Executive Orders

46 OUTBREAK

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETter to come back Monday morning, but it would have meant getting the kids up too early. As it was, Jack Junior and Sally had to study for tests, and for the moment, Katie needed new arrangements of her own. Camp David had been so different it was very much like returning from a vacation, and coming back was something of a shock. As soon as the Executive Mansion appeared in the windows of the descending helicopter, faces and moods changed. Security was vastly increased. The body count around the perimeter was noticeably different, and that, too, was a reminder of how undesirable this place and the life it contained were for them. Ryan stepped off first, saluted the Marine at the bottom of the stairs then looked up at the south face of the White House. It was like a slap in the face. Welcome back to reality. After seeing his family safely inside, President Ryan headed west for his office.

"Okay, what's happening?" he asked van Damm, who hadn't had much of a weekend himself—but then, nobody was trying to kill him or his family, either.

"The investigation hasn't turned up much of anything yet. Murray says to be patient, things are happening. Best advice, Jack, just keep going with it," the chief of staff advised. "You have a full day tomorrow. The country's mood is for you. There's always an outpouring of sympathy in times like—"

"Arnie, I'm not going out after votes for myself, remember? It's nice that people think better of me after some terrorists attack my daughter, but, you know, I really don't want to look at things in those terms," Jack observed, his anger returning after two days of relief. "If I ever had thoughts about staying in this job, last week cured me."

"Well, yes, but—"

" 'But, hell! Arnie, when it's all said and done, what will I take away from this place? A place in the history books? By the time that's written, I'll be dead, and I won't be around to care what historians say, will I? I have a friend in the history business who says that all history is really nothing more than the application of ideology to the past—and I won't be around to read it anyway. The only thing I want to take away from here is my life and the lives of my family. That's all. If somebody else wants the pomp and circumstance of this fucking prison, then let 'em have it. I've learned better. Fine," POTUS said bitterly, his mood totally back in his office now. "I'll do the job, make the speeches, and try to get some useful work done, but it ain't worth it all, Arnie. For goddamned sure it isn't worth having nine terrorists try to kill your daughter. There's only one thing you leave behind on this planet. That's your kids. Everything else, hell, other people just make it up to suit themselves anyway, just like the news."

"It's been a rough couple of days, and—"

"What about the agents who died? What about their families? I had a nice two-day vacation. They sure as hell didn't. I've gotten used enough to this job that I hardly thought about them at all. Over a hundred people worked hard to make sure I forgot about it. And I let them do it! It's important that I don't dwell on such things, right? What am I supposed to concentrate on? 'Duty, Honor, Country'? Anybody who can do that and turn his humanity off doesn't belong here, and that's what this job is turning me into."

"You finished, or do I have to get a box of Kleenex for you?" For one brief moment the President looked ready to punch van Damm. Arnie plunged on. "Those agents died because they chose jobs they thought were important. Soldiers do the same thing. What's with you, anyway, Ryan? How the hell do you think a country happens? You think it's just nice thoughts? You weren't always that stupid. You were a Marine once. You did other stuff for CIA. You had balls then. You have a job. You didn't get drafted, remember? You volunteered for this, whether you admit it or not. You knew it was possible this would happen. And so now you're here. You want to run away, fine—run away. But don't tell me it isn't worth it. Don't tell me it doesn't matter. If people died to protect your family, don't you fucking dare tell me it doesn't matter!" Van Damm stormed out of the office, without even bothering to close the door behind him.

Ryan didn't know what to do right then. He sat down behind his desk. There were the usual piles of paper, neatly arrayed by a staff that never slept. Here was China. Here was the Middle East. Here was India. Here was advance information on the leading economic indicators. Here were political projections for the 161 House seats to be decided in two days. Here was a report on the terrorist incident. Here was a list of the names of the dead agents, and under each was a list of wives and husbands, parents and children, and in the case of Don Russell, grandchildren. He knew all the faces, but Jack had to admit that he hadn't remembered all the names. They'd died to protect his child, and he didn't even know all the names. Worst of all, he'd allowed himself to be carted away, to indulge himself in yet more artificial comfort—and forget. But here it all was, on his desk, waiting for him, and it wouldn't go away. And he couldn't run away, either. He stood and walked out the door, heading left for the chief of staff's corner office, passing Secret Service agents who'd heard the exchange, probably traded looks, certainly developed their own thoughts, and now concealed them.

"Arnie?"

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"I'm sorry."

"OKAY, HONEY," HE groaned. He'd go to see the doctor tomorrow morning. It hadn't gotten better at all. If anything, it had gotten worse. The headaches were punishing, and that despite two extra-strength Tylenol every four hours. If only he could sleep it off, but that was proving hard.

Only exhaustion allowed him an hour here and an hour there. Just getting up to use the bathroom required a few minutes of concentrated effort, enough that his wife offered to help, but, no, a man didn't need an escort for that. On the other hand, she was right. He did need to see a doctor. Would have been smarter to do it yesterday, he thought. Then he might have felt better now.

IT HAD BEEN easy for Plumber, at least on the procedural side. The tape-storage vault was the size of a respectable public library, and finding things was easy. There, on the fifth shelf, were three boxed Beta-format cassettes. Plumber took them down, removed the tapes from the boxes, and replaced them with blanks. The three tapes he placed in his briefcase. He was home twenty minutes later. There, for his own convenience, he had a commercial-type Betamax, and he ran the tapes of the first interview, just to make sure, just to confirm the fact that the tapes were undamaged. And they were. These would have to be sent to a secure place.

Next, John Plumber drafted his three-minute commentary piece for the next day's evening news broadcast. It would be a mildly critical piece on the Ryan presidency. He spent an hour on it, since, unlike the current crop of TV reporters, he liked to achieve a certain elegance in his language, a task which came easily to him, as his grammar was correct. This he printed up and read over because he both edited and detected errors more easily on paper than on a computer monitor. Satisfied, he copied the piece over to disk, which would later be used at the studio to generate copy for the TelePrompTer. Next, he composed another commentary piece of the same overall length (it turned out to be four words shorter), and that he printed also. Plumber spent rather more time with this one. If it were to be his professional swan song, then it had to be done properly, and this reporter, who had drafted quite a few obituaries for others, both admired and not, wanted his own to be just right. Satisfied with the final copy, he printed that up as well, tucking the pages into his briefcase, with the cassettes. This one he would not copy to disk.

"GUESS THEY'RE finished," the chief master sergeant said. The take from the Predator showed the tank columns heading back to their laagers, hatches open on the turrets, crewmen visible, mainly smoking. The exercise had gone well for the newly constituted UIR army, and even now they were conducting their road movement in good order.

Major Sabah spent so much time looking over this man's shoulder that they really should have spoken on a more informal basis, he thought. It was all routine. Too routine. He'd expected—hoped—that his country's new neighbor would require much more time to integrate its military forces, but the commonality of weapons and doctrine had worked in their favor. Radio messages copied down here and at STORM TRACK suggested that the exercise was concluded. The TV coverage from the UAV confirmed it, however, and confirmation was important.

"That's funny…" the sergeant observed, to his own surprise.

"What is that?" Sabah asked.

"Excuse me, sir." The NCO stood and walked over to a corner cabinet, from which he extracted a map, and brought it back to his workstation. "There's no road there. Look, sir." He unfolded the map, matched the coordinates with those on the screen—the Predator had its own Global Positioning Satellite navigation system and automatically told its operators where it was—and tapped the right section on the paper. "See?"

The Kuwaiti officer looked back and forth from map to screen. On the latter, there was a road, now. But that was easily explained. A column of a hundred tanks would convert almost any surface into a hard-packed highway of sorts, and that had happened here.

But there hadn't been a road there before. The tanks had made it over the last few hours.

"That's a change, Major. The Iraqi army was always road-bound before."

Sabah nodded. It was so obvious that he hadn't seen it. Though native to the desert, and supposedly schooled in traveling there, the Iraqi army in 1991 had connived at its own destruction by sticking close to roads, because its officers always seemed to get lost when moving cross- country. Not as mad as it sounded—the desert was essentially as featureless as the sea—it had made their movements predictable, never a good thing in a war, and given advancing allied forces free rein to approach from unexpected directions.

That had just changed.

"You suppose they have GPS, too?" the chief master sergeant asked.

"We couldn't expect them to stay stupid forever, could we?"

PRESIDENT RYAN KISSED his wife on the way to the elevator. The kids weren't up yet. One sort of work lay ahead. Another sort lay behind. Today there wasn't time for both, though some efforts would be made. Ben Goodley was waiting on the helicopter.

"Here's the notes from Adler on his Tehran trip." The National Security Advisor passed them over. "Also the write-up from Beijing. The working group is getting together at ten to go over that situation. The SNIE team will be meeting at Langley later today, too."

"Thanks." Jack strapped into his seat and started reading. Arnie and Gallic came aboard and took their seats forward of his.

"Any ideas, Mr. President?" Goodley asked.

"Ben, you're supposed to tell me, remember?"

"How about I tell you that it doesn't make much sense?"

"I already know that part. You guard the phones and faxes today. Scott should be in Taipei now. Whatever comes from him, fast-track it to me."

"Yes, sir."

The helicopter lurched aloft. Ryan hardly noticed that. His mind was on the job, crummy though it was. Price and Raman were with him. There would be more agents on the 747, and more still waiting even now in Nashville. The presidency of John Patrick Ryan went on, whether he liked it or not.

THIS COUNTRY MIGHT be small, might be unimportant, might be a pariah in the international community—not because of anything it had done, except perhaps to prosper, but because of its larger and less prosperous neighbor to the west—but it did have an elected government, and that was supposed to count for something in the community of nations, especially those with popularly elected governments themselves. The People's Republic had come to exist by force of arms—well, most countries did, Sec-State reminded himself—and had immediately thereafter slaughtered millions of its own citizens (nobody knew how many; nobody was terribly interested in finding out), launched into a revolutionary development program ("the Great Leap Forward"), which had turned out more disastrously than was the norm even for Marxist nations; and launched yet another internal «reform» effort ("the Cultural Revolution") which had come after something called the "Hundred Flowers" campaign, whose real purpose had been to smoke out potential dissidents for later elimination at the hands of students whose revolutionary enthusiasm had indeed been revolutionary toward Chinese culture—they'd come close to destroying it entirely, in favor of The Little Red Book. Then had come more reform, the supposed changeover from Marxism to something else, another student revolution—this one against the existing political system—arrogantly cut down with tanks and machine guns on global television. Despite all that, the rest of the world was entirely willing to let the People's Republic crush their cousins on Taiwan.

This was called realpolitik, Scott Adler thought. Something similar had resulted in an event called the Holocaust, an event his father had survived, with a number tattooed on his forearm to prove it. Even his own country officially had a one-China policy, though the unspoken codicil was that the PRC would not attack the ROC—and if it did, then America might just react. Or might not.

Adler was a career diplomat, a graduate of Cornell and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He loved his country. He was often an instrument of his country's policy, and now found himself to be his country's very voice of international affairs. But what he often had to say was not terribly just, and at moments like this, he wondered if he might himself be doing the same things that had been done sixty years earlier by other Fletcher grads, well-educated and well-meaning, who, after it was all over, wondered how the hell they'd been so blind as not to have seen it coming.

"We have fragments—and actually some rather large pieces from the missile that were lodged in the wing. It is definitely of PRC origin," the ROC Defense Minister said. "We will allow your technical people to look them over and make your own tests to confirm matters."

"Thank you. I will discuss that with my government."

"So." This was the Foreign Minister. "They allow a direct fligh from Beijing to Taipei. They do not object privately to the dispatch of an aircraft carrier. They disclaim any responsibility for the Airbus incident. I confess I see no rationale for this behavior."

"I am gratified that they express interest only in the restoration of regional stability."

"How good of them," Defense said. "After they deliberately upset it."

"This has caused us great economic harm. Again, foreign investors get nervous, and with the flight of their capital, we face some minor embarrassments. Was that their plan, do you suppose?"

"Minister, if that were the case, why did they ask me to fly here directly?"

"Some manner of subterfuge, obviously," the Foreign Minister answered, before Defense could say anything.

"But if so, what for?" Adler wanted to know. Hell, they were Chinese. Maybe they could figure it out.

"We are secure here. We know that, even if foreign investors do not. Even so, the situation is not an entirely happy one. It is rather like living in a castle with a moat. Across the moat is a lion. The lion would kill and eat us if he had the chance. He cannot leap the moat, and he knows that, but he keeps trying to do so, even with that knowledge. I hope you can understand our concern."

"I do, sir," SecState assured him. "If the PRC reduces the level of its activity, will you do the same?" Even if they couldn't figure out what the PRC was up to, perhaps they could de-stress the situation anyway.

"In principle, yes. Exactly how, is a technical question for my colleague here. You will not find us unreasonable."

And the entire trip had been staged for that simple statement. Now Adler had to fly back to Beijing to deliver it. Matchmaker, matchmaker…

HOPKINS HAD ITS own day-care center, staffed by permanent people and always some students from the university doing lab work for their child-care major. Sally walked in, looked around and was pleased by the multicolored environment. Behind her were four agents, all male, because there weren't any unassigned women. One carried a FAG bag. Nearby was a trio of plainclothes officers of the Baltimore City Police, who exchanged credentials with the USSS to confirm identity, and so another day started for SURGEON and SANDBOX. Katie had enjoyed the helicopter ride. Today she'd make some new friends, but tonight, her mother knew, she'd ask where Miss Marlene was. How did one explain death to a not-yet-three-year-old?

THE CROWD APPLAUDED with something more than the usual warmth. Ryan could feel it. Here he was, not yet three days after an attempt on the life of his youngest daughter, doing his job for them, showing strength and courage and all that other bullshit, POTUS thought. He'd led off with a prayer for the fallen agents, and Nashville was the Bible Belt, where such things were taken seriously. The rest of the speech had actually been pretty good, the President thought, covered things he really believed in. Common sense. Honesty. Duty. It was just that hearing his own voice speaking words written by somebody else made it seem hollow, and it was hard to keep his mind from wandering so early in the morning.

"Thank you, and God bless America," he concluded. The crowd stood and cheered. The band struck up. Ryan turned away from the armored podium to shake hands again with the local officials, and made his way off the stage, waving as he did so. Arnie was waiting behind the curtain.

"For a phony, you still do pretty good." Ryan didn't have time to respond to that before Andrea came up.

"FLASH-traffic waiting for you on the bird, sir. From Mr. Adler."

"Okay, let's roll. Stay close," he told his principal agent on the way out the back.

"Always," Price assured him.

"Mr. President!" a reporter shouted. There were a bunch of them. He was the loudest this morning. He was one of the NEC team. Ryan turned and stopped. "Will you press Congress for a new gun-control law?"

"What for?"

"The attack on your daughter was—"

Ryan held his hand up. "Okay. As I understand it, the weapons used were of a type already illegal. I don't see how a new law would accomplish much, unfortunately."

"But gun-control advocates say—"

"I know what they say. And now they're using an attack on my little girl, and the deaths of five superb Americans, to advance a political agenda of their own. What do you think of that?" the President asked, turning away.

"WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?"

He described his symptoms. His family physician was an old friend. They even played golf together. It wasn't hard. At the end of every year, the Cobra representative had plenty of demonstrator clubs in nearly mint condition. Most were donated to youth programs or sold to country clubs as rental sticks. But some he could give to his friends, not to mention some Greg Norman autographs.

"Well, you have a temperature, one hundred and three, and that's a little high. Your BP's one hundred over sixty-five, and that's a little low for you. Your color's rotten—"

"I know, I feel sick."

"You are sick, but I wouldn't worry about it. Probably a flu bug you picked up in some bar, and all the air travel doesn't help much, either—and I've been telling you for years about cutting back on the booze. What happened is you picked something up, and other factors worsened it. Started Friday, right?"

"Thursday night, maybe Friday morning."

"Played a round anyway?"

"Ended up with a snowman for my trouble," he admitted, meaning a score of 80.

"I'd settle for that myself, healthy and stone-sober." The doctor had a handicap of twenty. "You're over fifty and you can't wallow with the pigs at night and expect to soar with the eagles in the morning. Complete rest. A lot of liquids—non-alcoholic. Stay on the Tylenol."

"No prescription?"

The doc shook his head. "Antibiotics don't work on viral infections. Your immune system has to handle those, and it will if you let it. But while you're here, I want to draw some blood. You're overdue for a cholesterol check. I'll send my nurse in. You have somebody here to drive you home?"

"Yeah. I didn't want to drive myself."

"Good. Give it a few days. Cobra can do without you, and the golf courses will still be there when you feel better."

"Thanks." He felt better already. You always did when the doc told you that you weren't going to die.

"HERE YOU GO." Goodley handed the paper over. Few office buildings, even secure government ones, had the communications facilities that were shoehorned into the upper-level lounge area of the VC-25, whose call sign was Air Force One. "Not bad news at all," Ben added.

SWORDSMAN skimmed it once, then sat down to read it more slowly. "Okay, fine, he thinks he can defuse the situation," Ryan noted. "But he still doesn't know what the goddamned situation is."

"Better than nothing."

"Does the working group have this?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Maybe they can make some sense out of it. Andrea?"

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Tell the driver it's time to get moving." He looked around. "Where's Arnie?"

"I'M CALLING YOU on a cellular," Plumber said.

"Fine," van Damm replied. "I'm on one, too, as a matter of fact." The instruments on the aircraft were also secure, with STU-4 capability. He didn't say that. He just needed a retort. John Plumber was no longer on his Christmas card list. Unfortunately, his direct line was still on Plumber's Rolodex. What a shame he couldn't change it. And he'd have to tell his secretary not to put this guy through anymore, at least not when he was traveling.

"I know what you're thinking."

"Good, John. Then I don't have to say what I think."

"Catch the broadcast tonight. I'll be on at the end."

"Why?"

"See for yourself, Arnie. So long."

The chief of staff thumbed the kill switch on the phone and wondered what Plumber meant. He'd once trusted the man. Hell, he'd once trusted the man's colleague. He could have told the President about the call, but decided not to. He'd just delivered a pretty good speech, distractions and all, doing well in spite of himself, because the poor son of a bitch really did believe in more than he knew. It wouldn't be smart to drop something else on him. They'd tape the speech on the flight into California, and if it were fit to view, then he'd show it to POTUS.

"I DIDN'T KNOW there was a flu bug around," he said, putting his shirt back on. It took time. The auto executive was sore all over.

"There always is. Just it doesn't always make the news," the physician replied, looking over the vital signs his nurse had just written down. "And you got it." x "So?"

"So, take it easy. Don't go to the office. No sense infecting your whole company. Ride it out. You should be fine by the end of the week."

THE SNIE TEAM met at Langley. A ton of new information had come across from the Persian Gulf region, and they were sorting through it in a conference room on the sixth floor. Chavez's photo of Mahmoud Haji Daryaei had been blown up by the in-house photo lab and was now hanging on the wall. Maybe somebody would throw darts at it, Ding thought.

"Track toads," the former infantryman snorted, watching the Predator video.

"Kinda big to take on with a rifle, Sundance," Clark observed. "Those things always scared the hell out of me."

"LAWS rocket'll do 'em fine, Mr. C."

"What's the range on a LAWS, Domingo?"

"Four, five hundred meters."

"Those guns shoot two or three kilometers," John pointed out. "Think about it."

"I'm not up on the hardware," Bert Vasco said. He waved at the screen. "What's this mean?"

The answer came from one of CIA's military analysts. "It means the UIR military is in much better shape than we'd expected."

An Army major brought over from the Defense Intelligence Agency didn't dispute that. "I'm fairly impressed. It was a pretty vanilla exercise, nothing really complicated on the maneuver side, but they kept themselves organized for all of it. Nobody got lost—"

"You suppose they're using GPS now?" the CIA analyst asked.

"Anybody who subscribes to Yachting magazine can buy the things. The price is down to four hundred bucks, last time I looked," the officer told his civilian counterpart. "It means they can navigate their mobile forces a lot better. More than that, it means their artillery will become a whole lot more effective. If you know where your guns are, where your forward observer is, and where the target is in relation to him, then your first round is going to be pretty much on the money."

"Fourfold increase in performance?"

"Easy," the major replied. "That elderly gent on the wall has a big stick to wave at his neighbors. I imagine he'll let them know about it, too."

"Bert?" Clark asked.

Vasco squirmed in his seat. "I'm starting to worry. This is going faster than I expected. If Daryaei didn't have other things to worry about, I'd be more worried."

"Like?" Chavez asked.

"Like he has a country to consolidate, and he has to know that if he starts rattling sabers, we'll react." The FSO paused. "Sure as hell, he wants to let his neighbors know who the big boy on the block is. How close is he to being able to do something?"

"Militarily?" the civilian analyst asked. He gestured to the guy from DIA.

"If we were not in the picture, now. But we are in the picture."

"I ASK NOW that you will join me in a moment of silence," Ryan told the audience in Topeka. It was eleven here. That made it noon back home. Next stop Colorado Springs, then Sacramento, then, blessedly, home.

"YOU HAVE TO ask yourself what kind of man we have here," Kealty said in front of cameras of his own. "Five men and women dead, and he doesn't see the need for a law to control these guns. It's just beyond my comprehension how anyone can be as coldly heartless as that. Well, if he doesn't care about those brave agents, I do. How many Americans will have to die before he sees the need for this? Will he have to actually lose a family member? I'm sorry, I just can't believe that remark," the politician went on for the minicam.

"WE CAN ALL remember when people ran for reelection to Congress, and one of the things they told us was, 'Vote for me, because for every dollar that taxes take from this district, a dollar-twenty comes back. Do you remember those claims?" the President asked.

"What they didn't say was—well, it was actually a lot of things. Number one, who ever said that you depend on the government for money? We don't vote for Santa Claus, do we? It's the other way around. The government can't exist unless you give it money.

"Number two, are they telling you, 'Vote for me, 'cause I really stick it to those rotten people in North Dakota'? Aren't they Americans, too?

"Number three, the real reason this happens is that the government deficit means every district gets more in federal payments than it lost in federal taxes—excuse me, I mean direct federal taxes. The ones you can see.

"So they were bragging to you that they were spending more money than they had. If your next-door neighbor told you he was kiting checks drafted on your personal bank, you think maybe you might call the police about it?

"We all know that the government does take more than it gives back. They've just learned to hide it. The federal budget deficit means that every time you borrow money, it costs more than it should—why? Because the government borrows so much money that it drives up interest rates.

"And so, ladies and gentlemen, every house payment, every car payment, every credit-card bill is also a tax. And maybe they give you a tax break on interest payments. Isn't that nice?" POTUS asked. "Your government gives you a tax break on money you ought not to have to pay in the first place, and then it tells you that you get back more than you pay out." Ryan paused.

"Does anybody out there really believe that? Does anybody really believe it when people say that the United States can't afford—not to spend more money than it has? Are these the words of Adam Smith or Lucy Ricardo? I have a degree in economics, and I Love Lucy wasn't on the course.

"Ladies and gentlemen. I am not a politician, and I am not here to speak on behalf of any of your local candidates for the vacant seats in the People's House. I am here to ask you to think. You, too, have a duty. The government belongs to you. You don't belong to it. When you go out to vote tomorrow, please take the time to think about what the candidates say and what they stand for. Ask yourself, 'Does this make sense? and then make the best choice you can—and if you don't like any of them, go to the polls anyway, go into the voting booth, and then go home without giving your vote to anyone, but at least show up. You owe that to your country."

THE HEATING AND air-conditioning van pulled up the driveway, and a pair of men got out and walked up to the porch. One of them knocked.

"Yes?" the lady of the house asked in puzzlement.

"FBI, Mrs. Sminton." He showed his credentials. "Could we come in, please?"

"Why?" the sixty-two-year-old widow asked.

"We'd like you to help us with something, if you might." It had taken longer than expected. The guns used in the SANDBOX case had been traced to a manufacturer, from the manufacturer to a wholesaler, from the wholesaler to a dealer, and from the dealer to a name, and from a name to an address. With the address, the Bureau and Secret Service had gone to a United States District Court judge for a search-and-seizure warrant.

"Please come in."

"Thank you. Mrs. Sminton, do you know the gentleman who lives next door?"

"Mr. Azir, you mean?"

"That's right."

"Not very well. Sometimes I wave."

"Do you know if he's home now?"

"His car's not there," she replied, after looking. The agents already knew that. He owned a blue Oldsmobile wagon with Maryland tags. Every cop in two hundred miles was looking for it.

"Do you know when the last time was you saw him?"

"Friday, I guess. There were some other cars there, and a truck."

"Okay." The agent reached in his coveralls pocket and pulled out a radio. "Move in, move in. Bird is probably— say again, probably—out of the coop."

Before the widow's astonished eyes, a helicopter appeared directly over the house three hundred yards away. Zip lines dropped from both sides, and armed agents slid down them. At the same time, four vehicles converged from both directions on the country road, all of them driving off the road, onto the wide lawn straight toward the dwelling. Ordinarily, things would have gone slower, with some period of discreet surveillance, but the word was out on this one. Front and back doors were kicked in—and thirty seconds later, a siren went off. Mr. Azir, it seemed, had a burglar alarm. Then the radio crackled.

"Clear, building is clear. This is Betz. Search complete, building is clear. Bring in the lab troops." With that, two vans appeared. These proceeded up the driveway, and one of the first things the passengers did was to take samples of the gravel there, plus grass, to match with scrapings from the rented cars left at Giant Steps.

"Mrs. Sminton, could we sit down, please? There are a couple questions we'd like to ask you about Mr. Azir."

"SO?" MURRAY ASKED, arriving in the FBI Command Center.

"No joy," the agent at the console said.

"Damn." It wasn't said with passion. He'd never really expected it. But he expected some important information anyway. The Lab had collected all manner of physical evidence. Gravel samples could match the driveway. Grass and dirt found on the inside offenders and bumpers could link the vehicles to the Azir house. Carpet fibers—maroon wool—on the shoes of the dead terrorists could put them inside the house. Even now, a team of ten agents was beginning the process of discovering exactly who "Morde-cai Azir" was. Smart money was that he was about as Jewish as Adolf Eichmann. Nobody was covering that wager.

"Commander Center, this is Betz." Billy Betz was assistant special agent in charge of the Baltimore Field Division, and a former HRT shooter, hence his dramatic descent from the helicopter, leading his men… and a woman.

"Billy, this is Dan Murray. What do you have?"

"Would you believe it? A half-empty crate of seven-six-two ball ammo, and the lot numbers match, Director. Living room has a dark red wool rug. This is our place. Some clothes missing from the master-bedroom closet. I'd say nobody's been here for a couple of days. Location is secure. No booby traps. The lab troops are starting their routine." And all eighty minutes from the time the Baltimore SAC had walked into the Garmatz Federal Courthouse. Not fast enough, but fast.

The forensics experts were a mix of Bureau, Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a troubled agency whose technical staff was nonetheless excellent. They'd all be shaking the house for hours. Everyone wore gloves. Every surface would be dusted for fingerprints to match with those of the dead terrorists.

"SOME WEEKS AGO you saw me take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That's the second time I did that. The first time was as a brand-new Marine second lieutenant, when I graduated from Boston College. Right after that, I read the Constitution, to make sure I knew what it was that I was supposed to be defending.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we often hear politicians saying how they want government to empower you, so that you can do things.

"That's not the way it is," Ryan told them forcefully. "Thomas Jefferson wrote that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That's you. The Constitution is something you should all read. The Constitution of the United States was not written to tell you what to do. The Constitution establishes the relationship among the three branches of government. It tells the government what it may do, and it also tells the government what it may not do. The government may not restrict your speech. The government may not tell you how to pray. The government may not do a lot of things. Government is a lot better at taking things away than it is at giving, but most of all, the government does not empower you. You empower the government. Ours is a government of the people. You are not people who belong to the government.

"Tomorrow you will not be electing masters, you will be choosing employees, servants of your will, guardians of your rights. We do not tell you what to do. You tell us what to do.

"It is not my job to take your money and give it back. It is my job to take what money I must have to protect and serve you—and to do that job as efficiently as possible. Government service may be an important duty, and a great responsibility, but it is not supposed to be a blessing for those who serve. It is your government servants who are supposed to sacrifice for you, not you who sacrifice for them.

"Last Friday, three good men and two good women lost their lives in the service of our country. They were there to protect my daughter, Katie. But there were other children there, too, and in protecting one child, you protect all children. People like that do not ask for much more than your respect. They deserve that. They deserve it because they do things that we cannot easily do for ourselves. That's why we hire them. They sign on because they know that service is important, because they care about us, because they are us. You and I know that not all government employees are like that. That's not their fault. That's your fault. If you do not demand the best, you will not get the best. If you do not give the right measure of power to the right kind of people, then the wrong people will take more power than they need and they will use it the way they want, not the way you want.

"Ladies and gentlemen, that's why your duty tomorrow to elect the right people to serve you is so important. Many of you operate your own businesses and you hire people to work for you. Most of you own your own homes, and sometimes you hire plumbers, electricians, carpenters to do work for you. You try to hire the right people for the work because you pay for that work, and you want it done right. When your child is sick, you try to pick the best physician—and you pay attention to what that doctor does and how well he or she does it. Why? Because there is nothing more important to you than the life of your child.

"America is also your child. America is a country forever young. America needs the right people to look after her. It is your job to pick the right people, regardless of party, or race, or gender, or anything other than talent and integrity. I can't and I won't tell you which candidate merits your vote. God gave you a free will. The Constitution is there to protect your right to exercise that will. If you fail to exercise your will intelligently, then you have betrayed yourselves, and neither I nor anyone else can fix that for you.

"Thank you for coming to see me on my first visit to Colorado Springs. Tomorrow is your day. Please use it to hire the right people."

"IN A SERIES OF speeches clearly designed to reach conservative voters, President Ryan is stumping the country on the eve of the House elections, but even as federal officials investigate the vicious terrorist attack on his own daughter, the President flatly rejected the idea of improved gun-control laws. We have this report from NBC correspondent Hank Roberts, traveling with the presidential party today." Tom Donner continued looking into the camera until the red light went off.

"I thought he said some pretty good things today," Plumber observed while the tape ran.

"Invoking I Love Lucy must have come from Gallic Weston on a serious PMS day," Donner observed, flipping through his copy. "Funny, she used to do great speeches for Bob Fowler."

"Did you read the speech?"

"John, come on, we don't have to read what he says. We know what he's going to say."

"Ten seconds," the director called over their earpieces.

"Nice copy for later, by the way, John." The face broke into the smile at "three."

"A huge federal task force is now investigating Friday's attack on the President's daughter. We have this report from Karen Stabler in Washington."

"I thought you'd like it, Tom," Plumber replied, when the light went dark again. So much the better, he thought. His conscience was clear now.

THE VC-25 LIFTED off on time, and headed north to avoid some adverse weather over northern New Mexico. Arnie van Damm was topside in the communications area. There were enough important-looking boxes to run half the world here, or so it seemed, and hidden in the skin of the aircraft was a satellite dish whose expensive aiming system could track almost anything. At the chief of staff's direction, it was now getting the NBC feed off a Hughes bird.

"WE HAVE THIS closing comment from special correspondent John Plumber." Donner turned graciously. "John."

"Thank you, Tom. The profession of journalism is one I entered many years ago, because I was inspired in my youth. I remember my crystal radio set—those of you old enough might recall how you had to ground them to a pipe," he explained, with a smile. "I remember listening to Ed Murrow in London during the blitz, to Eric Sevareid from the jungles of Burma, to all the founding fathers— giants, really—of our profession. I grew up with pictures in my mind painted by the words of men whom all America could trust to tell the truth to the best of their ability. I decided that finding the truth and communicating it to people was as noble a calling as any to which a man—or woman—could aspire.

"We're not always perfect in this profession. No one is," Plumber went on.

To his right, Donner was looking at the TelePrompTer in puzzlement. This wasn't what was rolling in front of the camera lens, and he realized that, though Plumber had printed pages in front of him, he was giving a memorized speech. Imagine that. Just like the old days, apparently.

"I would like to say that I am proud to be in this profession. And I was, once.

"I was on the microphone when Neil Armstrong stepped down on the moon, and on sadder occasions, like the funeral of Jack Kennedy. But to be a professional does not mean merely being there. It means that you have to profess something, to believe in something, to stand for something.

"Some weeks ago, we interviewed President Ryan twice in one day. The first interview in the morning was taped, and the second one was done live. The questions were a little different. There's a reason for that. Between the first interview and the second, we were called over to see someone. I will not say who that was right now. I will later. That person gave us information. It was sensitive information aimed at hurting the President, and it looked like a good story at the time. It wasn't, but we didn't know that then. At the time, it seemed as though we had asked the wrong questions. We wanted to ask better ones.

"And so we lied. We lied to the President's chief of staff, Arnold van Damm. We told him that the tape had been damaged somehow. In doing that, we also lied to the President. But worst of all, we lied to you. I have the tapes in my possession. They are not damaged in any way.

"No law was broken. The First Amendment allows us to do almost anything we want, and that's all right, because you people out there are the final judge of what we do and who we are. But one thing we may not do is to break faith with you.

"I have no brief for President Ryan. Speaking personally, I disagree with him on many policy issues. If he should run for reelection, I will probably vote for someone else. But I was part of that lie, and I cannot live with it. Whatever his faults, John Patrick Ryan is an honorable man, and I am not supposed to allow my personal animus for or against anyone or anything to affect my work.

"In this case, I did. I was wrong. I owe an apology to the President, and I owe an apology to you. This might well be the end of my career as a broadcast journalist. If so, I want to leave it as I entered it, telling the truth as best I can.

"Good night, from NBC News." Plumber took a very deep breath as he stared at the camera.

"What the hell was that all about?"

Plumber stood before he answered. "If you have to ask that question, Tom—"

The phone on his desk rang—actually, it had a blinking light. Plumber decided not to answer it, and instead walked to his dressing room. Tom Donner would have to figure it out all by himself.

TWO THOUSAND MILES away, over Rocky Mountain National Park, Arnold van Damm stopped the machine, ejected the tape, and carried it down the circular stairs to the President's compartment in the nose. He saw Ryan going over his next and final speech of the day.

"Jack, I think you will want to see this," the chief of staff told him, with a broad grin.

THERE HAS TO be a first one of everything. This time it happened in Chicago. She'd seen her physician on Saturday afternoon and been told the same as everyone else. Flu. Aspirin. Liquids. Bed rest. But looking in the mirror, she saw some discoloration on her fair skin, and that frightened her even more than the other symptoms she'd had to that point. She called her doctor, but she got only an answering machine, and those blotches could not wait, and so she got in her car and drove to the University of Chicago Medical Center, one of America's finest. She waited in the emergency room for about forty minutes, and when her name was called, she stood and walked toward the desk, but she didn't make it, instead falling to the tile floor in sight of the administrative people. That caused some instant reactions, and a minute later, two orderlies had her on a gurney and were wheeling her back to the treatment area, her paperwork carried behind by one of the admissions people.

The first physician to see her was a young resident most of the way through his first year of postgraduate study in internal medicine, doing his ER rotation and liking it.

"What's the problem?" he asked, as the nursing staff went to work, checking pulse, blood pressure, and respiration.

"Here," the woman from admissions said, handing over the paper forms. The physician scanned them.

"Flu symptoms, looks like, but what's this?"

"Heart rate is one twenty, BP is—wait a minute." The nurse ran it again. "Blood pressure is ninety over fifty?" She looked much too normal for that. The doctor was unbuttoning the woman's blouse. And there it was. The clarity of the moment made passages from his textbooks leap into his mind. The young resident held up his hands.

"Everybody, stop what you're doing. We may have a major problem here. I want everybody regloved, everybody masked, right now."

"Temp is one-oh-four-point-four," another nurse said, stepping back from the patient.

"This isn't flu. We have a major internal bleed, and those are petechiae." The resident got a mask and changed gloves as he spoke. "Get Dr. Quinn over here." A nurse trotted out, while the resident looked again at the admission papers. Might be vomiting blood, darkened stool. Depressed blood pressure, high fever, and subcutaneous bleeding. But this was Chicago, his mind protested. He got a needle. "Everybody stay clear, okay, nobody get close to my hands and arms," he said, slipping the needle into the vein, then drawing four 5cc tubes.

"What gives?" Dr. Joe Quinn asked.

The resident recited the symptoms, and posed his own question as he moved the blood tubes onto a table. "What do you think, Joe?"

"If we were somewhere else…"

"Yeah. Hemorrhagic fever, if that's possible."

"Anybody ask her where she's been?" Quinn asked.

"No, Doctor," the admissions clerk replied.

"Cold packs," the head nurse said, handing over an armload of them. These went under the armpits, under the neck, and elsewhere to bleed off the body's potentially lethal heat.

"Dilantin?" Quinn wondered. "She's not convulsing yet. Hell." The chief resident took out his surgical scissors and cut off the patient's bra. There were more petechiae forming on her torso. "We have a very sick lady here. Nurse, call Dr. Klein in infectious disease. He'll be at home now. Tell him we need him here at once. We have to get her temp down, wake her up, and find out where the hell she's been."