The car pulled into the Kremlin through the Spaskiy Gate, then proceeded to the old Council of Ministers Building. There Adler alighted and hurried inside, into an elevator to a third-floor meeting room.

"Mr. Secretary." The greeting came from Golovko. Adler should have found him an eminence gris, he thought. But Sergey Nikolay'ch was actually a man of genuine intellect and the openness that resulted directly from it. He was not even a pragmatist, but a man who sought what was best for his country, and would search for it everywhere his mind could see. A seeker of truth, SecState thought. That sort of man he and America could live with.

"Chairman. Thank you for receiving us so quickly."

"Please come with me, Mr. Adler." Golovko led him through a set of high double doors into what almost appeared to be a throne room. EAGLE couldn't remember if this building went back to the czars. President Eduard Petrovich Grushavoy was waiting for him, already standing politely, looking serious but friendly.

"Mr. Adler," the Russian president said, with a smile and an extended hand.

"Mr. President, a pleasure to be back in Moscow."

"Please." Grushavoy led him to a comfortable set of chairs with a low table. Tea things were already out, and Golovko handled the serving like a trusted earl seeing to the needs of his king and guest.

"Thank you. I've always loved the way you serve your tea in Russia." Adler stirred his and took a sip.

"So, what do you have to say to us?" Grushavoy asked in pa.s.sable English.

"We have shown you what has become for us a cause for great concern."

"The Chinese," the Russian president observed. Everyone knew all of this, but the beginning of the conversation would follow the conventions of high-level talk, like lawyers discussing a major case in chambers.

"Yes, the Chinese. They seem to be contemplating a threat to the peace of the world. America has no wish to see that peace threatened. We've all worked very hard-your country and mine-to put an end to conflict. We note with grat.i.tude Russia's a.s.sistance in our most recent conflicts. Just as we were allies sixty years ago, so Russia has acted again lately. America is a country that remembers her friends."

Golovko let out a breath slowly. Yes, his prediction was about to come true. Ivan Emmetovich was a man of honor, and a friend of his country. What came back to him was the time he'd held a pistol to Ryan's head, the time Ryan had engineered the defection of KGB chairman Gerasimov all those years before. Sergey Nikolay'ch had been enraged back then, as furious as he had ever been in a long and stressful professional life, but he'd held back from firing the pistol because it would have been a foolish act to shoot a man with diplomatic status. Now he blessed his moderation, for now Ivan Emmetovich Ryan offered to Russia what he had always craved from America: predictability. Ryan's honor, his sense of fair play, the personal honesty that was the most crippling aspect of his newly acquired political persona, all combined to make him a person upon whom Russia could depend. And at this moment, Golovko could do that which he'd spent his life trying to do: He could see the future that lay only a few short minutes away.

"This Chinese threat, it is real, you think?" Grushavoy asked.

"We fear it is," the American Secretary of State answered. "We hope to forestall it."

"But how will we accomplish that? China knows of our military weakness. We have de-emphasized our defense capabilities of late, trying to shift the funds into areas of greater value to our economy. Now it seems we might pay a bitter price for that," the Russian president worried aloud.

"Mr. President, we hope to help Russia in that respect."

"How?"

"Mr. President, even as we speak, President Ryan is also speaking with the NATO chiefs of state and government. He is proposing to them that we invite Russia to sign the North Atlantic Treaty. That will ally the Russian Federation with all of Europe. It ought to make China take a step back to consider the wisdom of a conflict with your country."

"Ahh," Grushavoy breathed. "So, America offers Russia a full alliance of state?"

Adler nodded. "Yes, Mr. President. As we were allies against Hitler, so today we can again be allies against all potential enemies."

"There are many complications in this, talks between your military and ours, for example-even talks with the NATO command in Belgium. It could take months to coordinate our country with NATO."

"Those are technical matters to be handled by diplomatic and military technicians. At this level, however, we offer the Russian Federation our friendship in peace and in war. We place the word and the honor of our countries at your disposal."

"What of the European Union, their Common Market of economic alliances?"

"That, sir, is something left to the EEC, but America will encourage our European friends to welcome you completely into the European community, and offer all influence we can muster to that end."

"What do you ask in return?" Grushavoy asked. Golovko hadn't offered that prediction. This could be the answer to many Russian prayers, though his mind made the leap to see that Russian oil would be a major boon to Europe, and hence a matter of mutual, not unilateral, profit.

"We ask for nothing special in return. It is in the American interest to help make a stable and peaceful world. We welcome Russia into that world. Friendship between your people and ours is desirable to everyone, is it not?"

"And in our friendship is profit also for America," Golovko pointed out.

Adler sat back and smiled agreement. "Of course. Russia will sell things to America, and America will sell things to Russia. We will become neighbors in the global village, friendly neighbors. We will compete economically, giving and taking from each other, as we do with many other countries."

"The offer you make is this simple?" Grushavoy asked.

"Should it be more complicated?" the SecState asked. "I am a diplomat, not a lawyer. I prefer simple things to complex ones."

Grushavoy considered all this for half a minute or so. Usually, diplomatic negotiations lasted weeks or months to do even the simplest of things, but Adler was right: Simple was better than complex, and the fundamental issue here was simple, though the downstream consequences might be breathtaking. America offered salvation to Russia, not just a military alliance, but the opening of all doors to economic development. America and Europe would partner with the Russian Federation, creating what could become both an open and integrated community to span the northern hemisphere. It stood to make Eduard Petrovich Grushavoy the Russian who brought his country a full century into the present/future of the world, and for all the statues of Lenin and Stalin that had been toppled, well, maybe some of his own likeness would be erected. It was a thought to appeal to a Russian politician. And after a few minutes, he extended his hand across the low table of tea things.

"The Russian Federation gladly accepts the offer of the United States of America. Together we once defeated the greatest threat to human culture. Perhaps we can do so again-better yet, together we may forestall it."

"In that case, sir, I will report your agreement to my President."

Adler checked his watch. It had taken twenty minutes. d.a.m.n, you could make history in a hurry when you had your act together, couldn't you? He stood. "I must be off then to make my report."

"Please convey my respects to President Ryan. We will do our best to be worthy allies to your country."

"He and I have no doubts of that, Mr. President." Adler shook hands with Golovko and walked to the door. Three minutes after that, he was back in his car and heading back to the airport. Once there, the aircraft had barely begun to taxi when he got on the secure satellite phone.

Mr. President?" Andrea said, coming up to Ryan just as the plenary session of the NATO chiefs was about to begin. She handed over the secure portable phone. "It's Secretary Adler."

Ryan took the phone at once. "Scott? Jack here. What gives?"

"It's a done deal, Jack."

"Okay, now I have to sell it to these guys. Good job, Scott. Hurry back."

"We're rolling now, sir." The line went dead. Ryan tossed the phone to Special Agent Price-O'Day.

"Good news?" she asked.

"Yep." Ryan nodded and walked into the conference room.

"Mr. President." Sir Basil Charleston came up to him. The chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, he'd known Ryan longer than anyone else in the room had. One odd result of Ryan's path to the Presidency was that the people who knew him best were all spooks, mainly NATO ones, and these found themselves advising their chiefs of government on how to deal with America. Sir Basil had served no less than five Prime Ministers of Her Majesty's Government, but now he was in rather a higher position than before.

"Bas, how are you?"

"Doing quite well, thank you. May I ask a question?"

"Sure." But I don't have to answer it, Jack's smile added in reply.

"Adler is in Moscow now. Can we know why?"

"How will your PM react to inviting Russia into NATO?"

That made Basil blink, Ryan saw. It wasn't often that you could catch this guy unawares. Instantly, his mind went into overdrive to a.n.a.lyze the new situation. "China?" he asked after about six seconds.

Jack nodded. "Yeah. We may have some problems there."

"Not going north, are they?"

"They're thinking about it," Ryan replied.

"How good is your information on that question?"

"You know about the Russian gold strike, right?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. President. Ivan's been b.l.o.o.d.y lucky on both scores."

"Our intel strike in Beijing is even better."

"Indeed?" Charleston observed, letting Jack know that the SIS had also been pretty much shut out there.

"Indeed, Bas. It's cla.s.s-A information, and it has us worried. We're hoping that pulling Russia into NATO can scare them off. Grushavoy just agreed on it. How do you suppose the rest of these folks will react to it?"

"They'll react cautiously, but favorably, after they've had a chance to consider it."

"Will Britain back us on this play?" Ryan asked.

"I must speak with the PM. I'll let you know." With that, Sir Basil walked over to where the British Prime Minister was chatting with the German Foreign Minister. Charleston dragged him off and spoke quietly into his ear. Instantly, the Prime Minister's eyes, flaring a little wide, shot over to Ryan. The British PM was somewhat trapped, somewhat unpleasantly because of the surprise factor, but the substance of the trap was that Britain and America always supported each other. The "special relationship" was as alive and well today as it had been under the governments of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. It was one of the few constants in the diplomatic world for both countries, and it belied Kissinger's dictum that great nations didn't have friendships, but rather interests. Perhaps it was the exception proving the rule, but if so, exception it was. Both Britain and America would hurl themselves in front of a train for the other. The fact that in England, President Ryan was Sir John Ryan, KCVO, made the alliance even more firm. In acknowledgment of that, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom walked over to the American chief of state.

"Jack, will you let us in on this development?"

"Insofar as I can. I may give Basil a little more on the side, but, yeah, Tony, this is for real, and we're d.a.m.ned worried about it."

"The gold and the oil?" the PM asked.

"They seem to think they're in an economic box. They're just about out of hard currency, and they're hurting for oil and wheat."

"You can't make an arrangement for that?"

"After what they did? Congress would hang me from the nearest lamppost."

"Quite," the Brit had to agree. BBC had run its own news miniseries on human rights in the PRC, and the Chinese hadn't come off very well. Indeed, despising China was the new European sport, which hadn't helped their foreign-currency holdings at all. As China had trapped themselves, so the Western nations had been perversely co-opted into building the wall. The citizens of these democracies wouldn't stand for economic or trade concessions any more than the Chinese Politburo could see its way to making the political sort. "Rather like Greek tragedy, isn't it, Jack?"

"Yeah, Tony, and our tragic flaw is adherence to human rights. h.e.l.l of a situation, isn't it?"

"And you're hoping that bringing Russia into NATO will give them pause?"

"If there's a better card to play, I haven't seen it in my deck, man."

"How set are they on the path?"

"Unknown. Our intelligence on this is very good, but we have to be careful making use of it. It could get people killed, and deny us the information we need."

"Like our chap Penkovskiy in the 1960s." One thing about Sir Basil, he knew how to educate his bosses on how the business of intelligence worked.

Ryan nodded, then proceeded with a little of his own disinformation. It was business, and Basil would understand: "Exactly. I can't have that man's life on my conscience, Tony, and so I have to treat this information very carefully."

"Quite so, Jack. I understand fully."

"Will you support us on this?"

The PM nodded at once. "Yes, old boy, we must, mustn't we?"

"Thanks, pal." Ryan patted him on the shoulder.

CHAPTER 44.

The Shape of a New World Order It took all day, lengthening what was supposed to have been a pro forma meeting of the NATO chiefs into a minor marathon. It took all of Scott Adler's powers of persuasion to smooth things over with the various foreign ministers, but with the a.s.sistance of Britain, whose diplomacy had always been of the Rolls-Royce cla.s.s, after four hours there was a head-nod-and-handshake agreement, and the diplomatic technicians were sent off to prepare the doc.u.ments. All this was accomplished behind closed doors, with no opportunity for a press leak, and so when the various government leaders made it outside, the media learned of it like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. What they did not learn was the real reason for the action. They were told it had to do with the new economic promise in the Russian Federation, which seemed reasonable enough, and when you came down to it, was the root cause in any case.

In fact most of the NATO partners didn't know the whole story, either. The new American intelligence was directly shared only with Britain, though France and Germany were given some indications of America's cause for concern. For the rest, the simple logic of the situation was enough to offer appeal. It would look good in the press, and for most politicians all over the world, that was sufficient to make them doff their clothes and run about a public square naked. Secretary Adler cautioned his President about the dangers of drawing sovereign nations into treaty obligations without telling them all the reasons behind them, but even he agreed that there was little other choice in the matter. Besides, there was a built-in escape clause that the media wouldn't see at first, and hopefully, neither would the Chinese.

The media got the story out in time for the evening news broadcasts in America and the late-night ones in Europe, and the TV cameras showed the arrival of the various VIPs at the official dinner in Warsaw.

"I owe you one, Tony," Ryan told the British Prime Minister with a salute of his winegla.s.s. The white wine was French, from the Loire Valley, and excellent. The hard liquor of the night had been an equally fine Polish vodka.

"Well, one can hope that it gives our Chinese friends pause. When will Grushavoy arrive?"

"Tomorrow afternoon, followed by more drinking. Vodka again, I suppose." The doc.u.ments were being printed up at this very moment, and then would be bound in fine leather, as such important doc.u.ments invariably were, after which they'd be tucked away in various dusty bas.e.m.e.nt archives, rarely to be seen by the eyes of men again.

"Basil tells me that your intelligence information is unusually good, and rather frightening," the PM observed, with a sip of his own.

"It is all of that, my friend. You know, we're supposed to think that this war business is a thing of the past."

"So they thought a hundred years ago, Jack. It didn't quite work out that way, did it?"

"True, but that was then, and this is now. And the world really has changed in the past hundred years."

"I hope that is a matter of some comfort to Franz Ferdinand, and the ten million or so chaps who died as an indirect result of his demise, not to mention Act Two of the Great European Civil War," the Prime Minister observed.

"Yeah, day after tomorrow, I'm going down to Auschwitz. That ought to be fun." Ryan didn't really want to go, but he figured it was something of an obligation under the circ.u.mstances, and besides, Arnie thought it would look good on TV, which was why he did a lot of the things he did.

"Do watch out for the ghosts, old boy. I should think there are a number of them there."

"I'll let you know," Ryan promised. Would it be like d.i.c.kens's A Christmas Carol? he wondered. The ghost of horrors past, accompanied by the ghost of horrors present, and finally the ghost of horrors yet to be? But he was in the business of preventing such things. That's what the people of his country paid him for. Maybe $250,000 a year wasn't much for a guy who'd twice made a good living in the trading business, but it was a d.a.m.ned sight more than most of the taxpayers made, and they gave it to him in return for his work. That made the obligation as sacred as a vow sworn to G.o.d's own face. Auschwitz had happened because other men hadn't recognized their obligation to the people whom they had been supposed to serve. Or something like that. Ryan had never quite made the leap of imagination necessary to understand the thought processes of dictators. Maybe Caligula had really figured that the lives of the Roman people were his possessions to use and discard like peanut sh.e.l.ls. Maybe Hitler had thought that the German people existed only to serve his ambition to enter the history books-and if so, sure enough it had happened, just not quite the way he'd hoped it would. Jack Ryan knew objectively that he'd be in various history books, but he tried to avoid thinking about what future generations would make of him. Just surviving in his job from day to day was difficult enough. The problem with history was that you couldn't transport yourself into the future so that you could look back with detachment and see what the h.e.l.l you were supposed to do. No, making history was a d.a.m.ned sight harder than studying it, and so he'd decided to avoid thinking about it altogether. He wouldn't be around to know what the future thought anyway, so there was no sense in worrying about it, was there? He had his own conscience to keep him awake at night, and that was hard enough.

Looking around the room, he could see the chiefs of government of more than fifteen countries, from little Iceland to the Netherlands to Turkey. He was President of the United States of America, by far the largest and most powerful country of the NATO alliance-until tomorrow, anyway, he corrected himself-and he wanted to take them all aside and ask each one how the h.e.l.l he (they were all men at the moment) reconciled his self and his duties. How did you do the job honorably? How did you look after the needs of every citizen? Ryan knew that he couldn't reasonably expect to be universally loved. Arnie had told him that-that he only needed to be liked, not loved, by half-plus-one of the voters in America-but there had to be more to the job than that, didn't there? He knew all of his fellow chief executives by name and sight, and he'd been briefed in on each man's character. That one there, he had a mistress only nineteen years old. That one drank like a fish. That one had a little confusion about his s.e.xual preference. And that one was a crook who'd enriched himself hugely on the government payroll. But they were all allies of his country, and therefore they were officially his friends. And so Jack had to ignore what he knew of them and treat them like what they appeared to be rather than what they really were, and the really funny part of that was that they felt themselves to be his superiors because they were better politicians than he was. And the funniest part of all was that they were right. They were better politicians than he was, Ryan thought, sipping his wine. The British Prime Minister walked off to see his Norwegian counterpart, as Cathy Ryan rejoined her husband.