Executive Orders

39 FACE TIME

THE FLIGHT ACROSS THE pond was pleasant. The VC-20B was more a mini-airliner than a business jet, and the Air Force crewmen, who looked to Clark as though they might be old enough to take driving lessons, kept things smooth. The aircraft began its descent into the enveloping darkness of the European night, finally landing at a military airfield west of Paris.

There was no arrival ceremony per se, but Adler was an official of ministerial rank, and he had to be met, even on a covert mission. In this case, a high-level official—a civil servant—walked up to the aircraft as soon as the engines wound down. Adler recognized him as the stairs descended.

"Claude!"

"Scott. Congratulations on your promotion, my old friend!" In deference to American tastes, kisses were not exchanged.

Clark and Chavez scanned the area for danger, but all they saw were French troops, or maybe police—they couldn't tell at this distance—standing in a circle, with weapons in evidence. Europeans had a penchant for showing people machine guns, even on city streets. It probably had a salutary effect on street muggings, John thought, but it seemed a little excessive. In any case, they'd expected no special dangers in France, and indeed there were none. Adler and his friend got in an official vehicle. Clark and Chavez got in the chase car. The flight crew would head off for mandated crew rest, which was USAF-talk for having a few with their French colleagues.

"We go to the lounge for a few minutes before your aircraft is ready," a French air force colonel explained. "Perhaps you wish to freshen up?"

"Merci, mon commandant," Ding replied. Yeah, he thought, the Frenchies do know how to make you feel safe.

"Thank you for helping to arrange this," Adler said to his friend. They'd been FSOs together, once in Moscow and once more in Pretoria. Both had specialized in sensitive assignments.

"It is nothing, Scott." Which it wasn't, but diplomats talk like diplomats even when they don't have to. Claude had once helped him get through a divorce in a uniquely French way, all the while speaking as though conducting treaty negotiations. It was almost a joke between the two. "Our ambassador reports that he will be receptive to the right sort of approach."

"And what might that be?" SecState asked his colleague. They got out at what appeared to be the base officers club, and a minute later found themselves in a private dining room, with a carafe of fine Beaujolais on the table. "What's your take on this, Claude? What does Daryaei want?"

The shrug was as much a part of the French character as the wine, which Claude poured. They toasted, and the wine was superb even by the standards of the French diplomatic service. Then came business.

"We're not sure. We wonder about the death of the Turkoman Premier."

"You don't wonder about the death of—"

"I do not believe anyone has doubts about that, Scott, but that is a long-standing business, is it not?"

"Not exactly." Another sip. "Claude, you're still the best authority on wine I know. What's he thinking about?"

"Probably many things. His domestic troubles—you Americans don't appreciate them as well as you should. His people are restless, less so now that he's conquered Iraq, but the problem is still there. We feel that he must consolidate before he does anything else. We also feel that the process may turn out to be unsuccessful. We are hopeful, Scott. We are hopeful that the extreme aspects of the regime will moderate over time, perhaps not very much time. It must. It is no longer the eighth century, even in that part of the world."

Adler took a few seconds to consider that, then nodded thoughtfully. "Hope you're right. The guy's always scared me."

"All men are mortal. He is seventy-two, and he works a hard schedule. In any case, we have to check on him, do we not? If he moves, then we will move, together, as we have done in the past. The Saudis and we have talked on this matter also. They are concerned, but not overly so. Our assessment is the same. We counsel you to keep an open mind."

Claude might be correct, Adler thought. Daryaei HUY old, and consolidating the rule over a newly acquired country wasn't exactly a trivial undertaking. More than that, the easiest way to bring a hostile country down, if you have the patience for it, was to be nice to the bastards. A little trade, a few journalists, some CNN, and a couple of G-rated movies, such things could do wonders. If you have the patience. If you had the time. There were plenty of Iranian kids in American universities. That could be the most effective means for America to change the UIR. Problem was, Daryaei had to know that, too. And so here he was, Scott Adler, Secretary of State, a post he'd never expected to approach, much less have, and he was supposed to know what to do next. But he'd read enough diplomatic history to know better.

"I'll listen to what he has to say, and we're not looking to make any new enemies, Claude. I think you know that."

"D'accord." He topped off Adler's glass. "Unfortunately, you will find none of this in Tehran."

"And two is my limit when I'm working."

"Your flight crew is excellent," Claude assured him. "They fly our own ministers."

"When has your hospitality ever been lacking?"

FOR CLARK AND Chavez it was Perrier, cheaper to buy here, they both imagined, though the

lemons probably were not. "So how are things in Washington?" a French counterpart asked, just killing time, or so it seemed.

"Pretty strange. You know, it's amazing how quiet the country is. Maybe having a lot of the government turned off helps," John said, trying to dodge.

"And this talk of your President and his adventures?"

"Sounds like a lot of movie stuff to me," Ding said, with the open face of honesty. "Stealing a Russian sub? All by himself? Damn." Clark grinned. "I wonder who made that up?"

"But the Russian spy chief," their host objected. "It is he, and he's been on the television."

"Yeah, well, I bet we paid him a ton of money to come across, too."

"Probably wants to do a book and make some more." Chavez laughed. "Sumbitch'll get it, too. Hey, mon ami, we're just worker bees, okay?"

It didn't fly any better than a lead glider. Clark looked into their interrogator's eyes and they just clicked. The man was DGSE, and he knew Agency when he saw it. "Then be careful of the nectar you will find where you are going, my young friend. It is, perhaps, too sweet." It was like the start of a card game. The deck was out, and he was shuffling. Probably just one hand, and maybe a friendly one, but the hand had to be played.

"What do you mean?"

"The man you go to meet, he is dangerous. He has the look of one who sees what we do not."

"You've worked the country?" John asked.

"I have traveled through the country, yes."

"And?" This was Chavez.

"And I have never understood them."

"Yeah," Clark agreed. "I know what you're saying."

"An interesting man, your President," the Frenchman said again, and it was pure curiosity, actually an endearing thing to see in the eyes of an intelligence officer.

John looked right in those eyes and decided to thank the man for his warning, one pro to another. "Yeah, he is. He's one of us," Clark assured him.

"And those entertaining stories?"

"I cannot say." Delivered with a smile. Of course they're true. You think reporters have the wit to make such things up?

Both men were thinking the same thing, and both men knew it, though neither could speak it aloud: A shame we cannot get together some evening for a dinner and some stories. But it just wasn't done.

"On the way back, I will offer you a drink."

"On the way back, I will have it."

Ding just listened and watched. The old bastard still had it, and there were still lessons to learn from how he did it. "Nice to have a friend," he said five minutes later on the way to the French aircraft.

"Better than a friend, a pro. You listen to people like him, Domingo."

NOBODY HAD EVER said that governance was easy, even for those who invoked the word of God for nearly everything. The disappointment, even for Daryaei, who'd been governing Iran for nearly twenty years in one capacity or another, was in all the petty administrative rubbish that reached his desk and took from his time. He'd never grasped that it was almost entirely his fault. His rule was fair by his own reckoning, but harsh by most others. Most violations of the rules mandated death for the miscreant, and even small administrative errors on the part of bureaucrats could entail the end of a career—that degree of mercy depended on the magnitude of the error, of course. A bureaucrat who said no to everything, noting that the law was clear on an issue, whether it was or not, rarely got into trouble. One who broadened the scope of the government's power over the most minor of day-to-day activities was merely adding to the scope of Daryaei's rule. Such decisions came easily and caused little in the way of difficulty to the arbiter in question.

But real life wasn't that simple. Practical questions of commerce, for example, just the way in which the country did business in everything from the sale of melons to the honking of auto horns around a mosque required a certain degree of judgment, because the Holy Koran hadn't anticipated every situation, and neither had the civil law been based upon it. But to liberalize anything was a major undertaking, because any liberalization of any rule might be seen as a theological error—this in a country where apostasy was a capital crime. And so the lowest-level bureaucrats, when stuck with the necessity of saying yes to a request, from time to time, tended to hem and haw and kick things upstairs, which gave a higher-level official the chance to say no, which came just as easily to them after a career of doing so, but with somewhat greater authority, somewhat greater responsibility, and far more to lose in the event that someone higher still disagreed with the rare and erroneous yes decision. All that meant was that such calls kept perking up the pyramid. In between Daryaei and the bureaucracy was a council of religious leaders (he'd been a member under Khomeini), and a titular parliament, and experienced officials, but, disappointingly to the new UIR's religious leader, the principle held, and he found himself dealing with such weighty issues as the business hours for markets, the price of petrol, and the educational syllabus of grade-school females. The sour expression he'd adopted for such trivial issues merely made his lesser colleagues all the more obsequious in their presentation of the pros and cons, which added an additional measure of gravity to the absurd, while they sought favor for being strict (opposing whatever change was on the table) or for being practical (supporting it). Earning Daryaei's favor was the biggest political game in town, and he inevitably found himself as tied down as an insect in amber by small issues, while he needed all his time to deal with the big ones. The amazing part is that he never understood why people couldn't take some initiative, even as he destroyed people on occasion for taking any.

So it was that he landed in Baghdad this evening to meet with local religious leaders. The issue of the day was which mosque in need of repair would get repaired first. It was known that Mahmoud Haji had one personal favorite for his own prayers, another for its architectural beauty, and yet a third for its great historical significance, while the people of the city loved yet another—and wouldn't it be a better idea, politically, to deal with the maintenance needs of that one first, the better to ensure the political stability of the region? After that came a problem with the right of women to drive cars (the previous Iraqi regime had been overly liberal on that!), which was objectionable, but was it not difficult to take away a right already possessed, and what of women who lacked a man (widows, for example) to drive them, and also lacked the money with which to hire one? Should the government look after their needs? Some—physicians for one example, teachers for another—were important to the local society. On the other hand, since Iran and Iraq were now one, the law had to be the same, and so did one grant a right to Iranian women or deny it to the Iraqi? For these weighty issues and a few others, he had to take an evening flight to Baghdad.

Daryaei, sitting in his private jet, looked over the agenda for the meeting and wanted to scream, but he was too patient a man for that—or so he told himself. He had something important to prepare for, after all. In the morning he'd be meeting with the Jew American foreign minister. His expression, as he looked through the papers, frightened even the flight crew, though Mahmoud Haji didn't notice that, and even if he had, would not have understood why.

Why couldn't people take some initiative!

THE JET WAS a Dassault Falcon 900B, about nine years old, similar in basic type and function to the USAF VC-20B twin-jet. The two-man flight crew was a pair of French air force officers, both rather senior for this "charter," and there was also a pair of cabin attendants, both female and as charming as they could be. At least one, Clark figured, was a DGSE spook. Maybe both. He liked the French, especially their intelligence services. As troublesome an ally as France occasionally was, when the French did business in the black world, they damned well did business as well as any and better than most. Fortunately, in the case at hand, aircraft are noisy and hard to bug. Perhaps that explained why one attendant or the other would come back every fifteen minutes or so to ask if they needed anything.

"Anything special we need to know?" John asked, when the latest offer was declined with a smile.

"Not really," Adler replied. "We want to get a feel for the guy, what he's up to. My friend Claude, back at Paris, says that things are not as bad as they look, and his reasoning seems pretty sound. Mainly I'm delivering the usual message."

"Behave yourself," Chavez said, with a smile.

The Secretary of State smiled. "Somewhat more diplomatically, but yes. What's your background, Mr. Chavez?"

Clark liked that one: "You don't want to know where we got him from."

"I just finished my master's thesis," the young spook said proudly. "Get hooded in June."

"Where?"

"George Mason University. Professor Alpher. '

That perked Adler's interest. "Really? She used to work for me. What's the thesis on?"

"It's called 'A Study in Conventional Wisdom: Erroneous Diplomatic Maneuvers in Turn-of-the-Century Europe. "

"The Germans and the Brits?"

Ding nodded. "Mainly, especially the naval races."

"Your conclusion?"

"People couldn't recognize the differences between tactical and strategic goals. The guys supposed to be thinking 'future' were thinking 'right now, instead. Because they confused politics with statecraft, they ended up in a war that brought down the entire European order, and replaced it with nothing more than scar tissue." It was remarkable, Clark thought, listening to the brief discourse, that Ding's voice changed when discussing his school work.

"And you're an SPO?" SecState asked, with a certain degree of incredulity.

A very Latino grin reappeared. "Used to be. Sorry if I don't drag my knuckles on the ground like I'm supposed to, sir."

"So why did Ed Foley lay you two on me?"

"My fault," Clark said. "They want us to take a little stroll around and get a smell for things." "Your fault?" Scott asked. "I was their training officer, once upon a time," John explained, and that changed the complexion of the conversation entirely.

"You're the guys who got Koga out! You're the guys who—"

"Yeah, we were there," Chavez confirmed. SecState was probably cleared for all that. "Lots of fun." The Secretary of State told himself that he should be offended that he had two field spooks with him— and the younger one's remark about being a knuckle-dragger wasn't that far off. But a master's from George Mason…

"You're also the guys who sent that report that Brett Hanson pooh-poohed, the one about Goto. That was good work. In fact, it was excellent work." He'd wondered what these two were doing on the SNIE team for the UIR situation. Now he knew.

"But nobody listened," Chavez pointed out. It may have been a deciding factor in the war with Japan, and a very hairy time for them in that country. But it had also given him some real insight into how diplomacy and statecraft hadn't changed very much since 1905. It was an ill wind that blew no one good.

"I'll listen," Adler promised. "Let me know what your little stroll turns up, okay?"

"Sure will. I guess you have need-to-know on this," John observed, with a raised eyebrow. Adler turned and waved to one of the attendants, the pretty brunette one whom Clark had tagged as a certain spook. She was just as charming as hell, and drop-dead pretty, but seemed a little too clumsy in the galley to be a full-time flight attendant.

"Yes, Monsieur Minister?"

"How long until we land?"

"Four hours."

"Okay, then, could we have a deck of cards and a bottle of wine?"

"Certainly." She hustled the twelve feet to get them.

"Not supposed to drink on duty, sir," Chavez said.

"You're off-duty until we land," Adler told them. "And I like to play cards before I go into one of these sessions. Good for the nerves. You gentlemen up to a friendly game? '

"Well, Mr. Secretary, if you insist," John replied. Now they'd all get a read on the mission. "A little five-card stud, maybe?"

EVERYBODY KNEW WHERE the line was. No official communiques had been exchanged, at least not between Beijing and Taipei, but it was known and understood even so, because people in uniform tend to be practical and observant. The PRC aircraft never flew closer than ten nautical miles (fifteen kilometers) to a certain north-south line, and the ROC aircraft, recognizing that fact, kept the same distance from the same invisible bit of longitude. On either side of the line, people could do anything they wanted, appear as aggressive as they wished, expend all the ordnance they could afford, and that was agreed to without so much as a single tactical radio message. It was all in the interest of stability. Playing with loaded guns was always dangerous, as much so for nation-states as for children, though the latter were more easily disciplined—the former were too big for that.

America now had four submarines in the Formosa Strait. These were spotted on—under—the invisible line, which was the safest place to be. A further collection of three ships was now at the north end of the passage, a cruiser, USS Port Royal, along with destroyers The Sulli-vans and Chandler. All were SAM ships, equipped with a total of 250 SM2-MR missiles. Ordinarily, they were tasked to guard a carrier from air attack, but «their» carrier was in Pearl Harbor having her engines replaced. Port Royal and The Sullivans—named for a family of sailors wiped out on the same ship in 1942—were both Aegis ships with powerful SPY radars, which were now sur-veilling air activity while the submarines were handling the rest. Chandler had a special ELINT team aboard to keep track of voice radio transmissions. Like a cop on the beat, they were not so much there to interfere with anyone's exercises as to let people know that The Law was around, in a friendly sort of way, and as long as they were, things would not get out of hand. At least that was the idea. And if anyone objected to the presence of the American ships, their country would note that the seas were free for the innocent passage of all, and they weren't in anyone's way, were they? That they were actually part of someone else's plan was not immediately apparent to anyone. What happened next confused nearly everyone.

It was dawn in the air, if not yet on the surface, when a flight of four PRC fighters came off the mainland, heading east, followed five minutes later by four more. These were duly tracked by the American ships at the extreme range of their billboard radars. Routine track numbers were assigned, and the computer system followed their progress to the satisfaction of the officers and men in the CIC of Port Royal. Until they didn't turn. Then a lieutenant lifted a phone and pushed a button.

"Yes?" a groggy voice answered.

"Captain, Combat, we have a flight of PRC aircraft, probably fighters, about to cross the line, bearing two-one-zero, altitude fifteen thousand, course zero-niner-zero, speed five hundred. There's a flight of four more a few minutes behind."

"On the way." The captain, partially dressed, arrived in the combat information center two minutes later, not in time to see the PRC fighters break the rules, but in time to hear a petty officer report something:

"New track, four or more fighters coming west."

For the purposes of convenience, the computer had been told to assign «enemy» designator-graphics to the mainland fighters and «friendly» symbols to the Taiwanese. (There were also a few American aircraft around from time to time, but these were electronic-intelligence gatherers and well out of harm's way.) At this point, there were two immediately converging flights of four each, about thirty miles apart, but with a closure speed of over a thousand miles per hour. The radar was also tracking six commercial airliners, all on the east side of the line, minding their own business as they skirted the agreed-upon «exercise» areas.

"Raid Six is turning," a sailor reported next. This was the first outbound flight off the mainland, and as the captain watched, the velocity vector turned southward, while the outbound flight off Taiwan bored in on them.

"Illuminators coming on," the chief at the ESM console said. "The ROCs are lighting up Raid Six. Their radars seem to be in tracking mode."

"Maybe that's why they turned," the captain thought.

"Maybe they got lost?" the CIC officer wondered.

"Still dark out. Maybe they just went too far." They didn't know what sort of navigation gear the ChiCom fighters might have had, and driving a single-seat aircraft over the sea at night was not a precise business.

"More airborne radars coming on, easterly direction, probably Raid Seven," the ESM chief said. This was the second flight off the mainland.

"Any electronic activity from Raid Six?" the CIC officer asked.

"Negative, sir." These fighters continued their turn and were now heading west, back for the line, with the ROC F-16s in pursuit. It was at this point that things changed.

"Raid Seven is turning, course now zero-nine-seven."

"That puts them on the -16s… and they're illuminating…," the lieutenant observed, with the first hint of worry in his voice. "Raid Seven is lighting up the F-16's, radars in tracking mode."

The Republic of China F-16s then turned also. They'd been getting a lot of work. The newer, American-made fighters and their elite pilots comprised only about a third of their fighter force, and were drawing the duty of covering and responding to the flight exercises of their mainland cousins. Leaving Raid Six to return, they necessarily got more interested in the trailing flight, still heading east. The closure rate was still a thousand miles per hour, and both sides had their missile-targeting radars up and running, aimed at each other. That was internationally recognized as an unfriendly act, and one to be avoided for the simple reason that it was the aerial equivalent of aiming a rifle at someone's head.

"Uh-oh," the petty officer on the ESM board said. "Sir, Raid Seven, their radars just shifted to tracking mode." Instead of just searching for targets, the airborne systems were now operating in the manner used to guide air-to-air missiles. What had been merely unfriendly a few seconds ago now became overtly hostile.

The F-16s broke into two pairs—elements—and began maneuvering freely. The outbound PRC fighters did the same. The original flight of four, Raid Six, was now across the line, heading west on what appeared to be a direct line to their airfield.

"Oh, I think I know what's going on here, sir, look how—"

A very small pip appeared on the screen, leaving one of the ROC F-16s—

"Oh, shit," a sailor said. "We have a missile in the air—"

"Make that two," his chief said.

Aloft, a pair of American-made AIM-120 missiles were now taking separate paths to separate targets.

"They thought it was an attack. Oh, Christ," the captain said, turning to his communications. "Get me CiNC-PAC right now! "

It didn't take long. One of the mainland fighters turned into a puff on the screen. Warned, the other jinked hard and dodged its missile at the last second.

Then it turned back. The southern PRC fighter element maneuvered also, and Raid Six turned radically to the north, its illumination radars now on. Ten seconds later, six more missiles were airborne and tracking targets.

"We got a battle on our hands!" the chief of the watch said. The captain lifted the phone: "Bridge, combat, general quarters, general quarters!" Then he grabbed the TBS microphone, getting the captains of his two companion ships, both ten miles away, east and west of his cruiser as the alarm gong started sounding on USS Port Royal.

"I have it," The Sullivans reported. That destroyer was outboard.

"Me, too," Chandler chimed in. That one was closer to the island nation, but getting the radar picture from the Aegis ships via data link.

"That's a kill!" Another ChiCom fighter took its hit and headed down to the still-dark surface. Five seconds later, an F-16 died. More crewmen arrived in CIC, taking their battle stations.

"Captain, Raid Six was just trying to simulate—"

"Yeah, I see that now, but we have a train wreck on our hands."

And then, predictably, a missile went wild. These were so small as to be hard for the Aegis radar to track, but a technician boosted power, throwing six million watts of RF energy into the «exercise» area, and the picture became more clear.

"Oh, shit!" a chief said, pointing to the main tactical display. "Captain, look there!"

It was instantly obvious. Someone had loosed what was probably an infra-red-seeking missile, and the hottest target in town was an Air China Airbus 310, with two huge General Electric CF6 turbofans—the same basic engines as those which powered all three of the American warships—which looked like the sun to its single red eye.

"Chief Albertson, get him on guard!" the skipper shouted.

"Air China Six-Six-Six, this is a U.S. Navy warship, you have a missile inbound on you from the northwest, I say again, maneuver immediately, you have a missile tracking you from the northwest!"

"What, what?" But the plane started moving, turning left and descending. Not that it mattered.

The plotted velocity vector of the missile never wavered from the target. There was a hope that it would burn out and fall short, but the missile was going at mach 3, and the Air China flight was already slowed down, commencing its approach to its home field. When the pilot put his nose down, he just made things easier for the missile.

"It's a big airplane," the captain said.

"Only two engines, sir," the weapons officer pointed out.

"That's a hit," a radarman said. "Get her down, pal, get her down. Oh, fuck," the captain breathed, wanting to turn away. On the display, the 310's blip tripled in size and flashed the emergency code.

"He's calling Mayday, sir," a radioman said. "Air China flight triple-six is calling Mayday… engine and wing damage… possible fire aboard."

"Only about fifty miles out," a chief said. "He's vectoring for a direct approach into Taipei."

"Captain, all stations report manned and ready. Condition One is set throughout the ship," the 1C man of the watch told the skipper.

"Very well." His eyes were locked on the center of the three radar displays. The fighter engagement, he saw, had ended as quickly as it had started, with three fighters splashed, another possibly damaged, and both sides withdrawing to lick their wounds and figure out what the hell had happened. On the Taiwanese side, another flight of fighters was up and forming just off their coast.

"Captain!" It was the ESM console. "Looks like every radar on every ship just lit off. Sources all over the place, classifyinglhem now." But that didn't matter, the captain knew. What mattered now was that Airbus 310 was slowing and descending, according to his display.

"CiNCPAC Operations, sir." The radio chief pointed.

"This is Port Royal," the captain said, lifting the phone-type receiver for the satellite radio link. "We just had a little air battle here—and a missile went wild and it appears that it hit an airliner inbound from Hong Kong to Taipei. The aircraft is still in the air, but looks to be in trouble. We have two ChiCom MiGs and one ROC F-16 splashed, maybe one more -16 damaged."

"Who started it?" the watch officer asked.

"We think the ROC pilots fired the first missile. It could have been a screwup." He explained on for a few seconds. "I'll upload our radar take as quick as I can."

"Very well. Thank you, Captain. I'll pass that along to the boss. Please keep us informed."

"Will do." The skipper killed the radio link and turned to the 1C man of the watch. "Let's get a tape of the battle set up for uplinking to Pearl."

"Aye, sir." Air China 666 was still heading toward the coast, but the radar track showed the aircraft snaking and yawing around its straight-line course into Taipei. The ELINT team on Chandler was now listening in on the radio circuits. English is the language of international aviation, and the pilot in command of the wounded airliner was speaking quickly and clearly, calling ahead for emergency procedures, while he and his co-pilot struggled with their wounded airliner. Only they, really, knew the magnitude of the problem. Everyone else was just a spectator, rooting and praying that he'd keep it together for another fifteen minutes.

THIS ONE WENT up the line fast. The communications nexus was Admiral David Seaton's office on the hilltop overlooking Pearl Harbor. The senior communications watch officer changed buttons on his phone to call the theater commander-in-chief, who immediately told him to shoot a CRixiclevel flash message to Washington. Seaton next ordered an alert message to the seven American warships in the area—mainly the submarines— to perk their ears up. After that, a message went off to the Americans who were «observing» the exercise in various Republic of China military command posts—these would take time to get delivered. There was still no American embassy in Taipei, and therefore no attaches or CIA personnel to hustle down to the airport to see if the airliner made it in safely or not. At that point, there was nothing to do but wait, in anticipation of the questions that would start arriving from Washington, and which as yet he was in no real position to answer.

"YES?" RYAN SAID, lifting the phone.

"Dr. Goodley for you, sir."

"Okay, put him on." Pause. "Ben, what is it?"

"Trouble off Taiwan, Mr. President; could be a bad one." The National Security Advisor explained on, telling what he knew. It didn't take long.

It was, on the whole, an impressive exercise in communications. The Airbus was still in the air, and the President of the United States knew that there was a problem—and nothing else.

"Okay, keep me posted." Ryan looked down at the desk he was about to leave. "Oh, shit." It was such a pleasure, the power of the presidency. Now he had virtually instant knowledge of something he could do nothing about. Were there Americans on the aircraft? What did it all mean? What was happening?

IT COULD HAVE been worse. Daryaei got back on the aircraft after having been in Baghdad for less than four hours, having dealt with the problems even more tersely than usual, and taking some satisfaction from the fear he'd struck into a few hearts for having bothered him with such trivial matters. His sour stomach contributed to an even more sour expression as he boarded and found his seat, and waved to the attendant to tell the flight crew to get moving—the sort of wrist-snapping gesture that looked like off with their heads to so many. Thirty seconds later, the stairs were up and the engines turning.

"WHERE DID YOU learn this game?" Adler asked.

"In the Navy, Mr. Secretary," Clark answered, collecting the pot. He was ten dollars up now, and it wasn't the money. It was the principle of the thing. He'd just bluffed the Secretary of State out of two bucks. Miller Time.

"I thought sailors were crummy gamblers."

"That's what some people say." Clark smiled, as he piled the quarters up.

"Watch his hands," Chavez advised.

"I am watching his hands." The attendant came aft and poured out the rest of the wine. Not even two full glasses for the men, just enough to pass the time. "Excuse me, how much longer?"

"Less than an hour, Monsieur Minister."

"Thank you." Adler smiled at her as she moved back forward.

"King bets, Mr. Secretary," Clark told him.

Chavez checked his hole card. Pair of fives. Nice start. He tossed a quarter into the center of the table after Adler's.

THE EUROPEAN-MADE Airbus 310 had lost its right-side engine to the missile, but that wasn't all. The heat-seeker had come in from the right rear and impacted on the side of the big GE turbofan, with fragments from the explosion ripping into the outboard wing panels. Some of these sliced into a fuel cell—fortunately almost empty—which trailed some burning fuel, panicking those who could look out their windows and see. But that wasn't the frightening part. Fire behind the aircraft couldn't hurt anyone, and the vented fuel tank didn't explode, as it might have done had it been hit as little as ten minutes earlier. The really bad news was the damage to the aircraft's control surfaces.

Forward, the two-man flight crew was as experienced as that of any international airline. The Airbus could fly quite well, thank you, on one engine, and the left-side engine was undamaged, and now turning at full power while the co-pilot shut down the right side of the aircraft and punched the manual controls on the elaborate fire-suppression systems. In seconds, the fire-warning alarms went silent and the co-pilot started breathing again.

"Elevator damage," the pilot reported next, working the controls and finding that the Airbus wasn't responding as it should.

But the problem wasn't with the flight crew, either. The Airbus actually flew via computer software, a huge executive program that took inputs directly from the airframe as well as from the control movements of the pilots, analyzed them, and then told the control surfaces what to do next.

Battle damage was not something the software engineers had anticipated in the design of the aircraft. The program noted the traumatic loss of the engine and decided it was an engine explosion, which it had been taught to think about. The onboard computers evaluated the damage to the aircraft, what control surfaces worked and how well, and adjusted itself to the situation.

"Twenty miles," the co-pilot reported, as the Airbus settled in on its direct-penetration vector. The pilot adjusted his throttle, and the computers—the aircraft actually had seven of them—decided this was all right, and lowered engine power. The aircraft, having burned off most of its fuel, was light. They had all the engine power they needed. The altitude was low enough that depres-surization was not an issue. They could steer. They just might make this, they decided. A «helpful» fighter aircraft pulled alongside to look over their damage and tried to call them on the guard frequency, only to be told to keep out of the way, in very irate Mandarin.

The fighter could see skin peeling off the Airbus, and tried to report that, only to be rebuffed. His F-5E backed off to observe, talking to his base all the while.

"Ten miles." Speed was below two hundred knots now, and they tried to lower flaps and slats, but the ones on the right side didn't deploy properly, and the computers, sensing this, didn't deploy them on the left side, either. The landing would have to be overly fast. Both pilots frowned, cursed, and got on with it.

"Gear," the pilot ordered. The co-pilot flipped the levers, and the wheels went down—and locked in place, which was worth a sigh of relief to both drivers. They couldn't tell that both tires on the right side were damaged.

They had the field in view now, and both could see the flashing lights of emergency equipment as they crossed the perimeter fencing, and the Airbus settled. Normal approach speed was about 135 knots. They were coming in at 195. The pilot knew he'd need every available foot of space, and touched down within two hundred meters of the near edge.

The Airbus hit hard, and started rolling, but not for long. The damaged right-side tires lasted about three seconds before they both lost pressure, and one second after that, the metal strut started digging a furrow in the concrete. Both men and computers tried to maintain a straight-line course for the aircraft, but it didn't work. The 310 yawed to the right. The left-side gear snapped with a cannon-shot report, and the twin-jet bellied out. For a second, it appeared that it might pinwheel onto the grass, but then a wingtip caught, and the plane started turning over. The fuselage broke into three uneven sections. There was a gout of flame when the left wing separated—mercifully, the forward bit of fuselage shot clear, as did the after section, but the middle section stopped almost cold in the middle of the burning jet fuel, and all the efforts of the racing firefighters couldn't change that. It would later be determined that the 127 people killed quickly asphyxiated. Another 104 escaped with varying degrees of injury, including the flight crew. The TV footage would be uplinked within the hour, and a fullblown international incident was now world news.

CLARK FELT A slight chill as his aircraft touched down. Looking out the window, he imagined a certain familiarity, but admitted it was probably imaginary, and besides, all international airports looked pretty much alike in the dark. Forward, the French aviators followed directions, taxiing to the air force terminal for security, instructed to follow another business-type jet which had landed a minute ahead of them.

"Well, we're here," Ding said, with a yawn. He had two watches on, one for local time and one for Washington, and from them he tried to decide what time his body thought it was. Then he looked outside with all the curiosity of a tourist, and suffered the usual disappointment. It might as easily have been Denver from what he could see.

"Excuse me," the brunette attendant said. "They've instructed us to remain in the aircraft while another is serviced first."

"What's a few more minutes?" Secretary Adler thought, as tired as the rest of them. Chavez looked out the window. "There, he must have gotten in ahead of us."

"Kill the cabin lights, will you?" Clark asked. Then he pointed at his partner.

"Why—" Clark cut the SecState off with a gesture. The attendant did as she was told. Ding took his cue and pulled the camera out of his bag.

"What gives?" Adler asked more quietly, as the lights went off.

"There's a G right in front of us," John replied, taking his own look. "Not many of them around, and he's going to a secure terminal. Let's see if we can tell who it is, okay?" Spooks had to be spooks, Adler knew. He didn't object. Diplomats gathered information, too, and knowing who had access to such expensive official transport could tell them something about who really rated in the UIR government. In a few seconds, just as their own wheels were chocked, a parade of cars rolled up to the Gulfstream fifty meters away from them on the Iranian—UIR-ian— air force ramp.

"Somebody important," Ding said.

"How you loaded?"

"ASA 1200, Mr. C.," Chavez replied, selecting the tele-photo setting. The whole aircraft fit into the frame. He couldn't zoom any closer. He started shooting as the steps came down.

"Oh," Adler said first. "Well, that shouldn't be much of a surprise."

"Daryaei, isn't it?" Clark asked.

"That's our friend," SecState confirmed.

Hearing this, Chavez got off ten rapid frames, showing the man getting off, to be greeted by some colleagues, who embraced him like a long-lost uncle, then guided him into the car. The vehicles pulled off. Chavez fired off one more, then put the camera back in his bag. They waited another five minutes before they were allowed to de-plane.

"Do I want to know what time it is?" Adler asked, heading for the door.

"Probably not," Clark decided. "I guess we'll get a few hours of rack time before the meeting."

At the bottom of the steps was the French ambassador, with one obvious security guard, and ten more locals. They would travel to the French embassy in two cars, with two Iranian vehicles leading and two more trailing the semi-official procession. Adler went with the ambassador in the first one. Clark and Chavez bundled into the second. They had a driver and another man in the front seat. Both would have to be spooks.

"Welcome to Tehran, my friends," the guy riding shotgun said.

"Merci," Ding replied, with a yawn.

"Sorry to get you up so early," Clark added. This one would probably be the station chief. The people he and Ding had sat with at Paris would have called ahead to let him know that they were probably not State Department security types. The Frenchman confirmed it.

"Not your first time, I am told."

"How long have you been here?" John asked.

"Two years. The car is safe," he added, meaning that it probably wasn't bugged. "We have a message for you from Washington," the ambassador told Adler in the leading car. Then he relayed what he knew about the Airbus incident at Taipei. "You will be busy when you return home, I'm afraid."

"Oh, Christ!" the Secretary observed. "Just what we need. Any reaction yet?"

"Nothing I know of. But that will change within hours. You are scheduled to see the Ayatollah Daryaei at ten-thirty, so you have time for some sleep. Your flight back to Paris will leave just after lunch. We will give you all the assistance you request."

"Thank you, Mr. Ambassador." Adler was too tired to say much else.

"Any idea what happened?" Chavez asked in the trail car.

"We have only what your government has told us to pass along. Evidently there was a brief clash over the Strait of Taiwan, and a missile hit an unintended target."

"Casualties?" Clark said next.

"Unknown at this time," the local DGSE station chief said.

"Kinda hard to hit an airliner without killing somebody." Ding closed his eyes in anticipation of a soft bed at the embassy.

THE SAME NEWS was given to Daryaei at exactly the same time. He surprised his fellow cleric by taking it without a visible reaction. Mahmoud Haji had long since decided that people who didn't know anything couldn't interfere with much.

FRENCH HOSPITALITY WAS not disgraced even by its transplantation to a place which could hardly have been more different from the City of Light. Inside the compound, three uniformed soldiers collected the Americans' bags, while another man in some sort of livery conducted them to their quarters. The beds were turned down, and there was ice water on the nightstands. Chavez checked his watches again, groaned, and collapsed into the bed. For Clark, sleep came harder. The last time he'd looked at an embassy compound in this city… what was it? he asked himself. What was bothering him so much about this?

ADMIRAL JACKSON DID the brief, complete with videotape.

"This is the upload from Port Royal. We have a similar tape from The Sullivans, no real differences, so we'll just use the one," he told those in the Sit Room. He had a wooden pointer and started moving it around the large-screen TV display.

"This is a flight of four fighters, probably Jianjiji Hongzhaji-7s—we call it the B-7 for the obvious reason. Two engines and two seats, performance and capabilities like an old F-4 Phantom. The flight departs the mainland, and comes out a little too far. There's a no-man's-land right about here that neither side had violated until today. Here's another flight, probably the same aircraft and—"

"You're not sure?" Ben Goodley asked.

"We've ID'd the aircraft from their avionics, their radar emissions. A radar can't directly identify an airplane by type," Robby explained. "You have to deduce types by what they do, or from the electronic signatures of their equipment, okay? Anyway, the lead group is coming east, and crosses the invisible line here." The pointer moved. "Here's a flight of four Taiwanese F-16s with all the bells and whistles. They see the lead PRC group come too far and vector in on them. Then the lead group turns back west. Soon thereafter, right about… now, the trailing group lights off their radars, but instead of tracking their own lead group, they're hitting the F-16s."

"What are you saying, Rob?" the President asked.

"What this looks like, the lead group was simulating a dawn attack on the mainland, and the trail group was supposed to defend against the simulated attack. On the surface, it looks like a fairly standard training exercise. The trail group, however, lit up the wrong people, and when they shifted radar modes to the attack setting, one of the Taiwanese pilots must have thought he was under attack and so he pickled off a missile. Then his wingman did the same. Zap! Right here, a B-7 eats a Slammer, but this one evades it—damned lucky for him—and he gets off a missile of his own. Then everybody starts shooting. This F-16 jinks around one but walks right into another—see here, the pilot ejects, and we think he survived. But this element launches four missiles, and one of those acquires this airliner. Must have just barely made it all the way. We've checked the range, and it's actually two miles over what we thought the missile could do. By the time it caught up and hit, the fighters have all turned back, the PRC guys because they were probably bingo-fuel, and the ROC guys because they were Winchester—out of missiles. All in all, it was a fairly sloppy engagement on both sides."

"You're saying it was a goof?" This came from Tony Bretano.

"It certainly looks that way, except for one thing—"

"Why carry live missiles on an exercise?" Ryan said.

"Close, Mr. President. The ROC pilots, sure, they're carrying white ones because they see the whole PRC exercise as a threat—"

"White ones?" It was Bretano again.

"Excuse me, Mr. Secretary. White missiles are war shots. Exercise missiles are usually painted blue. The PRC guys, though, why carry heat-seekers? In situations like this, we usually don't, because you can't turn them off— once they go they're entirely on their own, fire-and-forget, we call it. One other thing. All the birds fired at the F-16s were radar-homers. This one, the one that went for the airliner, seems to be the only heat-seeker that was launched. I don't much like the smell of that."

"Deliberate act?" Jack asked quietly.

"That is a possibility, Mr. President. The whole show looks just like a screwup, classic case. A couple fighter jocks get really hyped on something, you have an instant fur-ball, some people get killed, and we'll never be able to prove otherwise, but if you look at this two-plane element, I think they were aiming for the airliner all along—unless they took it for a ROC fighter, and I don't buy that—"

"Why?"

"It was heading the wrong way all the time," Admiral Jackson answered.

"Buck fever," Secretary Bretano offered.

"Why not engage people heading right for you instead of somebody heading away? Mr. Secretary, I'm a fighter pilot. I don't buy it. If I'm in an unexpected combat situation, first thing I do is identify the threats to me and shoot 'em right in the lips."

"How many deaths?" Jack asked bleakly.

Ben Goodley handled that one: "News reports say over a hundred. There are survivors, but we don't have any kind of count yet. And we should expect that there were some Americans aboard. A lot of business goes on between Hong Kong and Taiwan."

"Options?"

"Before we do anything, Mr. President, we need to know if any of our people are involved. We only have one carrier anywhere close, the Elsenhower battle group on the way to Australia for SOUTHERN CUP. But it's a good bet that this won't exactly help things out between Beijing and Taipei."

"We'll need some kind of press release," Arnie told the President.

"We need to know if we lost any citizens first," Ryan said. "If we did… well, what do we do, demand an explanation?"

"They'll say it was a mistake." Jackson repeated. "They might even blame the Taiwanese for shooting first and starting it, then disclaim all responsibility."

"But you don't buy it, Robby?"

"No, Jack—excuse me, no, Mr. President. I don't think so. I want to go over the tapes with a few people, to back-check me some. Maybe I'm wrong… but I don't think so. Fighter pilots are fighter pilots. The only reason to shoot the guy who's running away instead of the guy who's closing in is because you want to."

"Move the Ike group north?" Bretano wondered.

"Get me contingency plans to do just that," the President said.

"That leaves the Indian Ocean uncovered, sir," Jackson pointed out. "Carl Vinson is most of the way home to Norfolk now. John Stennis and Enterprise are still in the yard at Pearl, and we do not have a deployable carrier in the Pacific. We're out of carriers on that whole half of the world, and we'll need a month at best to move another one in from LantFleet."

Ryan turned to Ed Foley. "What are the chances this could blow all the way up?"

"Taiwan's going to be pretty unhappy about this. We have shots fired and people dead. National-flag airline clobbered. Countries tend to be protective of those," the DCI observed. "It's possible."

"Intentions?" Goodley asked the DCI.

"If Admiral Jackson is correct—I'm not ready to buy into that yet, by the way," Ed Foley added for Robby's benefit. He got an understanding nod. "Then we have something going on, but what it is, I don't know. Better for everybody if this was an accident. I can't say I like the idea of pulling the carrier out of the Indian Ocean with the developing situation in the Persian Gulf."

"What's the worst thing that can happen between the PRC and Taiwan?" Bretano asked, annoyed that he had to ask the question at all. He was still too new in his job to be as effective as his President needed.

"Mr. Secretary, the People's Republic has nuclear-tipped missiles, enough to turn Formosa into a cinder, but we have reason to believe that the Republic of China has them too and—"

"Roughly twenty," Foley interrupted. "And those F-16s can one-way a couple all the way to Beijing if they want. They can't destroy the People's Republic, but twenty thermonuclear weapons will knock their economy back at least ten years, maybe twenty. The PRC does not want that to happen. They're not crazy, Admiral. Keep it conventional, okay?"

"Very well, sir. The PRC does not have the ability to invade Taiwan. They lack the necessary amphibious assets to move large numbers of troops for a forced-entry assault. So what happens if things blow up anyway? Most likely scenario is a nasty air and sea battle, but one that leads to no resolution, since neither side can finish off the other. That also means a shooting war astride one of the world's most important trade routes, with all sorts of adverse diplomatic consequences for all the players. I can't see the purpose in doing this intentionally. Just too destructive to be deliberate policy… I think." He shrugged. It didn't make sense, but neither did a deliberate attack on a harmless airliner—and he'd just told his audience that had probably been deliberate.

"And we have large trade relationships with both," the President noted. "We want to prevent that, don't we? I'm afraid it's looking like we have to move that carrier, Robby. Let's get some options put together, and let's try to figure out what the hell the PRC might be up to."

CLARK WOKE UP first, feeling quite miserable. But that wasn't allowed under the circumstances. Ten minutes later, he was shaved, dressed, and heading out the door, leaving Chavez in bed. Ding didn't speak the language anyway.

"Morning walk?" It was the guy who'd brought them in from the airport.

"I could use a stretch," John admitted. "And you are?"

"Marcel Lefevre."

"Station chief?" John asked bluntly.

"Actually, I am the commercial attache," the Frenchman replied—meaning, yes. "You mind if I come along?"

"Not at all," Clark replied, surprising his companion as they headed for the door. "Just wanted to take a walk. Any markets around here?"

"Yes, I will show you."

Ten minutes later, they were in a street of commerce. Two Iranian shadows were fifty feet behind them, and obvious about it, though they did nothing more than to observe. The sounds brought it all back. Clark's Farsi was not all that impressive, especially since it was over fifteen years since he'd practiced it, but though his speech might not have been terribly good, his hearing clicked back in, soon catching the chatter and bargaining as the two Westerners passed stalls on both sides of the street.

"How are food prices?"

"Fairly high," Lefevre answered. "Especially with all the supplies they shipped to Iraq. A few grumbles about that." There was something lacking, John saw, after a few minutes of contemplation. Passing half a block of food stalls, they were now in another area—gold, always a popular trade item in this part of the world. People were buying and selling. But there wasn't the enthusiasm he remembered from before. He looked at the stalls as he passed, trying to figure what it was.

"Something for your wife?" Lefevre asked.

Clark tried an unconvincing smile. "Oh, you never know. Anniversary coming up soon." He stopped to look at a necklace.

"Where are you from?" the dealer asked.

"America," John replied, also in English. The man had picked out his nationality at once, probably from his clothes, and taken the chance to speak in that language.

"We do not see many Americans here."

"Too bad. In my younger days I traveled here quite a lot." It was actually rather a nice necklace, and on checking the price tag and doing the mental calculation, the cost was reasonable as hell. And he did have an anniversary approaching.

"Perhaps someday that will change," the goldsmith said.

"There are many differences between my country and yours," John observed sadly. Yes, he could afford it, and as usual he had plenty of cash with him. One nice thing about American currency was that it was damned near universally accepted.

"Things change," the man said next.

"Things have changed," John agreed. He looked at a slightly more expensive necklace. It wasn't any problem handling them. One thing about Islamic countries, they had a way of discouraging thieves. "There's so little smiling here, and this is a market street."

"You have two men following you."

"Really? Well, I'm not breaking any laws, am I?" Clark asked with some obvious concern.

"No, you are not." But the man was nervous.

"This one," John said, handing it to the goldsmith.

"How will you pay?"

"American dollars, is that okay?"

"Yes, and the price is nine hundred of your dollars." It required all of his control not to show surprise. Even in a New York wholesale shop, this necklace would have been triple that, and while he wasn't quite prepared to spend that much, haggling was part of the fun of shopping in this part of the world. He'd figured that he could talk the guy down to maybe fifteen hundred, still a considerable bargain. Had he heard the man properly?

"Nine hundred?"

An emphatic finger pointed right at his heart. "Eight hundred, not a dollar less—you wish to ruin me?" he added loudly. "You bargain hard." Clark adopted a defensive posture for the benefit of the watchers, who were coming closer.

"You are an unbeliever! You expect charity? This is a fine necklace, and I hope you will give it to your honorable wife and not a lesser, debauched woman!" Clark figured he'd put the man in enough danger. He pulled out his wallet and counted off the bills, handing them over.

"You pay me too much, I am not a thief!" The goldsmith handed one back.

Seven hundred dollars for this?

"Excuse me, I meant no insult," John said, pocketing the necklace, which the man not quite tossed to him without a case.

"We are not all barbarians," the dealer said quietly, abruptly turning his back a split-second later.

Clark and Lefevre walked to the end of the street and headed to the right. They moved quickly, forcing their tail to follow.

"What the hell?" the CIA officer observed. He hadn't expected anything like that to happen.

"Yes. The enthusiasm for the regime has abated somewhat. What you saw is representative. That was nicely done, Monsieur Clark. How long in the Agency?"

"Long enough that I don't like being surprised that much. I believe your word is merde."

"So, is it for your wife?"

John nodded. "Yeah. Will he get into any trouble?"

"Unlikely," Lefevre said. "He may have lost money on the exchange, Clark. An interesting gesture, was it not?"

"Let's get back. I have a Cabinet secretary to wake up." They were back in fifteen minutes. John went right to his room.

"What's the weather like outside, Mr. C?" Clark reached into his pocket and tossed something across the room. Chavez caught it.

"Heavy."

"What do you suppose it costs, Domingo?"

"Looks like twenty-one carat, feels like it too…. coupla grand, easy."

"Would you believe seven hundred?"

"You related to the guy, John?" Chavez asked with a laugh. The laugh stopped. "I thought they didn't like us here?"

"Things change," John said quietly, quoting the goldsmith.

"HOW BAD WAS it?" Cathy asked.

"One hundred four survivors, it says, some pretty beat up, ninety confirmed dead, about thirty still unaccounted for, meaning they're dead, too, just haven't identified the body parts yet," Jack said, reading the dispatch just brought to the bedroom door by Agent Raman. "Sixteen Americans in the survivor category. Five dead. Nine unknown and presumed dead. Christ, there were forty PRC citizens aboard." He shook his head.

"How come—if they don't get along—"

"Why do they do so much business? They do, and that's a fact, honey. They spit and snarl at each other like alley cats, but they need each other, too."

"What will we do?" his wife asked.

"I don't know yet. We're saving the press release for tomorrow morning, when we have more information. How the hell am I supposed to sleep on a night like this?" the President of the United States asked. "We have fourteen dead Americans halfway around the world from here. I was supposed to protect them, wasn't I? I'm not supposed to let people kill our citizens."

"People die every day, Jack," the First Lady pointed out.

"Not from air-to-air missiles." Ryan put the dispatch on his night table and switched off the light, wondering when sleep would come, wondering how the meeting would go in Tehran.

IT STARTED WITH handshakes. A foreign ministry official met them outside the building. The French ambassador handled introductions, and everyone swiftly moved inside, the better to avoid the coverage of a TV camera, though none appeared to be in evidence on the street. Clark and Chavez played their parts, standing close to their principal, but not too close, looking around nervously, as they were supposed to do.

Secretary Adler followed the official, with everyone else in trail. The French ambassador stopped in the anteroom with the others, as Adler and his guide went all the way into the rather modest official office of the UIR's spiritual leader.

"I welcome you in peace," Daryaei said, rising from his chair to greet his guest. He spoke through an interpreter. It was a normal ploy for such meetings. It made for greater precision in communications—and also if something went badly wrong, it could be said that the interpreter had made the mistake, which gave both sides a convenient way out. "Allah's blessing on this meeting."

"Thank you for receiving me on such short notice," Adler said, taking his seat.

"You have come far. Your journey was a good one?" Daryaei inquired pleasantly. The entire ritual would be pleasant, or at least the beginning of it.

"It was uneventful," Adler allowed. He struggled not to yawn or show fatigue. Three cups of strong European coffee helped, though they made his stomach a little jumpy. Diplomats in serious meetings were supposed to act like surgeons in an operating room, and he had long practice in showing none of his emotions, jumpy stomach or not.

"I regret that we cannot show you more of our city. There is so much history and beauty here." Both men waited for the words to be translated. The translator was thirtyish, male, intense, and, Adler saw… afraid of Daryaei? he wondered. He was probably a ministry official, dressed in a suit that needed a little pressing, but the Ayatollah was in robes, emphasizing his national and clerical identity. Mahmoud Haji was grave, but not hostile in demeanor—and, strangely, he seemed totally lacking in curiosity.

"Perhaps the next time I visit."

A friendly nod. "Yes." This was said in English, which reminded Adler that the man understood his visitor's language. Nothing all that unusual in form, SecState noted. "It has been a long time since there were direct contacts between your country and mine, certainly at this level."

"This is true, but we welcome such contacts. How may I be of service to you, Secretary Adler?"

"If you do not object, I would like to discuss stability in this region."

"Stability?" Daryaei asked innocently. "What do you mean?"

"The establishment of the United Islamic Republic has created the largest country in the region. This is a matter of concern to some."

"I would say that we have improved stability. Was not the Iraqi regime the destabilizing influence? Did not Iraq start two aggressive wars? We certainly did no such thing."

"This is true," Adler agreed.

"Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood," Daryaei went on, speaking as the teacher he'd been for years. Probably a tough one, Adler thought to himself, with steel under the gentle voice.

"That is also true, but in the world of men the rules of religion are not always followed by those who call themselves religious," the American pointed out.

"Other countries do not accept the rule of God as we do. Only in the recognition of that rule can men hope to find peace and justice. That means more than saying the words. One must also live the words." And thank you for the Sunday school lesson, Adler thought, with a respectful nod. Then why the hell do you support Hezbollah?

"My country wishes no more than peace in this region—throughout the world, for that matter."

"As is indeed the wish of Allah, as revealed to us through the Prophet." He was sticking to the script, Adler saw. Once upon a time, President Jimmy Carter had dispatched an emissary to visit this man's boss, Khomeini, at his exile home in France. The Shah had been in deep political trouble then, and the opposition had been sounded out, just to hedge America's bets. The emissary had come home after the meeting to tell his President that Khomeini was a "saint."

Carter had accepted the report at face value, and brought about the removal of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, allowing the «saint» to supplant him.

Oops.

The next administration had dealt with the same man and gotten nothing more for it than a scandal and world ridicule.

Ouch.

Those were mistakes Adler was determined not to repeat.

"It is also one of my country's principles that international borders are to be honored. Respect for territorial integrity is the sine qua non of regional and global stability."

"Secretary Adler, all men are brothers, this is the will of Allah. Brothers may quarrel from time to time, but to make war is hateful to God. In any case, I find the substance of your remarks somewhat unsettling. You seem to suggest that we have unfriendly intentions to our neighbors. Why do you say such a thing?"

"Excuse me, I think you misunderstand. I make no such suggestions. I have come merely to discuss mutual concerns."

"Your country and its associates and allies depend on this region for their economic health. We will not do harm to that. You need our oil. We need the things that oil money can buy. Ours is a trading culture. You know that. Our culture is also Islamic, and it is a source of great pain to me that the West seems never to appreciate the substance of our Faith. We are not barbarians, despite what your Jewish friends may say. We have, in fact, no religious quarrel with the Jews. Their patriarch, Abraham, came from this region. They were the first to proclaim the true God, and truly there should be peace between us."

"It pleases me to hear those words. How may we bring this peace about?" Adler asked, wondering when the last time had been that someone had tried to drop a whole olive tree on his head.

"With time, and with talk. Perhaps it is better that we should have direct contacts. They, too, are people of trade in addition to being people of faith."

Adler wondered what he meant by that. Direct contacts with Israel. Was it an offer, or a sop to toss at the American government?

"And your Islamic neighbors?"

"We share the Faith. We share oil. We share a culture. We are already one in so many ways."

OUTSIDE, CLARK, CHAVEZ, and the ambassador sat quietly. The office personnel studiously ignored them, after having provided the usual refreshments. The security people stood about, not looking at the visitors, but not looking away from them, either. For Chavez it was a chance to meet a new people. He noted that the setting was old-fashioned, and oddly shabby, as though the building hadn't changed much since the departure of the previous government—a long time ago, he reminded himself—and it wasn't so much that things were run down as that they weren't modern. There was a real tension here, though. That he could feel in the air. An American office staff would have looked at him with curiosity. The six people in this room did not. Why?

Clark had expected that. Being ignored didn't surprise him. He and Ding were here as security troops, and they were just furniture, unworthy of notice. The people here would be trusted aides and underlings, faithful to their boss because they had to be. They had a measure of power because of him. These visitors would either ratify that power in the international sense or threaten it, and while that was important to their individual well-being, they could no more affect it than they could affect the weather, and so they just tuned their visitors out, except for the security pukes, who were trained to view everyone as a threat even though protocol disallowed them from the physical intimidation which they would have preferred to show.

For the ambassador it was one more exercise in diplomacy, conversations in carefully chosen words selected to show little on the one hand, and to uncover much on the other. He could guess at what was being said by both sides. He could even guess at the real meaning of the words. It was their truth that interested him. What did Daryaei have planned? The ambassador and his country hoped for peace in the region, and so he and his colleagues had prepped Adler to feel open to that possibility, while at the same time not knowing how this would really go. An interesting man, Daryaei. A man of God who had surely murdered the Iraqi President. A man of peace and justice who ruled his country with an iron hand. A man of mercy who clearly had his own personal staff terrified of him. You had only to look around the room to see that. A modern, Middle Eastern Richelieu? There was a novel thought, the Frenchman joked to himself, behind an impassive face. He'd have to run that idea past his ministry later today. And in with him right now was a brand-new American minister. He allowed for the fact that Adler had a fine reputation as a career diplomat, but was he good enough for this task?

"WHY DO WE discuss this? Why should I have territorial ambitions?" Daryaei asked, almost pleasantly, but telegraphing his irritation. "My people desire only peace. There has been too much strife here. For all my life I have studied and taught the Faith, and now, finally, in the closing days of my life, there is peace."

"We have no more wish for this region than that, except perhaps to reestablish our friendship with your country."

"On that we should talk further. I thank your country for not hindering the removal of trade sanctions against the former country of Iraq. Perhaps that is a beginning. At the same time, we would prefer that America did not interfere in the internal affairs of our neighbors."

"We are committed to the integrity of Israel," Adler pointed out.

"Israel is not, strictly speaking, a neighbor," Daryaei replied. "But if Israel can live in peace, then we can also live in peace."

The guy was good, Adler thought. He wasn't revealing very much, just denying everything. He made no policy statements aside from the usual protestations of peaceful intent. Every chief of state did that, though not many invoked the name of God so much. Peace. Peace. Peace.

Except that Adler didn't believe him for an instant on the subject of Israel. If he'd had peaceful intentions, he would have told Jerusalem first, the better to get them on his side for dealing with Washington. Israel had been the unnamed middleman for the arms-for-hostages disaster, and they'd been suckered, too.

"I hope that is a foundation upon which we can build."

"If your country treats my country with respect, then we can talk. Then we can discuss an improvement in relations."

"I will tell my President that."

"Your country, too, has endured much sorrow of late. I wish him the strength to heal your nation's wounds."

"Thank you." Both men stood. Handshakes were exchanged again, and Daryaei conducted Adler to the door.

CLARK NOTED THE way the office staff jumped to their feet. Daryaei conveyed Adler to the outer door, took his hand one more time, and let the man leave with his escorts. Two minutes later, they were in their official cars and on the way directly to the airport.

"I wonder how that went?" John asked nobody in particular. Everyone else wondered the same thing, but not another word was spoken. Thirty minutes later, aided by their official escort, the cars were back at Mehrabad International, and pulling up to the air force part of the facility, where their French jet was waiting.

There had to be a departure ceremony, too. The French ambassador talked with Adler for several minutes, all the while holding his hand in an extended farewell shake. With ample UIR-ian security, there was nothing for Clark and Chavez to do but look around, as they were supposed to do. In plain view were six fighter aircraft, with maintenance people working on them. The mechanics walked in and out of a large hangar that had doubtless been built under the Shah. Ding looked inside, and nobody made a fuss about it. Another airplane was in there, seemingly half disassembled. An engine was sitting on a cart, with another team of people tinkering with it.

"Chicken coops, you believe it?" Chavez asked.

"What's that?" Clark said, looking the other way.

"Check it out, Mr. C."

John turned. Stacked against the far wall of the hangar were rows of wire cages, about the size of those used for moving poultry. Hundreds of them. Funny thing for an air force base, he thought.

ON THE OTHER side of the airport, the Movie Star watched the last of his team board a flight to Vienna. He happened to gaze across the expansive vista to see the private jets on the far side, with some people and cars close to one of them. He wondered briefly what that was about. Probably some government function. So was what he had planned, of course, but one that would never be acknowledged. The Austrian Airlines flight pulled away from the gate on time, and would head off just behind the business jet, or whatever it was. Then he walked to another gate to board his own flight.