Read Jack Ryan 5 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin for Free Online

hand shook his shoulder.
    “The boss wants you,” another member of the team said
    “Doesn't he ever sleep?” Jack growled.
    “Tell me about it.”
    Ernest Allen was in the VIP-est accommodations on the aircraft, a cabin set exactly atop the wing spar with six plus swivel chairs. A coffeepot sat on the table. If he didn't have some coffee he'd soon be incoherent. If he did, he'd be unable to go back to sleep. Well, the government wasn't paying him to sleep. Ryan poured himself some coffee.
    “Yes, sir?”
    “Can we verify it?” Allen skipped the preliminaries.
    “I don't know yet,” Jack replied. “It's not just a question of National Technical Means. Verifying the elimination of so many launchers—”
    “They're giving us limited on-site inspection,” noted a junior member of the team.
    “I'm aware of that,” Jack replied. “The question is, does that really mean anything?” The other question is, why did they suddenly agree to something we've wanted for over thirty years . . . ?
    “What?” the junior member asked.
    “The Soviets have put a lot of work into their new mobile launchers. What if they have more of them than we know about? Do you think we can find a few hundred mobile missiles?”
    “But we have surface-scanning radar on the new birds and—”
    “And they know it, and they can avoid it if they want to— wait a minute. We know that our carriers can and do evade Russian radar-ocean-recon satellites. If you can do it with a ship, you can damned sure do it with a train,” Jack pointed out. Allen looked on without comment, allowing his underling to pursue the line in his stead. A clever old fox, Ernie Allen.
    “So, CIA is going to recommend against—damn it, this is the biggest concession they've ever made!”
    “Fine. It's a big concession. Everyone here knows that. Before we accept it, maybe we ought to make sure that they haven't conceded something that they've made irrelevant to the process. There are other things, too.”
    “So you're going to oppose—”
    “I'm not opposing anything. I'm saying we take our time and use our heads instead of being carried away by euphoria.”
    “But their draft treaty is—it's almost too good to be true.” The man had just proved Ryan's point, though he didn't see it quite that way.
    “Dr. Ryan,” Allen said, “if the technical details can be worked out to your satisfaction, how do you view the treaty?”
    “Sir, speaking from a technical point of view, a fifty-percent reduction in deliverable warheads has no effect at all on the strategic balance. It's—”
    “That's crazy!” objected the junior member.
    Jack extended his hand toward the man, pointing his index finger like the barrel of a gun. “Let's say I have a pistol pointed at your chest right now. Call it a nine-millimeter Browning. That has a thirteen-round clip. I agree to remove seven rounds from the clip, but I still have a loaded gun, with six rounds, pointed at your chest—do you feel any safer now?” Ryan smiled, keeping his “gun” out.
    “Personally, I wouldn't. That's what we're talking about here. If both sides reduce their inventories by half, that still leaves five thousand warheads that can hit our country. Think about how big that number is. All this agreement does is to reduce the overkill. The difference between five thousand and ten thousand only affects how far the rubble flies. If we start talking about reducing the number to one thousand warheads on either side, then maybe I'll start thinking we're on to something.”
    “Do you think the thousand-warhead limit is achievable?” Alien asked.
    “No, sir. Sometimes I just wish it were, though I've been told that a thousand-warhead limit could have the effect of making nuclear war 'winnable,' whatever the hell that means.” Jack shrugged and concluded: “Sir, if this current agreement goes through, it'll look better than it is. Maybe the symbolic value of the agreement has value in and of itself; that's a