It was not nearly as spectacular as Ryan had expected.  The Situation Room was probably no larger than the Oval Office upstairs.  There was expensive-looking wood paneling over what were probably concrete walls.  This part of the White House dated back to the complete rebuilding job done under Truman.  Ryan's lectern was to his left as he went in.  It stood in front and slightly to the right of a roughly diamond-shaped table, and behind it was the projection screen.  A note on the lectern said the slide projector in the middle of the table was already loaded and focused, and gave the order of the slides, which had been delivered from the National Reconnaissance Office.

Most of the people were already here, all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense.  The secretary of state, he remembered, was still shuttling back and forth between Athens and Ankara trying to settle the latest Cyprus situation.  This perennial thorn in NATO's southern flank had flared up a few weeks earlier when a Greek student had run over a Turkish child with his car and been killed by a gang minutes later.  By the end of the day fifty people had been injured, and the putatively allied countries were once more at each other's throats.  Now two American aircraft carriers were cruising the Aegean as the secretary of state labored to calm both sides.  It was bad enough that two young people had died, Ryan thought, but not something to get a country's army mobilized for.

Also at the table were General Thomas Hilton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Jeffrey Pelt, the president's national security adviser, a pompous man Ryan had met years before at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies.  Pelt was going through some papers and dispatches.  The chiefs were chatting amicably among themselves when the commandant of the marine corps looked up and spotted Ryan.  He got up and walked over.

"You Jack Ryan?" General David Maxwell asked.

"Yes, sir."  Maxwell was a short, tough fireplug of a man whose stubbly haircut seemed to spark with aggressive energy.  He looked Ryan over before shaking hands.

"Pleased to meet you, son.  I liked what you did over in London.  Good for the corps."  He referred to the terrorist incident in which Ryan had very nearly been killed.  "That was good, quick action you took, Lieutenant."

"Thank you, sir.  I was lucky."

"Good officer's supposed to be lucky.  I hear you got some interesting news for us."

"Yes sir.  I think you will find it worth your time."

"Nervous?"  The general saw the answer and smiled thinly.  "Relax, son.  Everybody in this damned cellar puts his pants on the same way as you."  He backhanded Ryan to the stomach and went back to his seat.  The general whispered something to Admiral Daniel Foster, chief of naval operations.  The CNO looked Ryan over for a moment before going back to what he was doing.