"If one of your children ran away from home, would you not work for his return?"

"Probably, but I would entice him, not threaten him, especially if I didn't have the ability to threaten him effectively." And your military is for s.h.i.t, too. So the briefings had told them before flying over.

"But when others encourage our child to abscond and defy their father, are we not to object?"

"Look, pal," Gant responded, not quite showing the inward heat he felt-or so he thought. "If you want to do business, then do business. If you want to chat, we can chat. But my time is valuable, and so is the time of our country, and we can save the chat for another time." And then Gant realized that, no, he wasn't a diplomat, and this was not a game he could play and win. "As you see, I am not gifted at this sort of exchange. We have people who are, but I am not one of them. I am the kind of American who does real work and earns real money. If you enjoy this game, that's fine, but it's not my game. Patience is a good thing, I suppose, but not when it impedes the objective, and I think your minister is missing something."

"What is that, Mr. Gant?"

"It is we who will have what we wish to have out of these meetings," Gant told the little Chinese man, and realized instantly that he'd stuck his own foot into his mouth about to the knee. He finished his coffee and excused himself, then headed unnecessarily for the bathroom, where he washed his hands before heading back outside. He found Rutledge standing alone, examining some spring flowers.

"Cliff, I think I f.u.c.ked something up," Gant confessed quietly.

"What's that?" the a.s.sistant Secretary asked, then listened to the confession. "Don't sweat it. You didn't tell them anything I haven't already told them. You just don't understand the language."

"But they'll think we're impatient, and that makes us vulnerable, doesn't it?"

"Not with me doing the talking inside," Rutledge answered, with a gentle smile. "Here I am Jimmy Connors at the U.S. Open, Mark. This is what I do."

"The other side thinks so, too."

"True, but we have the advantage. They need us more than we need them."

"I thought you didn't like taking this sort of line with people," Gant observed, puzzled by Rutledge's att.i.tude.

"I don't have to like it. I just have to do it, and winning is always fun." He didn't add that he'd never met Minister Shen before, and therefore had no personal baggage to trip over, as often happened with diplomats who had been known to put personal friendship before the interest of their countries. They usually justified it by telling themselves that the b.a.s.t.a.r.d would owe them one next time, which would serve their country's interest. Diplomacy had always been a personal business, a fact often lost on observers, who thought of these verbose technicians as robots.

Gant found all of this puzzling, but he would play along with Rutledge because he had to, and because the guy at least acted as though he knew what the h.e.l.l he was doing. Whether he did or not . . . Gant wondered how he'd be able to tell. Then it was time to go back indoors.

The ashtrays had been cleaned and the water bottles replenished by the domestic help, who were probably all politically reliable functionaries of one sort or another, or more likely professional intelligence officers, who were here because their government took no chances with anything, or at least tried not to. It was, in fact, a waste of trained personnel, but communists had never been overly concerned with utilizing manpower in an efficient way.

Minister Shen lit a smoke and motioned for Rutledge to lead off. For his part, the American remembered that Bismarck had counseled the use of a cigar in negotiations, because some found the thick tobacco smoke irritating and that gave the smoker the advantage.

"Minister, the trade policies of the People's Republic are set in place by a small number of people, and those policies are set in place for political reasons. We in America understand that. What you fail to understand is that ours truly is a government of the people, and our people demand that we address the trade imbalance. The People's Republic's inability to open markets to American goods costs the jobs of American citizens. Now, in our country it is the business of the government to serve the people, not to rule them, and for that reason, we must address the trade imbalance in an effective way."

"I fully agree that it is the business of government to serve the interests of the people, and for that reason, we must consider also the agony that the Taiwan issue imposes on the citizens of my country. Those who should be our countrymen have been separated from us, and the United States has a.s.sisted in the estrangement of our kinsmen . . ." The remarkable thing, Rutledge thought, was that this droning old fart hadn't died from smoking those d.a.m.ned things. They looked and smelled like the Lucky Strikes his grandfather had died of, at age eighty. It had not been a death to please a physician, however. Grandpa Owens had been driving his great-grandson to South Station in Boston when, lighting one, he'd dropped it into his lap and, in retrieving it, strayed onto the wrong side of the road. Grandpa hadn't believed in seat belts, either . . . the b.a.s.t.a.r.d actually chainsmoked, lighting a new one with the b.u.t.t of the previous one, like Bogie in a '30s movie. Well, maybe it was a way for the Chinese to pursue their population-control policy . . . but in rather an ugly way . . .

"Mr. Foreign Minister," Rutledge started off, when it was next his turn, "the government of the Republic of China is one elected in free and fair elections by the people who live in that country. In America's eyes, that makes the government of the Republic of China legitimate"-he didn't say that the government of the People's Republic was, therefore, illegitimate, but the thought hung in the room like a dark cloud-"and that makes the government in question worthy of international recognition, as you may have noticed has been the case in the last year.

"It is the policy of our government to recognize such governments. We will not change policies based upon firm principles to suit the wishes of other countries which do not share those principles. We can talk until you run out of cigarettes, but my government's position in this case is set in stone. So, you can recognize this fact and allow the meeting to move on to productive areas, or you can beat this dead horse until nothing is left of it. The choice is yours, of course, but is it not better to be productive than not?"

"America cannot dictate to the People's Republic that which concerns us. You claim to have your principles, and surely we have our own, and one of ours is the importance of our country's territorial integrity."

For Mark Gant, the hard part was keeping an impa.s.sive face. He had to pretend that this all made sense and was important, when he'd much prefer to set up his computer to review stock prices, or for that matter read a paperback book under the rim of the table. But he couldn't do that. He had to pretend that this was all interesting, which, if successfully done, could get him nominated for the next Academy Award ceremonies for Best Actor in a Supporting Role: "For keeping awake during the most boring contest since the Iowa gra.s.s-growing championships, the winner is . . ." He concentrated on not shifting in his seat, but that just made his a.s.s tired, and these seats hadn't been designed to fit his a.s.s. Maybe one of those skinny Chinese ones, but not that of a Chicago-raised professional who liked having a beer and a corned-beef sandwich for lunch at least once a week and didn't work out enough. His a.s.s required a broader and softer seat for comfort, but he didn't have one. He tried to find something interesting. He decided that Foreign Minister Shen had terrible skin, as though his face had once been on fire and a friend had tried to extinguish the flames with an ice pick. Gant tried to conjure up the image of that supposed event without smiling. Then came the fact that Shen was smoking so much, lighting his smokes from cheap paper matches instead of a proper lighter. Perhaps he was one of those people who set things down and forgot where they were, which would also explain why he used cheap throwaway pens instead of something in keeping with his rank and status. So, this important son of a b.i.t.c.h had suffered from terminal acne as a kid and was a b.u.t.terfingers. . . ? It was something worthy of an inward smile as the minister droned on in pa.s.sable English. That engendered a new thought. He had access to an earphone for simultaneous translation . . . could he get one tuned to a local station? They had to have a radio station in Beijing that played music of some sort or other, didn't they?

When Rutledge's turn came, it was almost as bad. The stated American position was as repet.i.tive as the Chinese one, perhaps more reasonable but no less boring. Gant imagined that lawyers talking over a divorce settlement probably went through bulls.h.i.t like this. Like diplomats, they were paid by the hour and not by the product. Diplomats and lawyers. What a pair, Gant thought. He was unable even to look at his watch. The American delegation had to present a united front of solid stone, Gant thought, to show the Heathen Chinese that the Forces of Truth and Beauty were firm in their resolve. Or something like that. He wondered if it would feel different negotiating with the British, for example, everyone speaking much the same language, but those negotiations were probably handled with phone calls or e-mails rather than this formalistic c.r.a.p. . . .

Lunch came at the expected hour, about ten minutes late because the Shen guy ran over, which was hardly unexpected. The American team all headed to the men's room, where no talking was done for fear of bugs. Then they went back outside, and Gant went to Rutledge.

"This is how you earn your living?" the stock trader asked with no small degree of incredulity.

"I try to. These talks are going pretty well," the a.s.sistant Secretary of State observed.

"What?" Gant inquired with total amazement.

"Yeah, well, their Foreign Minister is doing the negotiating, so we're playing with their varsity," Rutledge explained. "That means that we'll be able to reach a real agreement instead of a lot of back-and-forth between lowerlevel people and the Politburo-the additional layer of people can really mess things up. There'll be some of that, of course. Shen will have to talk over his positions with them every evening, maybe even right now-he's nowhere to be seen. I wonder who he reports to, exactly. We don't think he really has plenipotentiary powers, that the rest of the big boys second-guess him a lot. Like the Russians used to be. That's the problem with their system. n.o.body really trusts anybody else."

"You serious?" TELESCOPE asked.

"Oh, yeah, it's how their system works."

"That's a cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k," Gant observed.

"Why do you think the Soviet Union went belly-up?" Rutledge asked with amus.e.m.e.nt. "They never had their act together on any level because they fundamentally didn't know how properly to exercise the power they had. It was rather sad, really. But they're doing a lot better now."

"But how are the talks going, well?"

"If all they have to throw at us is Taiwan, their counterarguments on trade won't be all that impressive. Taiwan's a settled issue, and they know it. We may have a mutualdefense treaty with them in ten or eleven months, and they probably know that. They have good intelligence sources in Taipei."

"How do we know that?" Gant demanded.

"Because our friends in Taipei make sure they do. You want your adversaries to know a lot of things. It makes for better understandings, cuts down on mistakes and stuff." Rutledge paused. "I wonder what's for lunch . . .?"

Jesus, Gant thought. Then he thanked G.o.d that he was just here to offer economic backup for this diplomat. They were playing a game so different from anything he'd ever encountered before that he felt like a truck driver doing some day-trading on his laptop at a highway phone booth.

The newsies showed up for lunch so that they could get more B-roll tape of diplomats chatting amiably about such things as the weather and the food-the viewers would think they were handling matters of state, of course, when in fact at least half of the talks between diplomats at such affairs were limited to the problems of raising children or killing the crabgra.s.s in your lawn. It was all, in fact, a kind of gamesmanship with few parallels in other forms of endeavor, Gant was only beginning to understand. He saw Barry Wise approach Rutledge without a microphone or camera in attendance.

"So, how's it going, Mr. Secretary?" the reporter asked.

"Pretty well. In fact, we had a fine opening session," Rutledge replied in Gant's earshot. It was a shame, TELESCOPE decided, that the people couldn't see what really happened. It would be the funniest thing this side of Chris Rock. It made Laverne & Shirley look like King Lear in its lunacy, and the world chess championship look like a heavyweight-championship fight in its torpor. But every field of human endeavor had its rules, and these were just different ones.

There's our friend," the cop observed, as the car pulled out. It was Suvorov/Koniev in his Mercedes C-cla.s.s. The license tag number checked, as did the face in the binoculars.

Provalov had gotten the local varsity to handle this case, with even some help now from the Federal Security Service, formerly the Second Chief Directorate of the former KGB, the professional spy-chasers who'd made life in Moscow difficult for foreign intelligence operations. They remained superbly equipped, and though not so well funded as in the past, there was little to criticize in their training.

The problem, of course, was that they knew all that themselves, and took on a degree of inst.i.tutional arrogance that had gotten the noses of his homicide investigators severely out of joint. Despite all that, they were useful allies. There were a total of seven vehicles to handle the surveillance. In America, the FBI would have arranged a helicopter as well, but Michael Reilly wasn't here to make that condescending observation, somewhat to Provalov's relief. The man had become a friend, and a gifted mentor in the business of investigation, but enough was sometimes enough. There were trucks containing TV cameras to tape the business of the morning, and every automobile had two people in it so that driving wouldn't interfere with watching. They followed Suvorov/Koniev into central Moscow.

Back at his apartment, another team had already defeated his lock and was inside his flat. What happened there was as graceful as any performance by the Bolshoi Ballet. Once inside, the investigative team stood still at first, scanning for telltales, left-behind items as innocuous as a human hair stuck in place across a closet door to show if someone had opened it. Suvorov's KGB file was finally in Provalov's possession now, and he knew all the things the man had been trained in-it turned out that his training had been quite thorough, and Suvorov's grades had been, well, "C" cla.s.s most of the time: not outstanding enough to earn him the chance to operate in the field as an "illegal" officer on the home ground of the "Main Enemy," meaning the United States, but good enough that he'd become a diplomatic-intelligence specialist, mainly going over information brought in by others, but spending some time in the field, trying to recruit and "run" agents. Along the way, he'd established contact with various foreign diplomats, including three from China-those three he'd used to gather low-level diplomatic information, mainly chitchat-level stuff, but it was all regarded as useful. Suvorov's last field a.s.signment had been from 1989 to '91 in the Soviet Emba.s.sy in Beijing, where he'd again tried to gather diplomatic intelligence, and, they saw, with some success this time. The accomplishments had not been questioned at the time, Provalov saw, probably because he'd had some minor victories against the same country's diplomatic service while in Moscow. His file said that he could both speak and write Chinese, skills learned at the KGB Academy that had militated in favor of making him a China specialist.

One of the problems with intelligence operations was that what looked suspicious was often innocuous, and what looked innocuous could well be suspicious. An intelligence officer was supposed to establish contact with foreign nationals, often foreign intelligence officers, and then the foreign spy could execute a maneuver that the Americans called a "flip," turning an enemy into an a.s.set. The KGB had done the same thing many times, and part of the price of doing such business was that it could happen to your own people, not so much while you were not looking as when you were. Nineteen eighty-nine to '91 had been the time of glasnost, the "openness" that had destroyed the Soviet Union as surely as smallpox had annihilated primitive tribesmen. At that time, KGB was having problems of its own, Provalov reminded himself, and what if the Chinese had recruited Suvorov? The Chinese economy had just been starting to grow back then, and so they'd had the money to toss around, not as much as the Americans always seemed to have, but enough to entice a Soviet civil servant looking at the prospect of losing his job soon.

But what had Suvorov been doing since then? He was now driving a Mercedes-Benz automobile, and those didn't appear in your mailbox. The truth was that they didn't know, and finding out would not be very easy. They knew that neither Klementi Ivan'ch Suvorov nor Ivan Yurievich Koniev had paid his income taxes, but that merely put him at the same level as most Russian citizens, who didn't want to be bothered with such irrelevancies. And, again, they hadn't wanted to question his neighbors. Those names were now being checked to see if any were former KGB, and perhaps, therefore, allies of their suspect. No, they didn't want to alert him in any way.

The apartment looked "clean" in the police sense. With that, they began looking around. The bed was mussed up. Suvorov/Koniev was a man and therefore not terribly neat. The contents of the apartment were, however, expensive, much of them of foreign manufacture. West German appliances, a common affectation of the Russian well-to-do. The searchers wore latex surgical gloves as they opened the refrigerator door (refrigerator-freezers are well-regarded hiding places) for a visual examination. Nothing obvious. Then dresser drawers. The problem was that their time was limited and any residence just had too many places to hide things, whether rolled up in a pair of socks or inside the toilet-paper tube. They didn't really expect to find much, but making the effort was de rigueur-it was too hard to explain to one's superiors why one didn't do it than it was to send the search team in to waste their expensively trained time. Elsewhere, people were tapping the apartment's phone. They'd thought about installing some pinhole-lens cameras. These were so easy to hide that only a paranoid genius was likely to find them, but putting them in took time-the hard part was running the wires to the central monitoring station-and time was an a.s.set they didn't have. As it was, their leader had a cell phone in his shirt pocket, waiting for it to vibrate with the word that their quarry was driving back home, in which case they'd tidy up and leave in a hurry.

He was twelve kilometers away. Behind him, the trail cars were switching in and out of visual coverage as deftly as the Russian national football team advancing the soccer ball into tied-game opposition. Provalov was in the command vehicle, watching and listening as the KGB/FSS team leader used a radio and a map to guide his people in and out. The vehicles were all dirty, middle-aged, nondescript types that could be owned by the Moscow city government or gypsy-cab operators, expected to dart around, concealing themselves among the numerous twins they all had. In most cases, the second vehicle occupant was in the back seat, not the front, to simulate a taxi's pa.s.senger, and they even had cell phones to complete the disguise, which allowed them to communicate with their base station without looking suspicious. That, the FSS leader remarked to the cop, was one advantage of new technology.

Then came the call that the subject had pulled over, stopped, and parked his car. The two surveillance vehicles in visual contact continued past, allowing new ones to close in and stop.

"He's getting out," a Federal Security Service major reported. "I'm getting out to follow on foot." The major was young for his rank, usually a sign of a precocious and promising young officer on the way up, and so it was in this case. He was also handsome with his twenty-eight years, and dressed in expensive clothing like one of the new crop of Moscovite business entrepreneurs. He was talking into his phone in a highly animated fashion, the very opposite of what someone conducting a surveillance would do. That enabled him to get within thirty meters of the subject, and to watch his every move with hawk's eyes. Those eyes were needed to catch the most elegant of maneuvers. Suvorov/Koniev sat on a bench, his right hand already in his overcoat pocket while his left fiddled with the morning paper he'd brought out from the car-and that is what tipped the FSS major that he was up to no good. A newspaper was the main disguise used by a spy, something to cover the actions of the working hand, just as a stage magician kept one hand ostentatiously busy while the other performed the actual illusion. And so it was here, so beautifully done that had he been an untrained man, he would never have caught it. The major took a seat on another bench and dialed up another false number on his cell phone and started talking to a fict.i.tious business a.s.sociate, then watched his surveillance subject stand and walk with studied casualness back to his parked Mercedes.

Major Yefremov called a real number when his subject was a hundred meters away. "This is Pavel Georgiyevich. I am staying here to see what he left behind," he told his base station. He crossed his legs and lit a cigarette, watching the figure get back into his car and drive off. When he was well out of sight, Yefremov walked over to the other bench and reached under. Oh, yes. A magnetic holder. Suvorov had been using this one for some time. He'd glued a metal plate to the bottom of the green-painted wood, and to this he could affix a magnetic holder . . . about a centimeter in thickness, his hand told him. Their subject was a "player" after all. He'd just executed a dead-drop.

On hearing it, Provalov experienced the thrill of seeing a crime committed before his very eyes. Now they had their man committing a crime against the state. Now he was theirs. Now they could arrest him at any time. But they wouldn't, of course. The operation's commander next to him ordered Yefremov to retrieve the container for examination. That would be done very speedily, because the container would have to be returned. They only had half of the spy team. The other half would come to pick it up.

It was the computer. It had to be. On turning it on, they found a maze of folders, but one of them, they quickly saw, had encrypted contents. The encryption program was one they hadn't come across before. It was American, and its name was written down. They could do no more now. They lacked the proper disks to copy the covert file. That they could fix, and they could also copy the encryption program. Next, they'd have to plant a bugging device on the keyboard. In that way, they could use Sovorov's own pa.s.sword code to crack the encrypted file. With that decision made, the burglary team left the premises.

The next part was virtually preordained. They followed the Mercedes using the same multi-car drill, but the break came when a dump truck-still the dominant form of life on the Moscow streets-was closest. The subject parked the German sedan and jumped out, took just enough time to affix a strip of paper tape to a lamppost, and hopped back into his car. He didn't even bother to look around, as though he'd only done something routine.

But he hadn't. He'd just posted a flag, a notice to someone unknown that the dead-drop had something in it. That someone would walk or drive past and see the tape and know where to go. So, they had to examine the capsule quickly and replace it, lest they warn the enemy spy that their little operation had been compromised. No, you didn't do that until you had to, because things like this were like an unraveling sweater on a pretty woman. You didn't stop pulling the yarn until the t.i.ts were exposed, the FSS commander told Provalov.

CHAPTER 24.

Infanticide What's this?" the President asked at his morning intelligence briefing.

"A new SORGE source, this one's called WARBLER. I'm afraid it's not as good from an intelligence point of view, though it does tell us things about their ministers," Dr. Goodley added with some feigned delicacy.

Whoever WARBLER was, Ryan saw, she-it was definitely a she-kept a very intimate diary. She, too, worked with this Minister Fang Gan, and, it appeared, he was enamored of her, and she, if not exactly enamored of him, certainly kept records of his activities. All of them, Ryan saw. It was enough to make his eyes go a little wide this early in the morning.

"Tell Mary Pat that she can sell this stuff to Hustler if she wants, but I really don't need it at eight in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned morning."

"She included it to give you a feel for the source," Ben explained. "The material isn't as narrowly political as we're getting from SONGBIRD, but MP thinks it tells us a lot about the guy's character, which is useful, and also there's some political content to go along with the information on Fang's s.e.x life. It would appear he's a man of, uh . . . well, commendable vigor, I guess, though the girl in question would clearly prefer a younger lover. It appears that she had one, but this Fang guy scared him off."

"Possessive b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Ryan saw, skimming that section. "Well, I guess at that age you hold on to what you need. Does this tell us anything?"

"Sir, it tells us something about the kind of people who make decisions over there. Here we call them s.e.xual predators."

"Of which we have a few in government service ourselves," Ryan observed. The papers had just broken a story on a member of the Senate.

"At least not in this office," Goodley told his President. He didn't add anymore.

"Well, this President is married to a surgeon. She knows how to use sharp instruments," Ryan said, with a wry grin. "So, the Taiwan stuff yesterday was just a ploy because they haven't figured out how to address the trade issues yet?"

"So it would appear, and yes, that does seem a little odd. Also, MP thinks that they might have a low-level source in State. They know a little more than they could have gotten from the press, she thinks."

"Oh, great," Jack noted. "So what happened? The j.a.panese corporations sold their old sources to the Chinese?"

Goodley shrugged. "No telling at this time."

"Have Mary Pat call Dan Murray about this. Counterespionage is the FBI's department. Is this something we want to move on at once, or will this compromise SONGBIRD?"

"That's for somebody else to judge, sir," Goodley said, reminding the President that he was good, but not quite that good at this business.

"Yeah, somebody other than me, too. What else?"

"The Senate Select Intelligence Committee wants to look into the Russian situation."

"That's nice. What's the beef?"

"They seem to have their doubts about how trustworthy our friends in Moscow are. They're worried that they're going to use the oil and gold money to become the USSR again, and maybe threaten NATO."

"NATO's moved a few hundred miles east, last time I looked. The buffer zone will not hurt our interests."

"Except that we are obligated to defend Poland now," Goodley reminded his boss.

"I remember. So, tell the Senate to authorize funds to move a tank brigade east of Warsaw. We can take over one of the old Soviet laagers, can't we?"

"If the Poles want us to. They don't seem overly concerned, sir."

"Probably more worried by the Germans, right?"

"Correct, and there is a precedent for that concern."

"When will Europe get the word that peace has finally broken out for good and all?" Ryan asked the ceiling.

"There's a lot of history, some of it pretty recent, for them to remember, Mr. President. And much of it militates in the other direction."

"I've got a trip to Poland scheduled, don't I?"

"Yes, not too far off, and they're working out the itinerary right now."

"Okay, I'll tell the Polish president personally that he can depend on us to keep the Germans under control. If they step out of line-well, we'll take Chrysler back." Jack sipped his coffee and checked his watch. "Anything else?"

"That should do it for today."

The President looked up slyly. "Tell Mary Pat if she sends me more of this WARBLER stuff, I want the pictures to go with it."

"Will do, sir." Goodley had himself a good hoot at that.

Ryan picked up the briefing papers again and read through them more slowly this time, between sips of coffee and snorts, with a few grumbles thrown in. Life had been much easier when he was the guy who prepared these briefing papers than it was now that he was the guy who had to read them. Why was that? Shouldn't it have been the other way around? Before, he'd been the one to find the answers and antic.i.p.ate the questions, but now that other people had done all that stuff for him . . . it was harder. That didn't make any sense at all, d.a.m.n it. Maybe, he decided, it was because, after him, the information stopped. He had to make the decisions, and so whatever other decisions and a.n.a.lyses had been made at lower levels, the process came to one place and stopped cold. It was like driving a car: Someone else could tell him to turn right at the corner, but he was the guy at the wheel who had to execute the turn, and if somebody clobbered the car, he was the guy who'd get the blame. For a moment, Jack wondered if he was better suited to being a step or two down in the process, able to do the a.n.a.lysis work and make his recommendations with confidence . . . but always knowing that someone else would always get the credit for making the right move, or the blame for making the wrong one. In that insulation from consequence, there was safety and security. But that was cowardice talking, Ryan reminded himself. If there were anyone in Washington better suited for making decisions, he hadn't met the guy yet, and if that was arrogance talking, then so be it.

But there ought to be someone better, Jack thought, as the clock wound to his first appointment of the day, and it wasn't his fault that there wasn't. He checked his appointment sheet. The whole day was political bulls.h.i.t . . . except it wasn't bulls.h.i.t. Everything he did in this office affected the lives of American citizens in one way or another, and that made it important, to them and to him. But who had decided to make him the national daddy? What the h.e.l.l made him so d.a.m.ned smart? The people behind his back, as he thought of it, outside the overly thick windows of the Oval Office, all expected him to know how to do the right thing, and over the dinner table or a low-stakes card game, they'd b.i.t.c.h and moan and complain about the decisions he'd made that they didn't like, as though they knew better-which was easy to say out there. In here it was different. And so, Ryan had to apply himself to every little decision, even menus for school lunches-that one was a real son of a b.i.t.c.h. If you gave kids what they liked to eat, nutritionists would complain that they really ought to eat healthy twigs and berries, but for the most part, parents would probably opt for burgers and fries, because that's what the kids would eat, and even healthy food, uneaten, did them little good. He'd talked that one over with Cathy once or twice, but he really didn't need to. She let their own kids eat pizza whenever they wished, claiming that pizza was high in protein, and that a kid's metabolism could eat almost anything without ill effect, but when cornered, she'd admit that put her at odds with some of her fellow professors at Johns Hopkins. And so what was Jack Ryan, President of the United States, Doctor of Philosophy in History, Bachelor of Arts in Economics, and a Certified Public Accountant (Ryan couldn't even remember why he had bothered taking that exam), supposed to think, when experts-including the one he was married to-disagreed? That was worth another snort, when his desk buzzer went off and Mrs. Sumter announced that his first appointment of the day was here. Already Jack was wishing for a b.u.mmed cigarette, but he couldn't do that until he had a break in his schedule, because only Mrs. Sumter and a few of his Secret Service detail were allowed to know that the President of the United States suffered, intermittently, from that vice.

Jesus, he thought, as he did so often when the workday began, how did I ever get stuck in here? Then he stood and faced the door, conjuring up his welcoming Presidential smile as he tried to remember who the h.e.l.l was coming in first to discuss farm subsidies in South Dakota.

The flight, as usual, was out of Heathrow, this one in a Boeing 737, because it wasn't all that long a hop to Moscow. The Rainbow troopers filled the entire first-cla.s.s section, which would please the cabin staff, though they didn't know it yet, because the pa.s.sengers would be unusually polite and undemanding. Chavez sat with his father-inlaw, politely watching the safety-briefing video, though both knew that if the airplane hit the ground at four hundred knots, it really wouldn't help all that much to know where the nearest emergency exit was. But such things were rare enough to be ignored. Ding grabbed the magazine from the pocket in front and flipped through it in the hope of finding something interesting. He'd already bought all the useful items from the "flying mall" magazine, some to his wife's pitying amus.e.m.e.nt.

"So, the little guy's walking better?" Clark asked.

"You know, the enthusiasm he has for it is kinda funny, the big grin every time he makes it from the TV to the coffee table, like he's won the marathon, got a big gold medal, and a kiss from Miss America on his way to Disney World."

"The big things are made up of a lot of little things, Domingo," Clark observed, as the aircraft started its takeoff run. "And the horizon's a lot closer when you're that short."