![]() ![]() So, what else is going to go wrong over there? Ryan asked. Ellen he called loudly enough to get through the door. The President knows, because he's the President, right? Then I become President, and I don't know a damned thing more than I knew the month before, but everybody out there-Ryan waved his arm at the window-thinks I'm fucking omniscient. So, I translated the battle with the Helvetii and slept that night. But I still had to translate half a page of Caesar's goddamned Gallic Wars, and I saw the President on TV, and I figured things were okay, because he was the President of the United Goddamned States, and he-had to know what was really going on. I remember wondering if the world was going to blow up. Robby, back when I was in high school, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. Things will quiet down if the other side has half a brain, Adler said hopefully.ĭo they? Robby Jackson asked, just before Arnie van Damm could. And she headed back to the secretaries' room, closing the curved door behind her. He still had more work of his own to do in China. Jesus, Scott, how do we predict what they're going to do? It doesn't agree with what your own people think-assuming they really think at all, the Vice President observed. That's the problem with good intelligence information. Not to their people, especially, but sure as hell to the guys who make the decisions. The only way to get them back in touch will involve some pain. They're just out of touch with the rest of the world. Ryan figured it was his background as a fighter pilot to be first in things. I see trouble, Jackson said, before anyone else could. There was amusement around the coffee table at that one. It's quite a disappointment to learn what things are really like. You know, out in the fleet we used to think-well, we used to hope-that decisions made in this room here were based on solid data. I just can't forget the motto of the whole intelligence community: 'We bet your life.' It's lonely out there with a fighter plane strapped to your back, risking your life on the basis of a piece of paper with somebody's opinion typed on it, when you never know the guy it's from or the data it's based on. That's the fundamental problem dealing with them. But do they see things in the same way that we do? No, they do not. Sir, that's not a question with an easy answer. ![]()
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