Executive Orders

8 CHANGE OF COMMAND

THE PART AT ANDREWS was mercifully short. From the Cathedral, the caskets had traveled in hearses, with the large official party left behind to disperse throughout Embassy Row. Air Force One was waiting on the ramp to take the Durlings back to California one last time. It seemed far more desultory now. There was yet another honor guard to salute the flag-draped coffins, but this was different. The crowd was smaller, composed mostly of Air Force and some other military personnel who had worked directly with the presidential party in one way or another. At the family's request, the actual burial ceremony would be smaller, and limited to relatives only, which was probably better for everybody. And so here at Andrews came the last "Ruffles and Flourishes" and the last "Hail to the Chief." Mark stood at attention, holding his hand over his heart in a gesture sure to be on the cover of all the news magazines. A good kid, doing his best, and being more manly than he would ever know. A scissors lift took the caskets to the cargo door, for at this point that's what the bodies were; mercifully, that part of the transfer was hidden from view. Then it was time. The family walked up the steps into the VC-25 for their last ride. It wouldn't even have the Air Force One call sign anymore, because that label went with the President, and the President wasn't aboard. Ryan watched the aircraft taxi off, then rumble down the runway. TV cameras tracked it until it was a mere dot in the sky. Ryan's eyes did the same. By that time, a flight of F16s, relieved of their guard duty over Washington, landed one by one. When that was done, Ryan and his family climbed aboard a Marine helicopter to return to the White House. The flight crew smiled and fussed over his children. Little Jack got a unit patch after he buckled in. The mood of the day changed with that. The Marines of

VMH-1 had a new family to take care of, and life for them moved on.

Already the White House staff was at work, moving their things in (they'd labored throughout the morning moving the Durlings' things out), changing some furniture, and tonight his family would sleep in the same house first occupied by John Adams. The kids, being kids, looked out the windows as the helicopter began its descent. The parents, being parents, looked at each other.

Things changed at this point. At a private family funeral, this would have been the wake. The sadness was supposed to be left behind, and the mourners would remember what a great guy Roger was, and then talk about what new things were going on in their lives, how the kids were doing at school, discussions of the baseball off-season trades. It was a way for things to return to normal after a sad and stressful day. And so it was in this case, if on a somewhat broader scale. The White House photographer was waiting there on the South Lawn as the helicopter touched down. The stairs were lowered, and a Marine corporal stood at the bottom of them. President Ryan came out first, getting a salute from the corporal in dress blues, which he automatically returned, so ingrained were the lessons from Quantico, Virginia, more than twenty years before. Cathy came down behind, and then the kids. The Secret Service agents formed a loose corridor which told them where to head. News cameras were off to the west, their left, but no questions were shouted— this time; that would change very quickly, too. Inside the White House, the Ryans were directed to the elevators for a rapid trip to the second, bedroom floor. Van Damm was waiting there.

"Mr. President."

"Do I change, Arnie?" Jack asked, handing his coat to a valet. Ryan stopped cold, if only for a second or two, in surprise at how easy that simple activity was. He was President now, and in small ways he had automatically started to act like one. Somehow that was more remarkable than the duties he'd already undertaken.

"No. Here." The chief of staff handed over a list of the guests already downstairs in the East Room. Jack scanned it, standing there in the middle of the hall. The names weren't so much people as countries,'many friendly, many acquaintances, some genuine strangers, and some… Even as a former National Security Advisor, he didn't know everything he ought to have known about them. While he read, Cathy hustled the kids off to the bathroom—or started to. An agent from the Detail had to assist in locating them. Ryan walked into his own, checking his hair in the mirror. He managed to comb it himself, without the ministrations of Mrs. Abbot, under van Damm's scrutiny. Not even safe in here, the President told himself.

"How long will this go, Arnie?"

"No telling, sir."

Ryan turned. "When we're alone, the name's still Jack, remember? I've been afflicted, not anointed."

"Okay, Jack."

"Kids, too?"

"That'll be a nice touch…. Jack, so far, you've been doing well."

"Do I have my speechwriter mad at me?" he asked, checking his tie and leaving the bathroom.

"Your instincts weren't so bad, but next time we can have a speech prepared for that."

Ryan thought about that, handing the list back to van Damm. "You know, just because I'm President doesn't mean I stopped being a person."

"Jack, get used to it, okay? You're not allowed to be 'just a person' anymore. Okay, you've had a few days to get used to the idea. When you walk downstairs, you are the United States of America, not just a person. That goes for you, that goes for your wife, and to some degree that goes for your kids." For his revelation, the chief of staff got a poisonous look that may have lasted a second or two. Arnie ignored it. It was just personal, not business. "Ready, Mr. President?"

Jack nodded, wondering if Arnie was right or not, and wondering why the observation had angered him so much. And then wondering again how true it was. You couldn't tell with Arnie. He was and would continue to be a teacher, and as with most skilled teachers, he would occasionally tell lies as harsh exemplars of a deeper truth.

Don Russell appeared in the corridor, leading Katie by the hand. She had a- red ribbon in her hair as she broke free and ran to her mother. "Look what Uncle Don did!" At least one member of the Detail was already a member of the family.

"You may want to get them all into the bathroom now, Mrs. Ryan. There are no restrooms on the State Floor."

"None?"

Russell shook his head. "No, ma'am, they sort of forgot when they built the place."

Caroline Ryan grabbed the two youngest and led them off, doing her motherly duty. She returned in a couple of minutes.

"Want me to carry her downstairs for you, ma'am?" Russell asked with a grandfatherly smile. "The stairs are a little tricky in heels. I'll hand her off at the bottom."

"Sure." People started heading for the stairwell, and Andrea Price keyed her microphone.

"SWORDSMAN and party are moving from the residence to the State Floor."

"Roger," another agent responded from downstairs.

They could hear the noise even before making the last turn on the marble steps. Russell set Katie Ryan on the floor next to her mother. The agents faded away, becoming strangely invisible as the Ryans, the First Family, walked into the East Room.

"Ladies and gentlemen," a staff member announced, "the President of the United States, Dr. Ryan, and family." Heads turned. There was a brief wave of applause which quickly faded, but the looks continued. They appeared friendly enough, Jack thought, knowing that not all were. He and Cathy moved a little to the left, and formed the receiving line.

They came mainly one by one, though some of the visiting chiefs of state had brought wives. A protocol officer at Ryan's left whispered the name of each into his ear, making Jack wonder how she knew all of these people by sight. The procession to him wasn't quite as haphazard as it appeared. The ambassadors representing countries whose heads had chosen not to make the trip held back, but even those, standing about in little knots of associates and sipping at their Perrier-with-a-twist, didn't hide their professional curiosity, checking out the new President and the way he greeted the men and women who came up to him.

"The Prime Minister of Belgium, M. Arnaud," the protocol officer whispered. The official photographer started clicking away to record every official greeting, and two TV cameras were doing the same, albeit more quietly.

"Your telegram was very gracious, Mr. Prime Minister, and it came at a sensitive moment," Ryan said, wondering if the truth sounded good enough, wondering if Arnaud had even read it—well, of course he had, though he probably hadn't drafted it.

"Your talk to the children was very moving. I'm sure everyone here thinks the same," the P.M. replied, gripping Ryan's hand, testing it for firmness, looking hard and deep into his eyes, and rather pleased with himself for the very skilled mendacity of his greeting. For all that, he had read the telegram and pronounced it fitting, and was gratified at hearing Ryan's reaction to it. Belgium was an ally, and Arnaud had been well briefed by the chief of his country's military-intelligence service, who'd worked with Ryan at several NATO conferences, and always liked the American's read on the Soviets—and now, the Russians. An unknown quantity as a political leader, the gist of the briefing had been, but a bright and capable analyst. Arnaud did his own reading now, first in line mainly by accident, by grip and look and many years of experience in such things. Then he moved on.

"Dr. Ryan, I have heard so much about you." He kissed her hand in a very graceful Continental way. He hadn't been told how attractive the new First Lady was, and how dainty her hands were. Well, she was a surgeon, wasn't she? New to the game and uncomfortable with it, but playing along as she had to.

"Thank you, Prime Minister Arnaud," Cathy replied, informed by her own protocol officer (this one was just behind her) who this gentleman was. The hand business, she thought, was very theatrical… but nice.

"Your children are angels."

"How nice of you to say that." And he moved on, to be replaced by the President of Mexico.

News cameras floated around the room, along with fifteen reporters, because this was a working function of sorts. The piano in the room's northeast corner played some light classical—not quite what on the radio was called "easy listening," but close.

"And how long have you known the President?" The question came from the Prime Minister of Kenya, pleased to find a black admiral in the room.

"We go back quite a ways, sir," Robby Jackson replied.

"Robby! Excuse me, Admiral Jackson," the Prince of Wales corrected himself.

"Captain." Jackson shook his hand warmly. "It's been a while, sir."

"You two know—ah! Yes!" the Kenyan realized. Then he saw his counterpart from Tanzania and moved off to conduct business, leaving the two alone.

"How is he doing—really, I mean," the Prince asked, vaguely saddening Jackson. But this man had a job. Sent over as a friend in what Robby knew to have been a political decision, he would, on his return to Her Britannic Majesty's embassy, dictate a contact report. It was business. On the other hand, the question deserved an answer. The three of them had «served» together briefly one hot, stormy summer night.

"We had a short meeting with the acting chiefs a couple of days ago. There'll be a working session tomorrow. Jack'11 be okay," the J-3 decided he would say. He put some conviction behind it. He had to. Jack was now NCA—National Command Authority—and Jackson's loyalty to him was a matter of law and honor, not mere humanity.

"And your wife?" He looked over to where Sissy Jackson was talking with Sally Ryan.

"Still number two piano for the National Symphony."

"Who's the lead?"

"Miklos Dimitri. Bigger hands," Jackson explained. He decided it would be impolitic to ask any family questions of his own.

"You did well in the Pacific."

"Yeah, well, fortunately we didn't have to kill all that many people." Jackson looked his almost-friend in the eye. "That really stopped being fun, y'know?"

"Can he handle the job, Robby? You know him better than I do."

"Captain, he has to handle the job," Jackson answered, looking over at his Commander-in-Chief-friend, and knowing how much Jack detested formal occasions. Watching his new President endure the circulating line, it was impossible to avoid thinking back. "Long way from teaching history at the Trade School, Your Highness," the admiral observed in a whisper.

For Cathy Ryan, it was more than anything else an exercise in protecting her hand. Oddly she knew the formal occasion drill better than her husband. As a senior physician at Johns Hopkins's Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute, she'd had to deal with numerous formal fund-raisers over the years, essentially a high-class version of begging— most of which occasions Jack had missed, often to her displeasure. So, here she was, again, meeting people she didn't know, would never have the chance to like, and not one of whom would support her research programs.

"The Prime Minister of India," her protocol officer said quietly.

"Hello." The First Lady smiled her greeting, shook the hand, which was blessedly light.

"You must be very proud of your husband."

"I've always been proud of Jack." They were of the same height. The Prime Minister's skin was swarthy, and she squinted her eyes behind her glasses, Cathy saw. She probably needed a prescription change, and she probably got headaches from her out-of-date one. Strange. They had some pretty good doctors in India. Not all of them came to America.

"And such lovely children," she added.

"How nice of you to say that." Cathy smiled again, in an automatic sort of way, to an observation that was as perfunctory as a comment on the clouds in the sky. A closer look at the woman's eyes told Cathy something she didn't like. She thinks she's better than me. But why? Be- cause she was a politician and Caroline Ryan a mere surgeon? Would it be different had she chosen to become a lawyer? No, probably not, her mind went on, racing as it sometimes did when a surgical procedure went bad unexpectedly. No, it wasn't that at all. Cathy remembered a night right here in the East Room, facing off with Elizabeth Elliot. It was the same supercilious mind-set: I'm better than you because of who I am and what I do. SURGEON—that was her Secret Service code name, which had not displeased her at all, really—looked more deeply into the dark eyes before hers. There was even more to it than that. Cathy let go of her hand as the next big shot came through the mill.

The Prime Minister departed the line and headed for a circulating waiter, from whom she took a glass of juice. It would have been too obvious to do what she really wanted to do. That would come the next day, in New York. For now she looked at one of her fellow Prime Ministers, this one representing the People's Republic of China. She raised her glass a centimeter or so, and nodded without smiling. A smile was unnecessary. Her eyes conveyed the necessary message.

"Is it true they call you SWORDSMAN?" Prince Ali bin Sheik asked with a twinkle in his eye.

"Yes, and, yes, it is because of what you gave me," Jack told him. "Thank you for flying over."

"My friend, there is a bond between us." His Royal Highness was not quite a chief of state, but with the current illness of his sovereign, Ali was taking over more and more of the Kingdom's duties. He was now in charge of foreign relations and intelligence, the former schooled by Whitehall, the latter by Israel's Mossad, in one of the most ironic and least-known contradictions in a part of the world known for its interlocking non sequiturs. On the whole, Ryan was pleased by that. Though he had much on his plate, Ali was capable.

"You've never met Cathy, have you?"

The Prince shifted his gaze. "No, but I have met your colleague, Dr. Katz. He trained my own eye doctor. Indeed, your husband is a fortunate man, Dr. Ryan."

And the Arabs were supposed to be cold, humorless, and disrespectful of women? Cathy asked herself. Not this guy. Prince Ali took her hand gently.

"Oh, you must have met Bernie when he went over in 1994." Wilmer had helped establish the eye institute in Riyadh, and Bernie had stayed five months to do some clinical instruction.

"He performed surgery on a cousin who was injured in a plane crash. He's back flying. And those are your children over there?"

"Yes, Your Highness." This one went into the card file as a good guy.

"Would you mind if I spoke with them?"

"Please." The Prince nodded and moved off.

Caroline Ryan, he thought, making his mental notes. Highly intelligent, highly perceptive. Proud. Will be an asset to her husband if he has the wit to make use of her. What a pity, he thought, that his own culture utilized its women so inefficiently—but he wasn't King yet, might never be, and even if he were to become so, there were limits to the changes he could make under the best of circumstances. His nation still had far to go, though many forgot how breathtakingly far the Kingdom had come in two generations. Even so, there was a bond between him and Ryan, and because of that, a bond between America and the Kingdom. He walked over to the Ryan family, but before he got there he saw what he needed. The children were slightly overwhelmed by everything. The smallest daughter was having the easiest time of it, sipping at a soft drink under the watchful eye of a Secret Service agent, while a few diplomatic wives attempted to talk to her. She was accustomed to being doted on, as so small a child ought to be. The son, older, was the most disoriented, but that was normal for a lad of his age, no longer a child but not yet a man. The eldest, Olivia to the briefing documents but Sally to her father, was dealing well with the most awkward age of all. What struck Prince Ali was that they were not used to all this. Their parents had protected them from Jack's official life. Spoiled as they undoubtedly were in some ways, they did not have the bored, haughty look of other such kids. You could tell much of a man and woman by examining their children. A moment later, he bent down over Katie. Initially she was taken aback by his unusual clothing—Ali had feared frostbite only two hours before—but in a moment his warm smile had her reaching up to touch his beard while Don Russell stood a meter away like a watch-bear. He took the time to catch the agent's eye, and the two traded a quick look. He knew that Cathy Ryan would be watching, too. What better way to befriend people than to show solicitude to their children? But it was more than that, and in his written report to his ministers, he would warn them not to judge Ryan by his somewhat awkward funeral speech. That he was not the usual sort to lead a country didn't mean that he was unfit to do so.

But some were.

Many of them were in this room.

SISTER JEAN BAPTISTE had done her best to ignore it, working through the heat of the day to sunset, trying to deny the discomfort that soon grew into genuine pain, hoping it would fade away, as minor ailments did—always did. She'd come down with malaria virtually her first week in this country, and that disease had never really gone away. At first she'd thought that's what it was, but it wasn't. The fever she'd written off to a typically hot Congo day wasn't that, either. It surprised her that she was afraid. For as often as she'd treated and consoled others, she'd never really understood the fear they had. She knew they were afraid, understood the fact that fear existed, but her response to it was succor and kindness, and prayer. Now for the first time, she was beginning to understand. Because she thought she knew what it was. She'd seen it before. Not often. Most of them never got this far. But Benedict Mkusa had gotten here, for what little good it had done. He would surely be dead by the end of the day, Sister Maria Magdalena had told her after morning mass. As little as three days before she would have sighed—but consoled herself with the thought that there would be another angel in heaven. Not this time. Now she feared that there might be two. Sister Jean Baptiste leaned against the door frame. What had she done wrong? She was a careful nurse. She didn't make mistakes. Well.

She had to leave the ward. She did so, walking down the breezeway to the next building, directly into the lab. Dr. Moudi was, as usual, at his workbench, concentrating as he always did, and didn't hear her walk in. When he turned, rubbing his eyes after twenty minutes on the microscope, he was surprised to see the holy woman with her left sleeve rolled up, a rubber strip tight around her upper arm, and a needle in her antecubital vein. She was on her third 5cc test tube, and discarding that, expertly drew a fourth.

"What is the matter, Sister?"

"Doctor, I think these need to be tested at once. Please, you will wish to put on a fresh pair of gloves."

Moudi walked over to her, staying a meter away while she withdrew the needle from her arm. He looked at her face and eyes—like the women in his home city of Qom, she dressed in a very chaste and proper manner. There was much to admire about these nuns: cheerful, hardworking, and very devoutly in service to their false god—that wasn't strictly true. They were People of the Book, respected by the Prophet, but the Shi'a branch of Islam was somewhat less respectful of such people than… no, he would save those thoughts for another time. He could see it in her eyes, even more clearly than the overt symptoms which his trained senses were beginning to discern, he saw what she already knew.

"Please sit down, Sister."

"No—I must—"

"Sister," the physician said more insistently. "You are a patient now. You will please do as I ask, yes?"

"Doctor, I—"

His voice softened. There was no purpose in being harsh, and truly this woman did not deserve such treatment before God. "Sister, with all the care and devotion you have shown to others in this hospital, please, allow this humble visitor to show some of it to you."

Jean Baptiste did as she was told. Dr. Moudi first donned a fresh pair of latex gloves. Then he checked her

pulse, 88, her blood pressure, 138/90, and took her temperature, 39—all the numbers were high, the first two because of the third, and because of what she thought it was. It could have been any of a number of ailments, from trivial to fatal, but she'd treated the Mkusa boy, and that luckless child was dying. He left her there, carefully picking up the test tubes and moving them to his laboratory bench.

Moudi had wanted to become a surgeon. The youngest of four sons, all nephews of his country's leader, he'd waited impatiently to grow up, watching his elder brothers march off to war against Iraq. Two of them had died, and the other had come back maimed, later to die by his own despairing hand, and he'd thought to be a surgeon, the better to save the lives of Allah's warriors, so that they could fight another day in His Holy Cause. That desire had changed, and instead he'd learned about infectious diseases, because there was more than one way to fight for the Cause, and after years of patience, his way was finally appearing.

Minutes later, he walked to the isolation ward. There is an aura to death, Moudi knew. Perhaps the image before him was something of the imagination, but the fact of it was not. As soon as the sister had brought the blood sample, he'd divided it in two, sending one carefully packed test tube by air express to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., the global center for the analysis of exotic and dangerous agents. The other he'd kept in cold storage to await developments. CDC was as efficient as ever. The telex had arrived hours earlier: Ebola Zaire was the identification, followed by a lengthy set of warnings and instructions which were entirely unnecessary. As was the diagnosis, really. Few things killed like this, and none of them so fast.

It was as if Benedict Mkusa had been cursed by Allah Himself, something Moudi knew not to be true, for Allah was a God of Mercy, who did not deliberately afflict the young and innocent. To say "it was written" was more accurate, but hardly more merciful for the patient or his parents. They sat by the bedside, dressed in protective garb, watching their world die before their eyes. The boy was in pain—horrid agony, really. Parts of his body were already dead and rotting while his heart still tried to pump and his brain to reason. The only other thing that could do this to a human body was a massive exposure to ionizing radiation. The effects were grossly similar. One by one at first, then in pairs, then in groups, then all at once, the internal organs became necrotic. The boy was too weak to vomit now, but blood issued from the other end of his GI tract. Only the eyes were something close to normal, though blood was there as well. Dark, young eyes, sad and not understanding, not comprehending that a life so recently begun was surely ending now, looking to his parents to make things right, as they always had during his eight years. The room stank of blood and sweat and other bodily fluids, and the look on the boy's face became more distant. Even as he lay still he seemed to draw away, and truly Dr. Moudi closed his eyes and whispered a prayer for the boy, who was just a boy, after all, and though not a Muslim, still a religious lad, and a person of the Book unfairly denied access to the words of the Prophet. Allah was merciful above all things, and surely He would show mercy to this boy, taking him safely into Paradise. And better it were done quickly.

If an aura could be black, then this one was. Death enveloped the young patient one centimeter at a time. The painful breaths grew more shallow, the eyes, turned to his parents, stopped moving, and the agonized twitches of the limbs traveled down the extremities until just the fingers moved, ever so slightly, and presently that stopped.

Sister Maria Magdalena, standing behind and between mother and father, placed a hand on the shoulder of each, and Dr. Moudi moved in closer, setting his stethoscope on the patient's chest. There was some noise, gurgles and faint tears as the necrosis destroyed tissue—a dreadful yet dynamic process, but of the heart there was nothing. He moved the ancient instrument about to be sure, then he looked up.

"He is gone. I am very sorry." He might have added that for Ebola this death had been merciful, or so the books and articles said. This was his first direct experience with the virus, and it had been quite dreadful enough.

The parents took it well. They'd known for more than a day, long enough to accept, short enough that the shock hadn't worn off. They would go and pray, which was entirely proper.

The body of Benedict Mkusa would be burned, and the virus with it. The telex from Atlanta had been very clear on that. Too bad.

RYAN FLEXED HIS hand when the line finally ended. He turned to see his wife massaging hers and taking a deep breath. "Get you something?" Jack asked.

"Something soft. Two procedures tomorrow morning." And they still hadn't come up with a convenient way of getting Cathy to work. "How many of these things will we have to do?" his wife asked.

"I don't know," the President admitted, though he knew that the schedule was set months in advance, and that most of the program would have to be adhered to regardless of his wishes. As each day passed, it amazed him more and more that people sought.after this job—the job had so many extraneous duties that it could scarcely be done. But the extraneous duties in a real sense were the job. It just went round and round. Then a staffer appeared with soft drinks for the President and First Lady, summoned by another who'd heard what Cathy had said. The paper napkins were monogrammed—stamped, whatever the process was called—with the image of the White House, and under it the words, THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. Husband and wife both noticed that at the same moment, then allowed their eyes to meet.

"Remember the first time we took Sally to Disney World?" Cathy asked.

Jack knew what his wife meant. Just after their daughter's third birthday, not long before their trip to England… and the beginning of a journey which, it seemed, would never end. Sally had fixed on the castle in the center of the Magic Kingdom, always looking to see it no matter where they were at the time. She'd called it Mickey's House. Well, they had their own castle now. For a while, anyway. But the rent was pretty high. Cathy wandered over to where Robby and Sissy Jackson were speaking with the Prince of Wales. Jack found his chief of staff.

"How's the hand?" Arnie asked.

"No complaints."

"You're lucky you're not campaigning. Lots of people think a friendly handshake is a knuckle-buster—man-toman and all that. At least these people know better." Van Damm sipped at his Perrier and surveyed the room. The reception was going well. Various chiefs of state and ambassadors and others were engaged in friendly conversation. There were a few discreet laughs at the exchange of jokes and pleasantries. The mood of the day had changed.

"So, how many exams did I pass and fail?" Ryan asked quietly.

"Honest answer? No telling. They all looked for something different. Remember that." And some of them really didn't give a damn, having come for their own domestic political reasons, but even under these circumstances it was impolitic to say so.

"Kinda figured that out on my own, Arnie. Now I circulate, right?"

"Hit India," van Damm advised. "Adler thinks it's important."

"Roger." At least he remembered what she looked like. So many of the faces in the line had turned immediately into blurs, just as happened at an over-large party of any sort. It made Ryan feel like a fraud. Politicians were supposed to have a photographic memory for names and faces. He did not, and wondered if there were some sort of training method to acquire one. Jack handed his glass off to an attendant, wiped his hands with one of the special napkins, and headed off to see India. Russia stopped him first.

"Mr. Ambassador," Jack said. Valeriy Bogdanovich Lermonsov had been through the receiving line, but there hadn't been time then for whatever he wanted to say. They shook hands again anyway. Lermonsov was a career diplomat, popular in the local community of his peers. There was talk that he'd been KGB for years, but that was hardly something Ryan could hold against him.

"My government wishes to ask if an invitation to Moscow could be entertained."

"I have no objection to it, Mr. Ambassador, but we were just over a few months ago and my time has many demands on it right now."

"I have no doubt of that, but my government wishes to discuss several questions of mutual interest." That code phrase made Ryan turn his body fully to face the Russian.

"Oh?"

"I feared that your schedule would be a problem, Mr. President. Might you then receive a personal representative for a quiet discussion of issues?"

That could only be one person, Jack knew. "Sergey Nikolay'ch?"

"Would you receive him?" the Ambassador persisted.

Ryan had a brief moment of, if not panic, then disquiet. Sergey Golovko was the chairman of the RVS—the reborn, downsized, but still formidable KGB. He also was one of the few people in the Russian government who had both brains and the trust of the current Russian president, Eduard Petravich Grushavoy, himself one of the few men in the world with more problems than Ryan had. Moreover, Grushavoy was keeping Golovko as close as Stalin had kept Beriya, needing a counselor with brains, experience, and muscle. The comparison wasn't strictly fair, but Golovko would not be coming over to deliver a recipe for borscht. "Items of mutual interest" usually meant serious business; coming directly to the President and not working through the State Department was another such indicator, and Lermonsov's persistence made things seem more serious still.

"Sergey's an old friend," Jack said with a friendly smile. All the way back to when he had a pistol in my face. "He's always welcome in my house. Let Arnie know about the scheduling?"

"I will do that, Mr. President."

Ryan nodded and moved off. The Prince of Wales had the Indian Prime Minister in a holding pattern, awaiting Ryan's appearance.

"Prime Minister, Your Highness," Ryan said with a nod.

"We thought it important that some matters be clarified."

"What might those be?" the President asked. He had an electrical twitch under his skin, from knowing what had to be coming now.

"The unfortunate incident in the Indian Ocean," the Prime Minister said. "Such misunderstandings."

"I'm—glad to hear that…"

EVEN THE ARMY takes days off, and the funeral of a President was one such day. Both Blue Force and OpFor had taken a day to stand down. That included the commanders. General Diggs's house was on a hilltop overlooking a singularly bleak valley, but for all that it was a magnificent sight, and the desert was warm that day from Mexican winds, which allowed a barbecue on his walled and hedged back yard.

"Have you met President Ryan?" Bondarenko asked, sipping an early-afternoon beer.

Diggs shook his head as he flipped the burgers and reached for his special sauce. "Never. Evidently he had a piece of getting the 10th ACR deployed to Israel, but, no. I know Robby Jackson, though. He's J-3 now. Robby speaks very well of him."

"This is American custom, what you do?" The Russian gestured to the charcoal burner.

Diggs looked up. "Learned it from my daddy. Could you pass my beer over, Gennady?" The Russian handed the glass to his host. "I do hate missing training days, but…" But he liked a day off as much as the next guy.

"This place you have here is amazing, Marion." Bondarenko turned to survey the valley. The immediate base area looked typically American, with its grid of roads and structures, but beyond that was something else. Scarcely anything grew, just what the Americans called creosote bushes, and they were like some sort of flora from a distant planet. The land here was brown, even the mountains looked lifeless. Yet there was something magnificent about the desert—and it reminded him of a mountaintop in Tajikistan. Maybe that was it.

"So, exactly how did you get those ribbons, General?" Diggs didn't know all the story. His guest shrugged.

"The Mudjeheddin decided to visit my country. It was a secret research facility, since closed down—it's a separate country now, as you know."

Diggs nodded. "I'm a cavalryman, not a high-energy physicist. You can save the secret stuff."

"I defended an apartment building—the home for the scientists and their families. I had a platoon of KGB border guards. The Mudje attacked us in company strength under cover of night and a snowstorm. It was rather exciting for an hour or so," Gennady admitted.

Diggs had seen some of the scars—he'd caught his visitor in the shower the previous day. "How good were they?"

"The Afghans?" Bondarenko grunted. "You did not wish to be captured by them. They were absolutely fearless, but sometimes that worked against them. You could tell which bands had competent leadership and which did not. That one did. They wiped out the other half of the facility, and on my side" — a shrug—"we were bloody lucky. At the end we were fighting on the ground floor of the building. The enemy commander led his people bravely— but I proved to be a better shot."

"Hero of the Soviet Union," Diggs remarked, checking his burgers again. Colonel Hamm was listening, quietly. This was how members of that community measured one another, not so much by what they had done as by how they told the story.

The Russian smiled. "Marion, I had no choice. There was no place to run away, and I knew what they did to captured Russian officers. So, they give me medal and promotion, and then my country—how you say? Evaporate?" There was more to it, of course. Bondarenko had been in Moscow during the coup, and for the first time in his life faced with making a moral decision, he'd made the right one, attracting the notice of several people who were now highly placed in the government of a new and smaller country.

"How about a country reborn?" Colonel Hamm suggested. "How about, we can be friends now?"

"Da. You speak well, Colonel. And you command well."

"Thank you, sir. Mainly I just sit back and let the regiment run itself." That was a lie that any really good officer understood as a special sort of truth.

"Using Sov—Russian tactical doctrine!" It just seemed so outrageous to the Russian general.

"It works, doesn't it?" Hamm finished his beer.

It would work, Bondarenko promised himself. It would work for his army as it had worked for the American, once he got back and got the political support he needed to rebuild the Russian Army into something it had never been. Even at its fighting peak, driving the Germans back to Berlin, the Red Army had been a heavy, blunt instrument, depending on the shock value of mass more than anything else. He also knew what a role luck had played. His former country had fielded the world's finest tank, the T-34, blessed with a diesel engine designed in France to power dirigibles, a suspension system designed by an American named J. Walter Christie, and a handful of brilliant design innovations from young Russian engineers. That was one of the few instances in the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in which his countrymen had managed to turn out a world-class product—and in this case it had been the right one at the right time— without which his country would surely have died. But the time was past for his country to depend on luck and mass. In the early 1980s the Americans had come up with the right formula: a small, professional army, carefully selected, exquisitely trained, and lavishly equipped. Colonel Hamm's OpFor, this llth Cavalry Regiment, was like nothing he'd ever seen. His pre-travel brief had told him what to expect, but that was different from believing it. You had to see it to believe. In the right terrain, that one regiment could take on a division and destroy it in hours. The Blue Force was hardly incompetent, though its commander had declined the chance to come and eat here in order to work with his sub-unit leaders this day, so badly had they been mauled.

So much to learn here, but the most important lesson of all was how the Americans faced their lessons. Senior officers were humiliated regularly, both in the mock battles and afterward in what they called the AAR, "after-action review," during which the observer-controller officers analyzed everything that had taken place, reading their notes off multicolored file cards like hospital pathologists.

"I tell you," Bondarenko said after a few seconds of reflection, "in my army, people would start fistfights during—"

"Oh, we came close to that in the beginning," Diggs assured him. "When they started this place up, commanders got relieved for losing battles, until everybody took a deep breath and realized that it was supposed to be tough here. Pete Taylor is the guy who really got the NTC running right. The OCs had to learn diplomacy, and the Blue Force people had to learn that they were here to learn, but I'll tell you, Gennady, there isn't another army in the world that inflicts humiliation on its commanders the way we do."

"That's a fact, sir. I was talking with Scan Connolly the other day—he's CO of the 10th ACR in the Negev Desert," Hamm explained to the Russian. "The Israelis still haven't got it all the way figured out. They still bitch about what the OCs tell 'em."

"We keep installing more cameras over there." Diggs laughed as he started shoveling burgers onto the plate. "And sometimes the Israelis don't believe what happened even after we show them the videotapes."

"Still too much hoo-uh over there," Hamm agreed. "Hey, I came here as a squadron commander, and I got my ass handed to me more'n once."

"Gennady, after the Persian Gulf War, 3rd ACR came here for their regular rotation. Now, you remember, they led Barry McCaffrey's 24th Mech—"

"Kicked ass and took names for two hundred twenty miles in four days," Hamm confirmed. Bondarenko nodded. He'd studied that campaign in detail.

"Couple months later, they came here and got the shit kicked outa them. That's the point, General. The training here is tougher than combat. There's no unit in the world as smart and fast and tough as Al's Blackhorse Cav—"

"Except your old Buffalo Soldiers, General," Hamm interjected.

Diggs smiled at the reference to the 10th. He was used to Hamm's interruptions anyway. "That's a fact, Al. Anyway, if you can just break even against the Op For, you're ready to take on anybody in the world, on the wrong side of three-to-one odds, and kick their ass into the next time zone."

Bondarenko nodded, smiling. He was learning fast. The small staff that had come with him was still prowling the base, talking with counterpart officers, and learning, learning, learning. Being on the wrong side of three-to-one odds wasn't the tradition of Russian armies, but that might soon change. The threat to his country was China, and if that battle were ever fought, it would be at the far end of a lengthy supply line, against a huge conscript army. The only answer to that threat was to duplicate what the Americans had done. Bondarenko's mission was to change the entire military policy of his country. Well, he told himself, he'd come to the right place to learn how.

BULLSHIT, THE PRESIDENT thought behind an understanding smile. It was hard to like India. They called themselves the world's largest democracy, but that wasn't especially true. They talked about the most high-minded principles, but had, when convenient, muscled neighbors, developed nuclear weapons, and in asking America to depart the Indian Ocean—"It is, after all, called the Indian Ocean," a former P.M. had told a former American Ambassador—decided that the doctrine of Freedom of the Seas was variably applicable. And for damned sure, they'd been ready to make a move on Sri Lanka. It was just that now, the move having been foiled, they were saying that no such move had ever been planned. But you couldn't look in the eyes of a chief of state and smile, and say, "Bullshit."

It just wasn't done.

Jack listened patiently, sipping at another glass of Per-rier fetched for him by a nameless aide. The situation in Sri Lanka was complex, and did, unfortunately, lend itself to misunderstanding, and India regretted that, and there were no hard feelings at all, but wouldn't it be better if both sides stood down. The Indian fleet was withdrawing back to its bases, training complete, and a few ships damaged by the American demonstration, which, the Prime Minister said without so many words, wasn't exactly cricket. Such bullies.

And what does Sri Lanka think of you? Ryan could have asked, but didn't.

"If only you and Ambassador Williams had communicated more clearly on the issue," Ryan observed sadly.

"Such things happen," the Prime Minister replied. "David—frankly, pleasant man though he is, I fear the climate is too hot for one of his age." Which was as close as she could come to telling Ryan to fire the man. Declaring Ambassador Williams persona non grata was far too drastic a step. Ryan tried not to change his expression, but failed. He needed Scott Adler over here, but the acting SecState was somewhere else at the moment.

"I hope you can appreciate the fact that I am really not in a position to make serious changes in the government at the moment." Drop dead,

"Please, I wasn't suggesting that. I fully appreciate your situation. My hope was to allay at least one supposed problem, to make your task easier." Or I could make it harder.

"Thank you for that, Prime Minister. Perhaps your Ambassador here could discuss things with Scott?"

"I'll be sure to speak to him on the matter." She shook Ryan's hand again and walked away. Jack waited for several seconds before looking at the Prince.

"Your Highness, what do you call it when a high-ranking person lies right in your face?" the President asked with a wry smile.

"Diplomacy."