Governments run on order and process. There was probably a protocol for everything, thought agent Judith Herz-formerly of the FBI, now attached semipermanently to the Family Trade Organization-short of launching a nuclear attack on your own territory. Unfortunately that was exactly what she'd been tasked with doing, and probably nobody since the more psychotic members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tasked with planning Operation Northwood during the 1960s had even imagined it. And even though a checklist had come down from on high and the colonel and Major Alvarez had confirmed it looked good, just thinking about it gave her a headache.

(1) Secure the package at all times. She glanced up from her clipboard, across the muddy field, at the white armored truck with the rectangular box body. The floodlights they'd hastily rigged that afternoon showed that it was having some difficulty reversing towards the big top; the rear axle would periodically spin, the engine roaring like an angry tiger as the driver grappled with its overweight carcass. Maybe we ought to have just used a minivan, she thought. With a suitable escort, it would have been less conspicuous… On the other hand, the armed guards in the back, watching each other as well as the physics package, would probably disagree.

(2) Do not deploy the package until arrival of ARMBAND. Armband, whatever it was-some kind of magic box that did whatever it was the world-walking freaks from fairyland did in their heads-had landed at MacArthur Airport; she'd sent Rich Hall and Amanda Cruz to pick it up. Check.

(3) PAL codes-call WARBUCKS for release authorization. That was the bit that brought her out in a cold sweat, because along with the half-dozen unsmiling federal agents from the NNSA, call sign WARBUCKS meant that this was the real deal, that the permissive action lock code to activate the nuclear device would be issued by the vice president himself, as explained in the signed Presidential Order she'd been allowed to read-but not to hold-by the corpse-faced bastard from the West Wing who Colonel Smith answered to. Since when does the President give WARBUCKS backpack nukes to play with, anyway? she asked herself; but it looked official enough, and the folder full of top secret code words that had landed on her desk with a palpable thud yesterday suggested that this might be a cowboy operation, but if so, it was being led by the number one rancher himself. At least, that was what the signatures of half the National Command Authority and a couple of Supreme Court justices implied.

(4) FADM/ARMBAND final assembly and PAL programming to be carried out on launch scaffold. The thing in the tent gave her the creeps; Smith called it a transdimensional siege tower, but it looked too close to a field-expedient gallows for her liking. She was going to go up there with Dr. Rand and a posse of inspectors from NNSA and a couple of army officers and when they came down from the platform some person or persons unknown would be dead. Not that she was anti-death-penalty or anything, but she'd started out as an FBI agent: The anonymous military way of killing felt profoundly wrong, like a gap in a row of teeth, or a death in the family.

(5) ARMBAND failure contingency plan. That was the worst bit of all, because if ARMBAND failed to work as advertised, she and Lucius Rand and everyone else would be standing on a scaffold with a ticking bomb on a sixty-second countdown, and they'd get precisely two chances to enter the eight-digit abort code.

It was a good thing that she'd taken the time for holy communion and attended confession that morning, she thought, as she walked towards the tent. It had been a long day, and she had a feeling that the night was going to be even longer.

Her earbud crackled: "Herz, speak to me." It was the colonel.

"Stage one is in hand, I'm waiting on news of ARMBAND." Out of one corner of her eye she saw moving headlights, another of the undercover patrol cars circling the block slowly, looking for rubberneckers. "Everything seems to be on track so far."

"Please hold." She walked on, briefly looking round to check on the armored car. (It was reversing again, pulling free of the patch of soft ground that had stymied it.) "Okay, that's good. Update me if there are any developments."

So the colonel is jittery? Good. A uniform over near the support truck from the NNSA was waving to her; local cops drafted in for crowd control and vehicle marshaling. She changed course towards him. So he should be. "What's up?" she demanded.

"Uh, agent-" He was nervous; not used to dealing with FBI.

"Herz." She nodded. "You have something."

"Yeah, there's a car at the north quadrant entrance, driver says it's for you. Name of Hall."

"Oh."-what's Rich doing up there?-"If that's Rich Hall and Amanda Cruz, we're expecting them." She kicked herself mentally: Should have told them which gate to use. "Let them in. They've got a package we're expecting."

"Sure thing, ma'am." He leaned over towards the driver's window of the patrol car, talking to his partner. Herz walked on, jittery with too much poor-quality caffeine and a rising sense of tension. We're about to fire the opening shot in a war, she thought. I wonder where it's going to end…

It was dark, and the moon already riding low in the sky outside the kitchen window, when Huw yawned and conceded defeat. He saved the draft of his report, closed the lid of his laptop, picked up two glasses and a bottle of zinfandel, and went upstairs to bed.

As he closed the door and turned on the light, the bedding moved. A tousled head appeared: "What kept you?"

"I have a report to write, in case you'd forgotten." He put the glasses and the bottle down on the dressing table and began to unbutton his shirt. "I hope you had a better day than I did, my lady."

"I very much doubt it." She sat up and plumped up the pillows. As the comforter dropped, he saw that she was naked. Catching his gaze, she smiled. "Lock the door?"

"Sure." He dropped his shirt on the carpet, let his jeans fall, then went to the door and shot the dead bolt. Then he picked up the wine bottle and twisted the screw cap. "What happened?"

"Head office are going mad." She screwed up her face. "It's unreal. The council are running around like half-headed turkey fowl, the whole flock of them."

"Well, that's a surprise." He filled a glass, sniffed it, then held it out to her. She took it. "Any word?…"

"Olga's bringing him out within the next hour. Assuming nobody attacks the ambulance, he'll be in a hospital bed by dawn. The last word from that quarter is that he's tried to talk, since the incident."

Huw filled his own wineglass, then sat down on the edge of the bed. "Can we forget about politics for a few hours? I know you want me to bring you up to date on what I was doing back in New York, and I'm sure you've got a lot of stuff to tell me about what's been going on since the last time we were together, but I would like, for once, to take some time out with you. Just you and me alone, with no unquiet ghosts."

Her frown faded slightly. "I wish we could." She sighed. "But there's so much riding on this. We'll have time later, if we succeed, but"-she glanced at the door anxiously-"there's so much that can still go wrong. If Miriam has any mad ideas about running away…"

"Well, that's an interesting question. While you were away, we had a talk. She seemed to need it."

"Oh?" Brilliana drank down a mouthful of wine. "How is she doing?"