The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

mainly Europeans, mainly on vacation with their families, smiling and laughing
as they drank their beer or wine or other local concoctions, thinking ahead to
the entertainments the night might hold, the intimate dinners, and the cool
cotton sheets that would follow, the laughter and the affection – all the things
that the world had denied Günther Bock.
He hated them all, sitting there alone, his eyes sweeping over the scene as he
might have done a zoo, watching the animals. Bock detested them for their
laughter and their smiles . . . and their futures. It wasn't fair. He'd had a
purpose in life, a goal to strive for. They had jobs. Fifty or so weeks per
year, they left their homes and drove to their workplaces and did whatever
unimportant thing it was that they did, and came home, and like good Europeans
saved their money for the annual fling in the Aegean, or Majorca, or America, or
someplace where there was sun and clean air and a beach. Pointless though their
lives might have been, they had the happiness that life had denied to the
solitary man sitting in the shade of a white umbrella, staring out to sea again
and sipping at his beer. It was not fair, not the least bit fair. He had devoted
his life to their welfare – and they had the life that he'd hoped to give them,
while he had less than nothing.
Except his mission.
Bock decided that he would not lie to himself on this issue any more than he did
on others. He hated them. Hated them all. If he didn't have a future, why should
they? If happiness was a stranger to him, why should it be their companion? He
hated them because they had rejected him and Petra, and Qati, and all the rest
who fought against injustice and oppression. In doing that, they had chosen the
bad over the good – and for that one was damned. He was more than they were,
Bock knew, he was better than they could ever hope to be. He could look down on
all of them and their pointless little lives, and whatever he did to them – for
them, he still tried to believe – was for him alone to decide. If some of them
were hurt, that was too bad. They were not really people. They were empty
shadows of what could have been people if they'd lived lives of purpose. They
had not cast him out, they'd cast themselves out, seeking the happiness that
came from . . . whatever lives they led. The lazy way. Like cattle. Bock
imagined them, heads down in feeding troughs, making contented barnyard noises
while he surveyed them. If some had to die – and some did have to die – should
it trouble him? Not at all, Günther decided.
***
'Mister President . . .'
'Yes, Elizabeth?' Fowler replied with a chuckle.
'When's the last time someone told you how good a lover you are?'
'I sure don't hear that in the Cabinet Room.' Fowler was speaking to the top of
her head, which nestled on his chest. Her left arm was wrapped around his chest,
while his left hand stroked her blonde hair. The fact of the matter, the
President thought, was that he was indeed pretty good at this. He had patience,
which he judged the most important talent for the business. Liberation and
equal-rights issues notwithstanding, it was a man's job to make a woman feel
cherished and respected. 'Not in the Press Room, either.'
'Well, you're hearing it from your National Security Advisor.'