The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

on for a minute or so.
'Is the operation worth the risk?' Fowler asked.
That surprised Ryan quite a bit. 'Sir, that decision is yours to make.'
'But I asked you for an opinion.'
'Yes, Mr President, it is. The take we've been getting from NIITAKA shows a
considerable degree of arrogance on their part. Something like this might have
the net effect of shocking them into playing honest ball with us.'
'You approve of our policy of dealing with Japan?' van Damm asked, just as
surprised as Ryan had been a moment earlier.
'My approval or disapproval is beside the point, but the answer to your question
is, yes.'
The Chief of Staff was openly amazed. 'But the previous administration – how
come you never told us?'
'You never asked, Arnie. I don't make government policy, remember? I'm a spook.
I do what you tell me to do, as long as it's legal.'
'You're satisfied on the legality of the operation?' Fowler asked, with a barely
suppressed smile.
'Mr President, you're the lawyer, not me. If I do not know the legal
technicalities – and I don't – I must assume that you, as an officer of the
court, are not ordering me to break the law.'
'That's the best dance number I've seen since the Kirov Ballet was in the
Kennedy Center last summer,' van Damm observed, with a laugh.
'Ryan, you know all the moves. You have my approval,' Fowler said, after a brief
pause. 'If we get what we expect, then what?'
'We have to go over that with the State Department guys,' Liz Elliot announced.
'That is potentially dangerous,' Ryan observed. 'The Japanese have been hiring a
lot of the people from the trade-negotiation section. We have to assume that
they have people inside.'
'Commercial espionage?' Fowler asked.
'Sure, why not? NIITAKA has never given us hard evidence of that, but if I were
a bureaucrat looking to leave government service and make half a mill' a year
representing them – like a lot of them do – how would I present myself to them
as a potentially valuable asset? I'd do it the same way a Soviet official or
spook presents bonafides to us. You deliver something juicy up-front.
That's illegal, but we're not devoting any assets to looking at the problem. For
that reason, wide dissemination of the information from this operation is very
dangerous. Obviously you'll want the opinion of Secretary Talbot and a few
others, but I'd be really careful how much farther you spread it. Also, remember
that if you tell the P.M. that you know what he said – and if he knows he only
said it in one place – you run the risk of compromising this
intelligence-gathering technique.' The President accepted that without anything
more than a raised eyebrow.
'Make it look like a leak in Mexico?' van Damm asked.
'That's the obvious ploy,' Ryan agreed.
'And if I confront him with it directly?' Fowler asked.
'Kind of hard to beat a straight-flush, Mr President. And if this were ever to
leak, Congress would go ballistic. That's one of my problems. I'm required to