Read Jack Ryan 8 - Debt of Honor for Free Online Page B

Make your delivery as planned.”
    It was an outrage, really, Jack told himself as he set the phone back. Such operations were better left in the field, but the President had insisted this time. He rose from his desk and headed toward the Oval Office.
    “Get'm?” D'Agustino asked as Jack hustled down the corridor.
    “You weren't supposed to know.”
    “The Boss was worried about it,” Helen explained quietly.
    “Well, he doesn't have to worry anymore.”
    “That's
    
     one score
    
     that needed settling. Welcome back, Dr. Ryan.”
     
     
    The past would haunt one other man that day.
    “Go on,” the psychologist said.
    “It was awful,” the woman said, staring down at the floor. “It was the only time in my life it ever happened, and…” Though her voice droned on in a level, emotionless monotone, it was her appearance that disturbed the elderly woman most of all. Her patient was thirty-five, and should have been slim, petite, and blonde, but instead her face showed the puffiness of compulsive eating and drinking, and her hair was barely presentable. What ought to have been fair skin was merely pale, and reflected light like chalk, in a flat grainy way that even makeup would not have helped very much. Only her diction indicated what the patient once had been, and her voice recounted the events of three years before as though her mind was operating on two levels, one the victim, and the other an observer, wondering in a distant intellectual way if she had participated at all.
    “I mean, he's who he is, and I worked for him, and I liked him…” The voice broke again. The woman swallowed hard and paused a moment before going on. “I mean, I admire him, all the things he does, all the things he stands for.” She looked up, and it seemed so odd that her eyes were as dry as cellophane, reflecting light from a flat surface devoid of tears. “He's so charming, and caring, and—”
    “It's okay, Barbara.” As she often did, the psychologist fought the urge to reach out to her patient, but she knew she had to stay aloof, had to hide her own rage at what had happened to this bright and capable woman. It had happened at the hands of a man who used his status and power to draw women toward him as a light drew moths, ever circling his brilliance, spiraling in closer and closer until they were destroyed by it. The pattern was so like life in this city. Since then, Barbara had broken off from two men, each of whom might have been fine partners for what should have been a fine life. This was an intelligent woman, a graduate of the
    
    
     University
    
     of
    
     Pennsylvania
    
    
    , with a master's degree in political science and a doctorate in public administration. She was not a wide-eyed secretary or summer intern, and perhaps had been all the more vulnerable because of it, able to become part of the policy team, knowing that she was good enough, if only she would do the one more thing to get her over the top or across the line, or whatever the current euphemism was on the Hill. The problem was, that line could be crossed only in one direction, and what lay beyond it was not so easily seen from the other side.
    “You know, I would have done it anyway,” Barbara said in a moment of brutal honesty. “He didn't have to—”
    “Do you feel guilty because of that?” Dr. Clarice Golden asked. Barbara Linders nodded. Golden stifled a sigh and spoke gently. “And you think you gave him the—”
    “Signals.” A nod. “That's what he said, 'You gave me all the signals.' Maybe I did.”
    “No, you didn't, Barbara. You have to go on now,” Clarice ordered gently.
    “I just wasn't in the mood. It's not that I wouldn't have done it, another time, another day, maybe, but I wasn't feeling well. I came into the office feeling fine that day, but I was coming down with the flu or something, and after lunch my stomach was queasy, and I thought about going home early, but it was the day we were doing the amendment on the