The metal pier is dry and cold, the temperature hovering close to zero degrees Fahrenheit. It's oppressively dark in the cavern under the ice, and Roger shivers inside his multiple layers of insulation, shifts from foot to foot to keep warm. He has to swallow to keep his ears clear and he feels slightly dizzy from the pressure in the artificial bubble of air, pumped under the icy ceiling to allow humans to exist here, under the Ross Ice Shelf; they'll all spend more than a day sitting in depressurization chambers on the way back up to the surface.

There is no sound from the waters lapping just below the edge of the pier. The floodlights vanish into the surface and keep going-the water in the subsurface Antarctic lake is incredibly clear-but are swallowed up rapidly, giving an impression of infinite, inky depths.

Manfred is here as the colonel's representative, to observe the arrival of the probe, receive the consignment they're carrying, and report back that everything is running smoothly. The others try to ignore him, jittery at the presence of the man from DC. There're a gaggle of engineers and artificers, flown out via McMurdo Base to handle the midget sub's operations. A nervous lieutenant supervises a squad of Marines with complicated-looking weapons, half gun and half video camera, stationed at the corners of the raft. And there's the usual platform crew, deep-sea-rig-maintenance types-but subdued and nervous-looking. They're afloat in a bubble of pressurized air wedged against the underside of the Antarctic ice sheet: below them stretch the still, supercooled waters of Lake Vostok.

They're waiting for a rendezvous.

"Five hundred yards," reports one of the techs. "Rising on ten." His companion nods. They're waiting for the men in the midget sub drilling quietly through three miles of frigid water, intruders in a long-drowned tomb. "Have 'em back on board in no time." The sub has been away for nearly a day; it set out with enough battery juice for the journey, and enough air to keep the crew breathing for a long time if there's a system failure, but they've learned the hard way that fail-safe systems aren't. Not out here, at the edge of the human world.

Roger shuffles some more. "I was afraid the battery load on that cell you replaced would trip an undervoltage isolator and we'd be here 'til Hell freezes over," the sub driver jokes to his neighbor.

Looking round, Roger sees one of the Marines cross himself. "Have you heard anything from Gorman or Suslowicz?" he asks quietly.

The lieutenant checks his clipboard. "Not since departure, sir," he says. "We don't have comms with the sub while it's submerged: too small for ELF, and we don't want to alert anybody who might be, uh, listening."

"Indeed." The yellow hunchback shape of the midget submarine appears at the edge of the radiance shed by the floodlights. Surface waters undulate, oily, as the sub rises.

"Crew-transfer vehicle sighted," the driver mutters into his mike. He's suddenly very busy adjusting trim settings, blowing bottled air into ballast tanks, discussing ullage levels and blade count with his number two. The crane crew is busy too, running their long boom out over the lake.

The sub's hatch is visible now, bobbing along the top of the water: the lieutenant is suddenly active. "Jones! Civatti! Stake it out, left and center!" The crane is already swinging the huge lifting hook over the sub, waiting to bring it aboard. "I want eyeballs on the portholes before you crack this thing!" It's the tenth run-seventh manned-through the eye of the needle on the lake bed, the drowned structure so like an ancient temple, and Roger has a bad feeling about it. We can't get away with this forever, We can't get away with this forever, he reasons. he reasons. Sooner or later . . . Sooner or later . . .

The sub comes out of the water like a gigantic yellow bath toy, a cyborg whale designed by a god with a sense of humor. It takes tense minutes to winch it in and maneuver it safely onto the platform. Marines take up position, shining torches in through two of the portholes that bulge myopically from the smooth curve of the sub's nose. Up on top, someone is talking into a handset plugged into the stubby conning tower; the hatch locking wheel begins to turn.

"Gorman, sir." It's the lieutenant. In the light of the sodium floods, everything looks sallow and washed-out; the soldier's face is the color of damp cardboard, slack with relief.

Roger waits while the submariner-Gorman-clambers unsteadily down from the top deck. He's a tall, emaciated-looking man, wearing a red thermal suit three sizes too big for him: salt-and-pepper stubble textures his jaw with sandpaper. Right now, he looks like a cholera victim; sallow skin, smell of acrid ketones as his body eats its own protein reserves, a more revolting miasma hovering over him. There's a slim aluminum briefcase chained to his left wrist, a bracelet of bruises darkening the skin above it. Roger steps forward.

"Sir?" Gorman straightens up for a moment: almost a shadow of military attention. He's unable to sustain it. "We made the pickup. Here's the QA sample; the rest is down below. You have the unlocking code?" he asks wearily.

Jourgensen nods. "One. Five. Eight. One. Two. Two. Nine."

Gorman slowly dials it into a combination lock on the briefcase, lets it fall open and unthreads the chain from his wrist. Floodlights glisten on polythene bags stuffed with white powder, five kilos of high-grade heroin from the hills of Afghanistan; there's another quarter of a ton packed in boxes in the crew compartment. The lieutenant inspects it, closes the case, and passes it to Jourgensen. "Delivery successful, sir." From the ruins on the high plateau of the Taklamakan Desert to American territory in Antarctica, by way of a detour through gates linking alien worlds: gates that nobody knows how to create or destroy except the Predecessors-and they aren't talking.

"What's it like through there?" Roger demands, shoulders tense. "What did you see see?"

Up on top, Suslowicz is sitting in the sub's hatch, half-slumping against the crane's attachment post. There's obviously something very wrong with him. Gorman shakes his head and looks away: the wan light makes the razor-sharp creases on his face stand out, like the crackled and shattered surface of a Jovian moon. Crow's-feet. Wrinkles. Signs of age. Hair the color of moonlight. "It took so long," he says, almost complaining. Sinks to his knees. "All that time time we've been gone . . ." He leans against the side of the sub, a pale shadow, aged beyond his years. "The sun was so we've been gone . . ." He leans against the side of the sub, a pale shadow, aged beyond his years. "The sun was so bright bright. And our radiation detectors. Must have been a solar flare or something." He doubles over and retches at the edge of the platform.

Roger looks at him for a long, thoughtful minute: Gorman is twenty-five and a fixer for Big Black, early history in the Green Berets. He was in rude good health two days ago, when he set off through the gate to make the pickup. Roger glances at the lieutenant. "I'd better go and tell the colonel," he says. A pause. "Get these two back to Recovery and see they're looked after. I don't expect we'll be sending any more crews through Victor-Tango for a while."

He turns and walks toward the lift shaft, hands clasped behind his back to keep them from shaking. Behind him, alien moonlight glimmers across the floor of Lake Vostok, three miles and untold light-years from home.

GENERAL LEMAY WOULD BE PROUD

WARNING: The following briefing film is classified SECRET INDIGO MARCH SNIPE. If you do not have SECRET INDIGO MARCH SNIPE clearance, leave the auditorium now now and report to your unit security officer for debriefing. Failing to observe this notice is an imprisonable offense. and report to your unit security officer for debriefing. Failing to observe this notice is an imprisonable offense.

You have sixty seconds to comply.

VIDEO CLIP: Shot of huge bomber, rounded gun turrets sprouting like mushrooms from the decaying log of its fuselage, weirdly bulbous engine pods slung too far out toward each wingtip, four turbine tubes clumped around each atomic kernel.

VOICE-OVER: The Convair B-39 Peacemaker is the most formidable weapon in our Strategic Air Command's arsenal for peace. Powered by eight nuclear-heated Pratt & Whitney NP-4051 turbojets, it circles endlessly above the Arctic ice cap, waiting for the call. This is Item One, the flight training and test bird: twelve other birds await criticality on the ground, for once launched a B-39 can only be landed at two airfields in Alaska that are equipped to handle them. This one's been airborne for nine months so far, and shows no signs of age.

CUT TO: A shark the size of a Boeing 727 falls away from the open bomb bay of the monster. Stubby delta wings slice through the air, propelled by a rocket-bright glare.

VOICE-OVER: A modified Navajo missile-test article for an XK-PLUTO payload-dives away from a carrier plane. Unlike the real thing, this one carries no hydrogen bombs, no direct-cycle fission ramjet to bring retaliatory destruction to the enemy. Traveling at Mach 3, the XK-PLUTO will overfly enemy territory, dropping megaton-range bombs until, its payload exhausted, it seeks out and circles a final target. Once over the target it will eject its reactor core and rain molten plutonium on the heads of the enemy. XK-PLUTO is a total weapon: every aspect of its design, from the shock wave it creates as it hurtles along at treetop height to the structure of its atomic reactor, is designed to inflict damage.

CUT TO: Belsen postcards, Auschwitz movies: a holiday in Hell.

VOICE-OVER: This is why we need such a weapon. is why we need such a weapon. This This is what it deters. The abominations first raised by the Third Reich's Organization Todt, now removed to the Ukraine and deployed in the service of New Soviet Man, as our enemy calls himself. is what it deters. The abominations first raised by the Third Reich's Organization Todt, now removed to the Ukraine and deployed in the service of New Soviet Man, as our enemy calls himself.

CUT TO: A sinister grey concrete slab, the upper surface of a Mayan step pyramid built with East German cement. Barbed wire, guns. A drained canal slashes north from the base of the pyramid toward the Baltic coastline, relic of the installation process: this is where it came from. The slave barracks squat beside the pyramid like a horrible memorial to its black-uniformed builders.

CUT TO: The new resting place: a big concrete monolith surrounded by three concrete-lined lakes and a canal. It sits in the midst of a Ukraine landscape, flat as a pancake, stretching out forever in all directions.

VOICE-OVER: This is Project Koschei. The Kremlin's key to the gates of Hell . . .

TECHNOLOGY TASTER

"We know they first came here during the Precambrian age."

Professor Gould is busy with his viewgraphs, eyes down, trying not to pay too much attention to his audience. "We have samples of macrofauna, discovered by paleontologist Charles D. Walcott on his pioneering expeditions into the Canadian Rockies, near the eastern border of British Columbia"-a hand-drawing of something indescribably weird fetches up on the screen-"like this opabina opabina, which died there 640 million years ago. Fossils of soft-bodied animals that old are rare; the Burgess Shale deposits are the best record of the Precambrian fauna anyone has found to date."

A skinny woman with big hair and bigger shoulder pads sniffs loudly; she has no truck with these antediluvian dates. Roger winces sympathy for the academic. He'd rather she wasn't here, but somehow she got wind of the famous paleontologist's visit-and she's the colonel's administrative assistant. Telling her to leave would be a career-limiting move.

"The important item to note"-photograph of a mangled piece of rock, visual echoes of the opabina opabina-"is the tooth marks. We find them also-their exact cognates-on the ring segments of the Z-series specimens returned by the Pabodie Antarctic expedition of 1926. The world of the Precambrian was laid out differently from our own; most of the landmasses that today are separate continents were joined into one huge structure. Indeed, these samples were originally separated by only two thousand miles or thereabouts. Suggesting that they brought their own parasites with them."

"What do tooth marks tell us about them, that we need to know?" asks the colonel.

The doctor looks up. His eyes gleam. "That something liked to eat them when they were fresh." There's a brief rattle of laughter. "Something with jaws that open and close like the iris in your camera. Something we thought was extinct."

Another viewgraph, this time with a blurry underwater photograph on it. The thing looks a bit like a weird fish-a turbocharged, armored hagfish with side-skirts and spoilers, or maybe a squid with not enough tentacles. The upper head is a flattened disk, fronted by two bizarre fernlike tentacles drooping over the weird sucker mouth on its underside. "This snapshot was taken in Lake Vostok last year. It should be dead: there's nothing there for it to eat. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Anomalocaris Anomalocaris, our toothy chewer." He pauses for a moment. "I'm very grateful to you for showing it to me," he adds, "even though it's going to make a lot of my colleagues very angry."

Is that a shy grin? The professor moves on rapidly, not giving Roger a chance to fathom his real reaction. "Now this this is interesting in the extreme," Gould comments. Whatever it is, it looks like a cauliflower head, or maybe a brain: fractally branching stalks continuously diminishing in length and diameter, until they turn into an iridescent fuzzy manifold wrapped around a central stem. The base of the stem is rooted to a barrel-shaped structure that stands on four stubby tentacles. is interesting in the extreme," Gould comments. Whatever it is, it looks like a cauliflower head, or maybe a brain: fractally branching stalks continuously diminishing in length and diameter, until they turn into an iridescent fuzzy manifold wrapped around a central stem. The base of the stem is rooted to a barrel-shaped structure that stands on four stubby tentacles.

"We had somehow managed to cram Anomalocaris Anomalocaris into our taxonomy, but this is something that has no precedent. It bears a striking resemblance to an enlarged body segment of into our taxonomy, but this is something that has no precedent. It bears a striking resemblance to an enlarged body segment of Hallucigena Hallucigena"-here he shows another viewgraph, something like a stiletto-heeled centipede wearing a war bonnet of tentacles-"but a year ago we worked out that we had poor Hallucigena Hallucigena upside down, and it was actually just a spiny worm. And the high levels of iridium and diamond in the head here . . . This isn't a living creature, at least not within the animal kingdom I've been studying for the past thirty years. There's no cellular structure at all. I asked one of my colleagues for help, and they were completely unable to isolate any DNA or RNA from it at all. It's more like a machine that displays biological levels of complexity." upside down, and it was actually just a spiny worm. And the high levels of iridium and diamond in the head here . . . This isn't a living creature, at least not within the animal kingdom I've been studying for the past thirty years. There's no cellular structure at all. I asked one of my colleagues for help, and they were completely unable to isolate any DNA or RNA from it at all. It's more like a machine that displays biological levels of complexity."

"Can you put a date to it?" asks the colonel.

"Yup." The professor grins. "It predates the wave of atmospheric atomic testing that began in 1945; that's about all. We think it's from sometime in the first half of this century, last half of last century. It's been dead for years, but there are older people still walking this earth. In contrast"-he flips to the picture of Anomalocaris Anomalocaris-"this specimen we found in rocks that are roughly 610 million years old." He whips up another shot: similar structure, much clearer. "Note how similar it is to the dead but not decomposed one. They're obviously still alive somewhere."

He looks at the colonel, suddenly bashful and tongue-tied. "Can I talk about the, uh, thing we were, like, earlier . . . ?"

"Sure. Go ahead. Everyone here is cleared for it." The colonel's casual wave takes in the big-haired secretary, and Roger, and the two guys from Big Black who are taking notes, and the very serious woman from the Secret Service, and even the balding, worried-looking admiral with the double chin and Coke-bottle glasses.

"Oh. Alright." Bashfulness falls away. "Well, we've done some preliminary dissections on the Anomalocaris Anomalocaris tissues you supplied us with. And we've sent some samples for laboratory analysis-nothing anyone could deduce much from," he adds hastily. He straightens up. "What we discovered is quite simple: these samples didn't originate in Earth's ecosystem. Cladistic analysis of their intracellular characteristics and what we've been able to work out of their biochemistry indicates, not a point of divergence from our own ancestry, but the absence of common ancestry. A tissues you supplied us with. And we've sent some samples for laboratory analysis-nothing anyone could deduce much from," he adds hastily. He straightens up. "What we discovered is quite simple: these samples didn't originate in Earth's ecosystem. Cladistic analysis of their intracellular characteristics and what we've been able to work out of their biochemistry indicates, not a point of divergence from our own ancestry, but the absence of common ancestry. A cabbage cabbage is more human, has more in common with us, than that creature. You can't tell by looking at the fossils, 600 million years after it died, but live tissue samples are something else. is more human, has more in common with us, than that creature. You can't tell by looking at the fossils, 600 million years after it died, but live tissue samples are something else.

"Item: it's a multicellular organism, but each cell appears to have multiple structures like nuclei-a thing called a syncitium. No DNA, it uses RNA with a couple of base pairs that aren't used by terrestrial biology. We haven't been able to figure out what most of its organelles do, what their terrestrial cognates would be, and it builds proteins using a couple of amino acids that we don't. That nothing nothing does. Either it's descended from an ancestry that diverged from ours before the archaeobacteria, or-more probably-it is no relative at all." He isn't smiling anymore. "The gateways, Colonel?" does. Either it's descended from an ancestry that diverged from ours before the archaeobacteria, or-more probably-it is no relative at all." He isn't smiling anymore. "The gateways, Colonel?"

"Yeah, that's about the size of it. The critter you've got there was retrieved by one of our, uh, missions. On the other side of a gate."

Gould nods. "I don't suppose you could get me some more?" he asks hopefully.

"All missions are suspended pending an investigation into an accident we had earlier this year," the colonel says, with a significant glance at Roger. Suslowicz died two weeks ago; Gorman is still disastrously sick, connective tissue rotting in his body, massive radiation exposure the probable cause. Normal service will not be resumed; the pipeline will remain empty until someone can figure out a way to make the deliveries without losing the crew. Roger inclines his head minutely.

"Oh well." The professor shrugs. "Let me know if you do. By the way, do you have anything approximating a fix on the other end of the gate?"

"No," says the colonel, and this time Roger knows he's lying. Mission four, before the colonel diverted their payload capacity to another purpose, planted a compact radio telescope in an empty courtyard in the city on the far side of the gate. XK-Masada, where the air's too thin to breathe without oxygen; where the sky is indigo, and the buildings cast razor-sharp shadows across a rocky plain baked to the consistency of pottery under a blood red sun. Subsequent analysis of pulsar signals recorded by the station confirmed that it was nearly six hundred light-years closer to the galactic core, inward along the same spiral arm. There are glyphs on the alien buildings that resemble symbols seen in grainy black-and-white Minox photos of the doors of the bunker in the Ukraine. Symbols behind which the subject of Project Koschei lies undead and sleeping: something evil, scraped from a nest in the drowned wreckage of a city on the Baltic floor. "Why do you want to know where they came from?"

"Well. We know so little about the context in which life evolves." For a moment the professor looks wistful. "We have-had-only one datum point: Earth, this world. Now we have a second, a fragment of a second. If we get a third, we can begin to ask deep questions like, not, 'Is there life out there?'-because we know the answer to that one, now-but questions like 'What sort sort of life is out there?' and 'Is there a place for us?' " of life is out there?' and 'Is there a place for us?' "

Roger shudders. Idiot, Idiot, he thinks. he thinks. If only you knew, you wouldn't be so happy. If only you knew, you wouldn't be so happy. He restrains the urge to speak up. Doing so would be another career-limiting move. More to the point, it might be a life-expectancy-limiting move for the professor, who certainly didn't deserve any such drastic punishment for his cooperation. Besides, Harvard professors visiting the Executive Office Building in DC are harder to disappear than comm-symp teachers in some flyblown jungle village in Nicaragua. Somebody might notice. The colonel would be annoyed. He restrains the urge to speak up. Doing so would be another career-limiting move. More to the point, it might be a life-expectancy-limiting move for the professor, who certainly didn't deserve any such drastic punishment for his cooperation. Besides, Harvard professors visiting the Executive Office Building in DC are harder to disappear than comm-symp teachers in some flyblown jungle village in Nicaragua. Somebody might notice. The colonel would be annoyed.

Roger realizes that Professor Gould is staring at him. "Do you have a question for me?" asks the distinguished paleontologist.

"Uh-in a moment." Roger shakes himself. Remembering timesurvivor curves, the captured Nazi medical-atrocity records mapping the ability of a human brain to survive in close proximity to the Baltic Singularity. Mengele's insanity. The SS's final attempt to liquidate the survivors, the witnesses. Koschei, primed and pointed at the American heartland like a darkly evil gun. The "world-eating mind" adrift in brilliant dreams of madness, estivating in the absence of its prey: dreaming of the minds of sapient beings, be they barrel-bodied wing-flying tentacular things things, or their human inheritors. "Do you think they could have been intelligent, Professor? Conscious, like us?"

"I'd say so." Gould's eyes glitter. "This one"-he points to a viewgraph-"isn't alive as we know it. And this this one"-he's found a Predecessor, God help him, barrel-bodied and bat-winged-"had what looks like a lot of very complex ganglia, not a brain as we know it, but at least as massive as our own. And some specialized grasping adaptations that might be interpreted as facilitating tool use. Put the two together, and you have a high-level technological civilization. Gateways between planets orbiting different stars. Alien flora, fauna, or whatever. I'd say an interstellar civilization isn't out of the picture. One that has been extinct for deep geological time-ten times as long as the dinosaurs-but that has left relics that work." His voice is trembling with emotion. "We humans, we've barely scratched the surface! The longest lasting of our relics? All our buildings will be dust in twenty thousand years, even the pyramids. Neil Armstrong's footprints in the Sea of Tranquility will crumble under micromete oroid bombardment in a mere half million years or so. The emptied oil fields will refill over ten million years, methane percolating up through the mantle: continental drift will erase everything. But one"-he's found a Predecessor, God help him, barrel-bodied and bat-winged-"had what looks like a lot of very complex ganglia, not a brain as we know it, but at least as massive as our own. And some specialized grasping adaptations that might be interpreted as facilitating tool use. Put the two together, and you have a high-level technological civilization. Gateways between planets orbiting different stars. Alien flora, fauna, or whatever. I'd say an interstellar civilization isn't out of the picture. One that has been extinct for deep geological time-ten times as long as the dinosaurs-but that has left relics that work." His voice is trembling with emotion. "We humans, we've barely scratched the surface! The longest lasting of our relics? All our buildings will be dust in twenty thousand years, even the pyramids. Neil Armstrong's footprints in the Sea of Tranquility will crumble under micromete oroid bombardment in a mere half million years or so. The emptied oil fields will refill over ten million years, methane percolating up through the mantle: continental drift will erase everything. But these these people . . . ! They built to last. There's so much to learn from them. I wonder if we're worthy pretenders to their technological crown?" people . . . ! They built to last. There's so much to learn from them. I wonder if we're worthy pretenders to their technological crown?"

"I'm sure we are, Professor," the colonel's secretary says brassily. "Isn't that right, Ollie?"

The colonel nods, grinning. "You betcha, Fawn. You betcha!"

THE GREAT SATAN

Roger sits in the bar in the King David Hotel, drinking from a tall glass of second-rate lemonade and sweating in spite of the air-conditioning. He's dizzy and disoriented from jet lag, the gut cramps have only let him come down from his room in the past hour, and he has another two hours to go before he can try to place a call to Andrea. They had another blazing row before he flew out here; she doesn't understand why he keeps having to visit odd corners of the globe. She only knows that his son is growing up thinking a father is a voice that phones at odd times of day.

Roger is mildly depressed, despite the buzz of doing business at this level. He spends a lot of time worrying about what will happen if they're found out-what Andrea will do, or Jason for that matter, Jason whose father is a phone call away all the time-if Roger is led away in handcuffs beneath the glare of flashbulbs. If the colonel sings, if the shy bald admiral is browbeaten into spilling the beans to Congress, who will look after them then?

Roger has no illusions about what kills black operations: there are too many people in the loop, too many elaborate front corporations and numbered bank accounts and shady Middle Eastern arms dealers. Sooner or later, someone will find a reason to talk, and Roger is in too deep. He isn't just the company liaison officer anymore: he's become the colonel's bagman, his shadow, the guy with the diplomatic passport and the bulging briefcase full of heroin and end-user certificates.

At least the ship will sink from the top down, he thinks. There are people very very high up who want the colonel to succeed. When the shit hits the fan and is sprayed across the front page of the high up who want the colonel to succeed. When the shit hits the fan and is sprayed across the front page of the Washington Post Washington Post, it will likely take down cabinet members and secretaries of state: the president himself will have to take the witness stand and deny everything. The republic will question itself.

A hand descends on his shoulder, sharply cutting off his reverie. "Howdy, Roger! Whatcha worrying about now?"

Jourgensen looks up wearily. "Stuff," he says gloomily. "Have a seat." The redneck from the embassy-Mike Hamilton, some kind of junior attache for embassy protocol by cover-pulls out a chair and crashes down on it like a friendly car wreck. He's not really a redneck, Roger knows-rednecks don't come with doctorates in foreign relations from Yale-but he likes people to think he's a bumpkin when he needs to get something from them.

"He's early," says Hamilton, looking past Roger's ear, voice suddenly all business. "Play the agenda, I'm your dim, but friendly, good cop. Got the background? Deniables ready?"

Roger nods, then glances round and sees Mehmet (family name unknown) approaching from the other side of the room. Mehmet is impeccably manicured and tailored, wearing a suit from Jermyn Street that costs more than Roger earns in a month. He has a neatly trimmed beard and moustache and talks with a pronounced English accent. Mehmet is a Turkish name, not a Persian one: pseudonym, of course. To look at him you would think he was a westernized Turkish businessman-certainly not an Iranian revolutionary with heavy links to Hezbollah and (whisper this) Old Man Ruholla himself, the hermit of Qom. Never in a thousand years the unofficial Iranian ambassador to the Little Satan in Tel Aviv.

Mehmet strides over. A brief exchange of pleasantries masks the essential formality of their meeting: he's early, a deliberate move to put them off-balance. He's outnumbered, too, and that's also a move to put them on the defensive, because the first rule of diplomacy is never to put yourself in a negotiating situation where the other side can assert any kind of moral authority, and sheer weight of numbers is a powerful psychological tool.

"Roger, my dear fellow." He smiles at Jourgensen. "And the charming Dr. Hamilton, I see." The smile broadens. "I take it the good colonel is desirous of news of his friends?"

Jourgensen nods. "That is indeed the case."

Mehmet stops smiling. For a moment he looks ten years older. "I visited them," he says shortly. "No, I was taken taken to see them. It is indeed grave, my friends. They are in the hands of very dangerous men, men who have nothing to lose and are filled with hatred." to see them. It is indeed grave, my friends. They are in the hands of very dangerous men, men who have nothing to lose and are filled with hatred."

Roger speaks. "There is a debt between us-"

Mehmet holds up a hand. "Peace, my friend. We will come to that. These are men of violence, men who have seen their homes destroyed and families subjected to indignities, and their hearts are full of anger. It will take a large display of repentance, a high blood price, to buy their acquiescence. That is part of our law, you understand? The family of the bereaved may demand blood price of the transgressor, and how else might the world be? They see it in these terms: that you must repent of your evils and assist them in waging holy war against those who would defile the will of Allah."

Roger sighs. "We do what we can," he says. "We're shipping them arms. We're fighting the Soviets every way we can without provoking the big one. What more do they want? The hostages-that's not playing well in DC. There's got to be some give-and-take. If Hezbollah doesn't release them soon, they'll just convince everyone that they're not serious about negotiating. And that'll be an end to it. The colonel wants wants to help you, but he's got to have something to show the man at the top, right?" to help you, but he's got to have something to show the man at the top, right?"

Mehmet nods. "You and I are men of the world and understand that this keeping of hostages is not rational, but they look to you for defense against the other Great Satan that assails them, and their blood burns with anger that your nation, for all its fine words, takes no action. The Great Satan rampages in Afghanistan, taking whole villages by night, and what is done? The United States turns its back. And they are not the only ones who feel betrayed. Our Ba'athist foes from Iraq . . . In Basra the unholy brotherhood of Tikrit and their servants the Mukhabarat hold nightly sacrifice upon the altar of Yair-Suthot; the fountains of blood in Tehran testify to their effect. If the richest, most powerful nation on Earth refuses to fight, these men of violence from the Bekaa think, how may we unstopper the ears of that nation? And they are not sophisticates like you or I."

He looks at Roger, who hunches his shoulders uneasily. "We can't can't move against the Soviets openly! They must understand that it would be the end of far more than their little war. If the Tali ban want American help against the Russians, it cannot be delivered openly." move against the Soviets openly! They must understand that it would be the end of far more than their little war. If the Tali ban want American help against the Russians, it cannot be delivered openly."

"It is not the Russians that we quarrel with," Mehmet says quietly, "but their choice in allies. They believe themselves to be infidel atheists, but by their deeds they shall be known; the icy spoor of Leng is upon them, their tools are those described in the Kitab Al Azif. We have proof that they have violated the terms of the Dresden Agreement. The accursed and unhallowed stalk the frozen passes of the Himalayas by night, taking all whose path they cross. And will you stopper your ears even as the Russians grow in misplaced confidence, sure that their dominance of these forces of evil is complete? The gates are opening everywhere, as it was prophesied. Last week we flew an F-14C with a camera relay pod through one of them. The pilot and weapons operator are in paradise now, but we have glanced into hell and have the film and radar plots to prove it."

The Iranian ambassador fixes the redneck from the embassy with an icy gaze. "Tell your ambassador that we have opened preliminary discussions with Mossad, with a view to purchasing the produce of a factory at Dimona, in the Negev. Past insults may be set aside, for the present danger imperils all of us. They They are receptive to our arguments, even if you are not: his holiness the Ayatollah has declared in private that any warrior who carries a nuclear device into the abode of the eater of souls will certainly achieve paradise. There will be an end to the followers of the ancient abominations on this Earth, Dr. Hamilton, even if we have to push the nuclear bombs down their throats with our own hands!" are receptive to our arguments, even if you are not: his holiness the Ayatollah has declared in private that any warrior who carries a nuclear device into the abode of the eater of souls will certainly achieve paradise. There will be an end to the followers of the ancient abominations on this Earth, Dr. Hamilton, even if we have to push the nuclear bombs down their throats with our own hands!"