"If I'm wrong, Mr. Edwards, then we ought to throw this hundred thousand dollars worth of electronic equipment in the trash and hire a gypsy with a crystal ball." The technician looked ashamed. "I'm really sorry, sir, I shouldn't have run my mouth, but what I meant was-"

"Don't worry about it," the retired CIA man said brusquely. "I got what I need."

"The ID all checks out, Mr. President. Bunch of prints on the credit cards and other things inside the wallet, some Blair's, some unknown. Probably store clerks, things like that. Judge Potter's are on the outside." "Can you tell us anything else, Alex?" Neumann glanced at CIA Director George Cowan, Hap Edwards, then back to the President.

"Only things that didn't happen, sir. Wilson Blair didn't get drowned somewhere with his clothes on, or get his wallet soaked in his own blood. His wallet didn't spend any time exposed to unusual environmental conditions, like a PCP lab, or a coke-processing plant. And there's nothing we can use as a lead inside the badge case or the wallet. No scraps of paper with phone numbers on them, receipts, or anything like that."

"Mr. President," George Cowan said, "our only link to the terrorists is Potter. Can't you persuade the Judge to tell us what he knows of this Jones character?"

"As part of his role in these negotiations, Judge Potter promised to keep any personal information about Jones confidential. Frankly, I don't think Jones told him anything of use."

"He told him something, Mr. President," Cowan said immediately. "And he knows what he looks like. If we knew what was in Potter's head, we could find this guy and squeeze him. We'd have the names of the people who are behind this."

"Harry gave his word. He's not going to go back on it."

"I could find out what he knows, Mr. President," Hap Edwards said without a trace of inflection. The President's jaw dropped and his head snapped around to face the former head of the CIA's Center For Counter-Terrorism.

"Are you implying that I should authorize the torture of a retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?" Hap Edwards stared at the President without saying a word. The President squinted and a horrible parody of a smile appeared on his face. "Aren't you afraid his heart would give out, Mr. Edwards?" he said in the most caustic tone he could muster.

"I'd keep it going long enough," Edwards said softly.

"You're excused from these proceedings, Mr. Edwards. Get out of this room." Hap Edwards shrugged, and then he left without another word.

"Hap Edwards offered to torture you to get information on this Jones person, Harry," the President said without preamble. "It was the most offensive thing I have encountered since I took office. And the most surprising. I think Hap Edwards is a certifiable psychopa-Harry!" he said suddenly. "Why on earth are you smiling?" The President was horrified.

"You may have been surprised, Mr. President, but at least one person will not be, when I tell him. That was exactly what our Mr. Jones told me I could expect, when he asked if I was sure I wanted to be the liaison on these negotiations. I, too, thought the possibility ludicrous." Potter's face took on an expression that was hard to read.

"You know, Mr. President, for nine years, during the entire American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lived in Paris. Think about that for a moment. The British never kidnapped him and tortured him to see what he knew. I mentioned this to Mr. Jones, after he said he would contact me only by phone from now on, to protect his safety. He laughed. He laughed and he reminded me that Franklin had a penchant for pleasures of the flesh.

"You know what Jones said then? 'Judge, today Hap Edwards would have Ben Franklin in a honey trap before his bags were unpacked. If that didn't work, Hap would hook him up to a field generator and give him a new education on electricity, beyond what he learned with his kite and his brass key.'" The Judge's face turned utterly serious.

"These...terrorists," Potter said, his voice indicating he was not entirely comfortable with the word, "often seem to know more about our people than we do, Mr. President. I find that more and more disturbing." "As do I."

"Jones also told me this wasn't about guns, it was about everything. I thought he meant the dead EPA director, but he mentioned our current seizure laws and told me to research an incident he called the 'Battle of Athens', in 1946 in Tennessee."

"I've never heard of it."

"Neither had I, but our Library of Congress has. There's a book, now out of print, that tells all about it." "Tell me," the President said.

"McMinn County, in Tennessee, between Knoxville and Chattanooga. In the late 1930s and up through the Second World War, the local government got more and more corrupt. The Sheriff's Department was financed by fines. Speeding, public drunkenness, that sort of thing. I guess I don't need to tell you what an incentive that was for false arrest."

"Our expanding seizure laws?"

"It's a good parallel," Potter agreed. "At any rate, both parties were fixing local elections and stuffing ballot boxes, but this was during the Roosevelt Administration, so the Democrats were better at it than the Republicans. The sheriff from '36 to '42 was a man named Cantrell. He became a state senator in '42, saw he couldn't win again in '46, so he decided to run against the incumbent sheriff, a man named Mansfield, I believe it was. Elections were held in the town of Athens.

"Only problem was that there were now three thousand ex-GIs in Athens, back from the war. A quarter of the registered voters. They'd had recent experience with dictators, and they held both Mansfield and Cantrell responsible for the police policy of false arrests, beatings while in custody, bribe-taking, and vote fraud. They ran an all-GI, nonpartisan ticket for the local political offices, and they promised a fair election with no vote fraud." Potter drew a breath and collected his thoughts.

"On election day, the sitting sheriff deputized two hundred of his cronies, issued them guns, and told them to help him out. They wouldn't let the blacks vote, and they shot one black man who wouldn't back down. They held guns on the ex-GIs who insisted on observing the count, and took the ballot boxes into the jail. Wouldn't let anyone watch. They shot people who came near the building."

"Oh, shit."

"Exactly. The GIs weren't having any of that. They got guns from the Guard armory and pinned down the deputies inside the jail. Finally dynamited the jail's porch, and the deputies panicked and surrendered. Gave up the ballots, which were then counted in front of everyone, and Mansfield and Cantrell were both defeated. The police who fled the town were replaced, and the newly elected officials accepted a pay limit."

"Where was the Governor when all this was going on?"

"He mobilized the State Guard, but a lot of those men were ex-service. He held off on sending them to Athens. The Guardsmen might have agreed with what the GIs were doing and joined them." "Jones knew about this obscure bit of history..." The President said. "Might he have come from the area?" Potter shook his head.

"It's not obscure any more. Just about everyone in the gun culture knows all about it. Jay Simkin, a researcher for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership-thai Milwaukee group Alex Neumann mentioned the other day? Simkin dug up the history and did a detailed piece in JPFO's newspaper in January of 1995. Spelled out exactly what happened."

"Our old friends," the President sighed. "Do they really have that big a circulation?" Potter shrugged.

"Big enough, and getting bigger every day. They sell reprints, and apparently you see them everywhere that gun people gather. Along with the reprint comes a list of questions that police and other public servants have to answer under the Privacy Act of 1974. Recommended for when the police ask for citizens' help." The President closed his eyes but said nothing.

"Oh, and then later that year, Simkin did a shorter piece on the 'Battle of Athens' for Soldier of Fortune, which has a lot of readers. Then a two page treatment on it ran in the October 1995 issue of Guns and Ammo magazine. They're part of the Petersen Group and they have a huge circulation." Potter watched as the President rubbed his temples. There were a few moments of complete silence, and then Potter took a deep breath.

"They'll be listening for notice of your agreement tomorrow, on the radio, Mr. President. Are you sure you want to turn them down?" It was the closest that Hanison Potter had ever come to verbally questioning the President's judgment.

"I can't accede to what they're demanding, Harry," the President said. "I just can't. We'll have to wait for Jones to call you, and carry on from there."

Harrison Potter thought of the conversation he'd had with the President only two days before, about how the issues involved had gone beyond ones based on the Second Amendment. Potter feared that very soon it was not going to matter what demands the President agreed to; it would be too late.

The old man also knew, however, that he had already pushed as hard as he dared. Further suggestions would have to wait for another time.

Sitting in the hotel room with the radio on, Cindy Caswell looked again at her watch. It was time. She listened to the radio for another twenty minutes, but the innocuous news message she had been told might be broadcast at ten minutes past the hour never came on. Cindy switched the radio off and left the room. Fifteen minutes later she was at a pay phone three blocks away, punching a number in Ohio onto the keypad. She fed a fistful of quarters into the instrument and waited.

"Hello?" came Allen Kane's voice after the third ring.

"They didn't go for it. You're on."

"Got it," Allen said, and broke the connection.

Arnold Katzenbaum, the retired U.S. Senator from Ohio, had reached the age where just getting around was an effort, but he still took a short walk every night. He reached the corner of the block and had just turned around to head back to his house when a shiny late-model Ford Crown Victoria pulled up across from him on the other side of the street.

"Sir, I'm lost," the driver said in a voice that indicated some kind of childhood speech impediment, not quite overcome. He was dressed in a business suit and held a map in front of him. Katzenbaum saw the frustrated look on the man's face. The retired Senator glanced both ways, then stepped out into the street and walked over to the driver's window.

"Can you show me where I am?" the man asked, turning the map towards the window but holding it inside the car so they could both see it. Katzenbaum peered at the map. He barely had to lean over, for he had severe curvature of the spine.

"Let's see," he said, reaching his right arm through the window to touch the paper with a gnarled finger. "Right here is, uh-"

Katzenbaum's words turned into a grunt of pain as the driver grabbed the Senator's wrist and pinned it to the inside of the door panel. Allen Kane took his foot off the brake and pushed the accelerator down about halfway. The sedan accelerated almost noiselessly down the suburban street. The speedometer was passing through 45 MPH when Allen heard something pop inside the old man's shoulder as his frail body flopped helplessly against the side of the car.

Allen made a slight steering correction with his right hand, and let go of Katzenbaum's wrist with his left just as the speedometer touched 60 MPH. He had been prepared to smash the man in the face with his left elbow, but that had not been necessary. Under the best of conditions Arnold Katzenbaum would not have been able to hold on to the speeding car for very long, and with a dislocated shoulder, it was hopeless. Katzenbaum tumbled eighty-seven feet before his body came to rest in the gutter. When it did, his limbs, head, and spine were all at odd angles.

Allen Kane let off the accelerator, checked his rearview mirror, and continued on his way at a more sedate 30 MPH.

The National Guard helicopter lay silently on the limestone floor of Henry Bowman's quarry pit. The pit had never been stocked, so no fish lived there, and there were no underwater currents to move the wreckage. After two weeks, however, the bodies of the four men trapped in the twisted hulk had begun to decompose. The methane gas made the corpses buoyant, enough so that the wreckage began to tilt slightly from where it had settled, until the opening in the fuselage faced up towards the surface. One of the bodies was not belted or wedged in place. It was the ATF agent who had broken his back and drowned while trying to get out of the sinking helicopter. His corpse floated out the opening and slowly rose to the surface, where the bloated skin glistened ripely in the moonlight.

"Hello?"

"Judge Potter? This is Jones. I have a message for the President. I don't know what it means, but my clients seem to believe he will be able to make some sense of it. Have you a pen?"

"Go ahead, Mr. Jones."

"The message is, 'Step one: Reverse the order. Step two: Add three to each of the first four digits. Step three: Add one to each of the last five digits.' That's the instructions, then there's three words: 'Just like Nuremberg.' And that's all."

"As in the war crimes trial?"

"Exactly." Ray listened as Judge Potter repeated the instructions back to him. "That's it," Ray said. "Plan on hearing from me again in about three weeks." Ray broke the connection.

"It's Arnold Katzenbaum's Social Security number, Mr. President," Alex Neumann said grimly. "The retired Senator from Ohio?" Both the President and Alex Neumann were well aware that Senator Katzenbaum had pushed for every antigun bill that had ever been mentioned in the Senate. "That's right, sir. He was pronounced dead at 12:31 this morning, Central time." The President closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

"How was he killed?" he asked.

"We're not sure. His body was found three blocks from his house, in the middle of the street. Emergency room techs all say he looked like one of the real bad one-vehicle motorcycle accidents they get every once in a while. Both arms and legs broken, neck broken, severe road rash, and a whole bunch of internal injuries, any one of which by itself would have killed him. They said part of his spine was actually sticking out through the skin on his back." Neumann paused. Got to stay professional here he thought.

"The theory, at least for now, is that he was thrown out of the back of a pickup truck. Guys on the scene said it looked like he tumbled close to a hundred feet. They say the truck must have been going close to 70 MPH."

"Was he alive when it happened?"

"Yes, sir. They tell me there's no doubt about that. The other bad news is on the phone call. Our equipment traced it instantly, but it originated at a bulk wholesaler in New York."

"Explain that." He's going to love this one Neumann thought.

"A company buys phone time in bulk. They resell it in blocks with different access codes for each block. The end user calls the company's 800 number, punches in this access code, then the number he wants to reach. The call is actually made by the equipment at the bulk wholesaler's facility. The person placing the call could be five states away, at a pay phone."

"Can't you get the name of the customer who has that access code from the company?" the President asked in a voice that showed his irritation.

"That's just it sir, we can't. The company couldn't give them to us if they wanted to-they don't have them. You see, what they do, they print up a paper card with a twelve-digit access code on it, and seal it in an opaque wrapper like a candy bar. The wrapper lists how much air time the card inside is good for. Twentyfive minutes is common, and that would retail for fifty dollars. The company wholesales bunches of these wrapped cards to retail chains, just like boxes of candy bars, at half that. Guy walks in off the street, at a drugstore or a QuikTrip, he buys phone privacy for two dollars a minute. After he's used his access code for twenty-five minutes, or whatever the card was good for, his call gets terminated by the company's computer. The company never uses that access code again. Using twelve digits, they could print a billion cards without using the same access code."

"There's that big a market for long distance service at two dollars a minute?" the President asked. Neumann shrugged.

"Yeah, for people who don't like to have their calls traced. I'd pay a lot more than that to keep Hap Edwards away from my door, sir." Neumann immediately regretted making the comment, but the President did not give any appearance of having heard it.

"I'm beginning to wish I hadn't cut the reward to half of what you recommended, Alex." "I'm not sure that's the problem, Mr. President," Neumann said uncertainly. If they won't take fifty million Neumann was thinking, they probably aren't human.

"Arnold Katzenbaum was killed last night," the President announced to the assembled members of the task force, "in a most horrible manner. And this event bears directly on the job we are doing here." He went on to explain the details of what had happened, without mentioning Harrison Potter's meeting with the socalled Mr. Jones, or the coded number that showed the murder had been carefully planned.

"I bring this up now because the FBI has strong evidence to indicate that this killing was premeditated, and done personally by the core group of terrorists who have been fomenting this...rebellion." "I knew Arnold Katzenbaum," Ohio Congressman Bane said. "What evidence does the FBI have?"