks. And when will that be, Jack?
'Nobody'd ever believe it.'
'Most people believe that Lyndon Johnson lost the New Hampshire primary to
Eugene McCarthy because of the Tet Offensive, too. Welcome to the world of
intelligence, Dr Goodley. You know what's the hard part of recognizing the
truth?' Jack asked.
'What's that?'
'Knowing that something just bit you on the ass. It's not as easy as you think.'
'And the breakup of the Warsaw Pact?'
'Case in point,' Ryan agreed. 'We had all kinds of indicators, and we all blew
the call. Well, that's not true, exactly. A lot of the youngsters in the DI –
Directorate of Intelligence,' Jack explained unnecessarily, which struck Goodley
as patronizing ' – were making noise, but the section chiefs pooh-poohed it.'
'And you, sir?'
'If the Director's agreeable, we can let you see some of that. Most of it, in
fact. The majority of our agents and field officers got faked out of their
jockstraps, too. We all could have done better, and that's as true of me as it
is of anybody else. If I have a weakness, it's that I have too tactical a
focus.'
'Trees instead of the forest?'
'Yep,' Ryan admitted. 'That's the big trap here, but knowing about it doesn't
always help a whole hell of a lot.'
'I guess that's why they sent me over,' Goodley observed.
Jack grinned. 'Hell, that's not terribly different from how I got started here.
Welcome aboard. Where do you want to start, Dr Goodley?'
Ben already had a good idea on that, of course. If Ryan could not see it coming,
that was not his problem, was it?
***