"I've never seen this before. The Vikings fans are planning a convoy ... over a thousand cars and buses. d.a.m.n," he noted. "That'll screw the roads up." He turned to see the extended weather forecast.

"What do you mean?"

"They have to come down 1-76 to get to Denver. That might mess things up some. We want to arrive about noon, maybe a little later ... about the same time the convoy is supposed to arrive...."

"Convoy-what do you mean? Convoy defending against what?" Qati asked.

"Not a real convoy," Russell explained. "More like a, uh, a motorcade. The fans from Minnesota have a big deal laid on. Tell you what, let's get a motel room for us. One close to the airport. When's our flight?" He paused. "Jesus, I really haven't been thinking very clear, have I?"

"What do you mean?" Ghosn asked again.

"Weather," Russell replied. "This is Colorado, and it is January. What if we get another snowstorm?" He scanned the page. Uh-oh Uh-oh ... ...

"For driving, you mean?"

"That's right. Look, what we ought to do is get rooms reserved, one of the motels right by the airport, say. We can go down the night before ... or I'll get the rooms for two-no, three nights, so there won't be any suspicion. Christ, I hope there's vacancies." Russell walked to the phone and flipped open the Yellow Pages right next to it. It took him four tries to find a room with twin doubles in a little independent place a mile from the airport. This he had to guarantee with a credit card that he'd managed not to use until now. He didn't like having to do that. One more bit of paper for his trail.

"Good morning, Liz." Ryan walked into the office and sat down. "How are you today?"

The National Security Advisor didn't like being baited any more than the next person. She'd had a little battle with this b.a.s.t.a.r.d's wife-in front of reporters!-and taken her lumps publicly. Whether Ryan had had anything to do with it or not, he must have had a good laugh about it last night. Worse than that, what that skinny little b.i.t.c.h had said also went after Bob Fowler, didn't it? The President had thought so on being told last night.

"You ready for the brief?"

"Sure am."

"Come on." She'd let Bob handle this.

Helen D'Agustino watched the two officials enter the Oval Office. She'd heard the story, of course. A Secret Service agent had heard the whole thing, and the vicious putdown administered to Dr. Elliot had already been the subject of a few discreet chuckles.

"Good morning, Mr. President," she heard Ryan say as the door closed.

"Morning, Ryan. Okay, let's hear it."

"Sir, what we plan to do is actually fairly simple. Two CIA officers will be in Mexico, at the airport, covered as airline maintenance personnel. They'll do the normal stuff, emptying ashtrays, cleaning the johns. Before they leave they will place fresh flower arrangements in the upstairs lounge. Concealed in the arrangements will be microphones like this one." Ryan pulled the plastic spike from his pocket and handed it over. "These will transmit what they pick up to a second transmitter, concealed in a bottle. That device will broadcast a multichannel EHF-that's extremely high frequency-signal out of the aircraft. A series of three other aircraft will fly parallel courses with the 747 to receive that signal. An additional receiver with a tape recorder attached will be concealed on the 747, both as a backup to the air-to-air links and as a cover for the operation. If it's located, the bugs will seem to be something done by the news people accompanying the Prime Minister. We don't expect that, of course. We'll have people at Dulles to recover our gadgets. In either case, the electronic transmission will be processed and the transcripts presented to you a few hours after the aircraft lands." "Very well. What are the chances for success?" Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm asked. He had to be there, of course. This was more an exercise in politics than statecraft. The downside political risk was serious, just as the reward for success would be more than noteworthy.

"Sir, there are no guarantees for operations of this kind. If something is said, it is likely that we'll know what it is, but he might not even discuss the matter at all. The equipment has all been tested. It works. The field officer running this operation is well experienced. He's done touchy ones before."

"Like?" van Damm asked.

"Like getting Gerasimov's wife and daughter out a few years ago." Ryan explained on for a minute or so.

"Is the operation worth the risk?" Fowler asked.

That surprised Ryan quite a bit. "Sir, that decision is yours to make."

"But I asked you for an opinion."

"Yes, Mr. President, it is. The take we've been getting from NIITAKA shows a considerable degree of arrogance on their part. Something like this might have the net effect of shocking them into playing honest ball with us."

"You approve of our policy of dealing with j.a.pan?" van Damm asked, just as surprised as Ryan had been a moment earlier.

"My approval or disapproval is beside the point, but the answer to your question is, yes."

The Chief of Staff was openly amazed. "But the previous administration-how come you never told us?"

"You never asked, Arnie. I don't make government policy, remember? I'm a spook. I do what you tell me to do, as long as it's legal."

"You're satisfied on the legality of the operation?" Fowler asked with a barely suppressed smile.

"Mr. President, you're the lawyer, not me. If I do not know the legal technicalities-and I don't-I must a.s.sume that you, as an officer of the court, are not ordering me to break the law."

"That's the best dance number I've seen since the Kirov Ballet was in Kennedy Center last summer," van Damm observed with a laugh.

"Ryan, you know all the moves. You have my approval," Fowler said after a brief pause. "If we get what we expect, then what?"

"We have to go over that with the State Department guys," Liz Elliot announced.

"That is potentially dangerous," Ryan observed. "The j.a.panese have been hiring a lot of the people from the trade-negotiation section. We have to a.s.sume that they have people inside."

"Commercial espionage?" Fowler asked.

"Sure, why not? NIITAKA has never given us hard evidence of that, but if I were a bureaucrat looking to leave government service and make half a mill' a year representing them-like a lot of them do-how would I present myself to them as a potentially valuable a.s.set? I'd do it the same way a Soviet official or spook presents bonafides to us. You deliver something juicy up-front. That's illegal, but we're not devoting any a.s.sets to looking at the problem. For that reason, wide dissemination of the information from this operation is very dangerous. Obviously you'll want the opinion of Secretary Talbot and a few others, but I'd be really careful how much farther you spread it. Also, remember that if you tell the PM that you know what he said-and if he knows he only said it in one place-you run the risk of compromising this intelligence-gathering technique." The President accepted that without anything more than a raised eyebrow.

"Make it look like a leak in Mexico?" van Damm asked.

"That's the obvious ploy," Ryan agreed.

"And if I confront him with it directly?" Fowler asked.

"Kind of hard to beat a straight flush, Mr. President. And if this were ever to leak, Congress would go ballistic. That's one of my problems. I'm required to discuss this operation with A1 Trent and Sam Fellows. Sam will play ball, but A1 has political reasons to dislike the j.a.panese."

"I could order you not to tell him...."

"Sir, that's one law I may not break for any reason."

"I might have to give you that order," Fowler observed.

Ryan was surprised again. Both he and the President knew what the consequences of that order would be. Just what Cathy had in mind. It might, in fact, be a fine excuse to leave government service.

"Well, maybe that won't be necessary. I'm tired of playing patty-cake with these people. They made an agreement, and they're going to keep it or have to deal with a very irate president. Worse than that, the idea that someone can suborn the president of a country in so venal a way is contemptible. G.o.dd.a.m.n it! I hate corruption."

"Right on, boss," van Damm commented. "Besides, the voters will like it."

"That b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Fowler went on after a moment. Ryan couldn't tell how much of this was real and how much feigned. "He tells me he's coming over to work out a few details, get acquainted some more, and what he's really planning is to welsh on a deal. Well, we'll see about that. I guess it's time he learned about hardball." The discourse stopped. "Ryan, I missed you last night."

"My wife got a headache, sir. Had to leave. Sorry."

"Feeling all right now?"

"Yes, sir, thank you."

"Turn your people loose."

Ryan stood. "Will do, Mr. President."

Van Damm followed him out and walked him to the West Entrance. "Nice job, Jack."

"Gee, they going to start liking me?" Jack asked wryly. The meeting had gone much too well.

"I don't know what happened last night, but Liz is really p.i.s.sed at your wife."

"They talked about something, but I don't know what."

"Jack, you want it straight?" van Damm asked.

Ryan knew that the friendly walk to the door was just too convenient, and the symbolism was explicit enough, wasn't it? "When, Arnie?"

"I'd like to say it's just business and not personal, but it is personal. I'm sorry, Jack, but it happens. The President will give you a glowing sendoff."

"Nice of him," Jack replied matter-of-factly.

"I tried, Jack. You know I like you. These things happen."

"I'll go quietly. But-"

"I know. No back-shots on the way out or after you're gone. You'll be asked in periodically, maybe draw some special missions, liaison stuff. You get an honorable discharge. On that, Jack, you have my word of honor, and the President's. He's not a bad guy, Jack, really he isn't. He's a tough-minded son of a b.i.t.c.h and a good politician, but he's as honest as any man I know. It's just that your way of thinking and his way of thinking are different-and he's the President."

Jack could have said that the mark of intellectual honesty is the solicitation of opposing points of view. Instead he said, "Like I said, I'll go quietly. I've been doing this long enough. It's time to relax a little, smell the roses and play with the kids."

"Good man." Van Damm patted his arm. "You bring this job off and your going-away statement from the Boss will sparkle. We'll have Callie Weston write it, even."

"You stroke like a pro, Arnie." Ryan shook his hand and walked off to his car. Van Damm would have been surprised to see the smile on his face.

"Do you have to do it that way?"

"Elizabeth, ideological differences notwithstanding, he has served his country well. I disagree with him on a lot of things, but he's never lied to me, and he's always tried to give me good advice," Fowler replied, looking at the plastic-stick microphone. He suddenly wondered if it was working.

"I told told you what happened last night." you what happened last night."

"You got your wish. He's on the way out. At this level you do not throw people out the door. You do it in a civilized and honorable way. Anything else is small-minded and decidedly stupid politically. I agree with you that he's a dinosaur, but even dinosaurs get a nice spot in the museums."

"But-"

"That's all. Okay, you had words with his wife last night. I'm sorry about that, but what kind of person penalizes someone for what their wife did?"

"Bob, I have a right to expect your support!"

Fowler didn't like that, but responded reasonably. "And you have it, Elizabeth. Now, this is neither the time nor the place for this sort of discussion."

Marcus Cabot arrived at Andrews Air Force Base just after lunch for his flight to Korea. The arrangements were more luxurious than they looked. The aircraft was a U.S. Air Force C-141B Starlifter, an aircraft with four engines and an oddly serpentlike fuselage. Loaded into the cargo area, he saw, was essentially a house trailer complete with kitchen, living and bed rooms. It was also heavily insulated-the C-141 is a noisy aircraft, especially aft. He went out the front door to meet the flight crew. The pilot, he saw, was a blond captain of thirty years. There were, in fact, two complete flight crews. The flight would be long, with a fueling stop at Travis Air Force Base in California, followed by three midair "tankings" over the Pacific. It would also be singularly boring, and he would sleep through it as much as possible. He wondered if government service was really worth it, and the knowledge that Ryan would soon be gone-Arnold van Damm had gotten the word to him-didn't improve his outlook. The Director of Central Intelligence strapped himself in and started to read through his briefing doc.u.ments. An Air Force noncom offered him a gla.s.s of wine, which he started on as the aircraft taxied off the ramp.

John Clark and Domingo Chavez boarded their own flight later that afternoon for Mexico City. It was better, the senior man thought, to get settled in and acclimated. Mexico City was yet another high-alt.i.tude metropolis whose thin air was made all the worse by air pollution. Their mission gear was carefully packed away, and they expected no trouble with customs clearance. Neither carried a weapon, of course, as this sort of mission did not require it.

The truck pulled off the Interstate exactly thirty-eight hours and forty minutes after leaving the cargo terminal at Norfolk. That was the easy part. It took fifteen minutes and all the driver's skill to back his rig up to the concrete loading dock outside the barn. A warm sun had thawed the ground into a six-inch-deep layer of gooey mud that almost prevented him from completing the maneuver, but on the third try he made it. The driver jumped down and walked back toward the dock.

"How do you open this thing?" Russell asked.

"I'll show you." The driver paused to sc.r.a.pe the mud off his boots, then worked the latch on the container. "Need help unloading?"

"No, I'll do it myself. There's coffee over in the house."

"Thank you, sir. I could use a cup."

"Well, that was easy enough," Russell said to Qati as they watched the man go away. Marvin opened the doors and saw a single large box with Sony Sony printed on all four sides, along with arrows to show which side was up, and the image of a champagne gla.s.s to tell the illiterate it was delicate. It was also sitting on a wooden pallet. Marvin removed the fasteners that held it in place, then fired up the forklift. The task of removing the bomb and putting it inside the barn was completed in another minute. Russell shut the forklift down, then draped a tarp over the box. By the time the trucker came back, the cargo box was again closed. printed on all four sides, along with arrows to show which side was up, and the image of a champagne gla.s.s to tell the illiterate it was delicate. It was also sitting on a wooden pallet. Marvin removed the fasteners that held it in place, then fired up the forklift. The task of removing the bomb and putting it inside the barn was completed in another minute. Russell shut the forklift down, then draped a tarp over the box. By the time the trucker came back, the cargo box was again closed.

"Well, you got your bonus," Marvin told him, handing over the cash.

The driver riffled through the bills. Now he got to drive the box back to Norfolk, but first he'd hit the nearest truck stop for eight hours of sleep. "A pleasure doing business with you, sir. You said you might have another job for me in a month or so?"

"That's right."

"Here's how you reach me." The trucker handed over his card.

"Heading right back?"

"After I get some sack time. I just heard on the radio there's snow coming tomorrow night. A big one, they say."

"That time of year, isn't it?"