The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

– a girl, by the way. Ryan visits the family periodically,' Goodley concluded.
'I see.' She didn't, but this is what one says. 'Any professional connection?'
'Not really. Mrs Zimmer, as I said, was Laotian. Her father was one of those
tribal chieftains that CIA supported against the North Vietnamese. The whole
group was wiped out. I haven't discovered how she managed to escape. She married
an Air Force sergeant and came to America. He died in an accident somewhere,
rather recently. There is nothing in Ryan's file to show any previous connection
to the family at all. The Laos connection is possible – to CIA, I mean – but
Ryan wasn't in government employ then, he was an undergrad in college. There's
nothing in the file to show a connection of any kind. Just one day, a few months
before the last presidential election, he set up this trust fund, and ever since
he visits them on the average of once a week. Oh, there was one other thing.'
'What's that?'
'I cross-referenced this from another file. There was some trouble at the
7-Eleven, some local punks were bothering the Zimmer family. Ryan's principal
bodyguard is a CIA officer named Clark. He used to be a field officer, and now
is a protective guy. I wasn't able to get his file,' Goodley explained. 'Anyway,
this Clark guy evidently assaulted a couple of gang kids. Sent one to the
hospital. I checked a newspaper clipping. It was in the news, a little item –
concerned citizen sort of thing. Clark and another CIA guy – the paper
identified them as federal employees, no CIA connection – were supposedly
accosted by four street toughs. This Clark guy must be a piece of work. The gang
leader had his knee broken and was hospitalized. One other was just knocked
unconscious, and the rest just stood there and wet their pants. The local cops
treated it as a gang problem – well, a former gang problem. No format charges
were pressed.'
'What else do you know about this Clark?'
'I've seen him a few times. Big guy, late forties, quiet, actually seems kind of
shy. But he moves – you know what he moves like? I took karate courses once. The
instructor was a former Green Beret, Vietnam veteran, all that stuff. Like that.
He moves like an athlete, fluid, economical, but it's his eyes. They're always
moving around. He looks at you sideways and decides if you're a threat or not a
threat . . .' Goodley paused. At that moment he realized what Clark really was.
Whatever else he was, Ben Goodley was no fool. ' . . . that is one dangerous
guy.'
'What?' Liz Elliot didn't know what he was talking about.
'Excuse me. I learned that from the karate teacher up at Cambridge. The really
dangerous ones don't seem dangerous. You just sort of lose track of them in the
room. My teacher, he was mugged on the subway station right there by Harvard. I
mean, they tried to mug him. He left three kids bleeding on the bricks. They
thought he was just a janitor or something – he's an African American, about
fifty now, I guess. Looks like a janitor or something the way he dresses, not
dangerous at all. That's what Clark is like, just like my old sensei . . .
Interesting,' Goodley said. 'Well, he's a SPO, and they're supposed to be good
at their job.
'I speculate that Ryan found out that some punks were bothering Mrs Zimmer, and
had his bodyguard straighten things out. The Anne Arundel County police thought