"We know where to look the next time he snorts, too. Anyway, you can call Fleet Operations and tell them there's nobody close to the carriers. Here, here, here, surface groups." He made marks on the paper. "Also heading west at good speed, and not being real covert about it. All target-track bearings are opening. It's a complete disengagement. They're not looking for any more trouble."

"Maybe that's good."

Jones crushed out the cigarette. "Yeah, Master Chief, maybe it is, if the flags get their shit together."

The funny part was that things had actually calmed down. Morning TV coverage of the Wall Street crash was clinically precise, and the analysis exquisite, probably better than Americans were getting at home, Clark thought, what with all the economics professors doing the play-by-play, along with a senior banker for color commentary. Perhaps, a newspaper editorialized, America will rethink her stance vis-a-vis Japan. Was it not clear that the two countries genuinely needed each other, especially now, and that a strong Japan served American interests as well as local ones? Prime Minister Goto was quoted in a conciliatory way, though not in front of a camera, in language that was for him decidedly unusual and widely covered for that reason.

"Fucking Twilight Zone," Chavez observed in a quiet moment, breaking language cover because he just had to. What the hell, he thought, they were under Russian operational control now. What rules did matter now?

"Russkiy," his senior replied tolerantly.

"Da, tovarisch," was the grumbled reply. "Do you have any idea what's going on. Is it a war or not?"

"The rules sure are funny," Clark said, in English, he realized. It's getting to me, too.

There were other gaijin back on the street, most of them apparently Americans, and the looks they were getting were back to the ordinary suspicion and curiosity, the current hostility level down somewhat from the previous week.

"So what do we do?"

"We try the Interfax number our friend gave us." Clark had his report all typed up. It was the only thing he knew to do, except for keeping his contacts active and fishing for information. Surely Washington knew what he had to tell them, he thought, going back into the hotel. The clerk smiled and bowed, a little more politely this time, as they headed to the elevator. Two minutes later they were in the room. Clark took the laptop from its carry-case, inserted the phone plug in the back, and switched it on. Another minute, and the internal modem dialed the number he'd gotten over breakfast, linking to a line across the Sea of Japan to the Siberian mainland, thence to Moscow, he supposed. He heard the electronic trilling of a ringing phone and waited for linkup.

The station chief had gotten over the cringing associated with having a Russian intelligence officer in the embassy communications room, but he hadn't quite gotten to the whimsy stage yet. The noise from the computer startled him.

"Very clever technique," the visitor said.

"We try."

Anyone who had ever used a modem would recognize the sound, the rasp of running water, or perhaps a floor-polishing brush, just a digital hiss, really, of two electronic units attempting to synchronize themselves so that data could be exchanged. Sometimes it took but a few seconds, sometimes as many as five or even ten. In fact, it only took one second or so with these units, and the remaining hiss was actually the random-appearing digital code of 19,200 characters of information crossing the fiberoptic line per second—first in one direction, then the other. When the real transmission was concluded, formal lockup was achieved, and the guy at the other end sent his twenty column-inches for the day. Just to be on the safe side, the Russians would make sure that the report would be carried in two papers the next day, on page 3 in both cases. No sense in being too obvious.

Then came the hard part for the CIA station chief. On command, he printed two copies of the same report, one of which went to the RVS officer. Was Mary Pat going through change-of-life or something?

"His Russian is very literary, even classical. Who taught him my language?"

"I honestly don't know," the station chief lied, successfully as it turned out. The hell of it was, the Russian was right. That occasioned a frown.

"Want me to help with the translation?"

Shit. He smiled. "Sure, why not?"

"Ryan." A whole five hours of sleep, Jack grumped, lifting the secure carphone. Well, at least he wasn't doing the driving.

"Mary Pat here. We have something. It'll be on your desk when you get there."

"How good?"

"It's a start," the DDO said. She was very economical in her use of words. Nobody really trusted radiophones, secure or not.

"Hello, Dr. Ryan. I'm Andrea Price." The agent was already dressed in a lab coat, complete with picture-pass clipped to the lapel, which she held up. "My uncle is a doctor, GP in Wisconsin. I think he'd like this." She smiled.

"Do I have anything to worry about?"

"I really don't think so," Agent Price said, still smiling. Protectees didn't like to see worried security personnel, she knew.

"What about my children?"

"There are two agents outside their school, and one more is in the house across from the day-care center for your little one," the agent explained. "Please don't worry. They pay us to be paranoid, and we're almost always wrong, but it's like in your business. You always want to be wrong on the safe side, right?"

"And my visitors?" Cathy asked.

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"Yes."

"Get them all Hopkins lab coats, souvenirs, like. I'll eyeball them all when they change." That was pretty clever, Cathy Ryan thought.

"You're carrying a gun?"

"Always," Andrea Price confirmed. "But I've never had to use it, never even took it out for an arrest. Just think of me as a fly on the wall," she said.

More like a falcon, Professor Ryan thought, but at least a tame one.

"How are we supposed to do that, John?" Chavez asked in English. The shower was running. Ding was sitting on the floor, and John on the toilet.

"Well, we seen 'em already, haven't we?" the senior officer pointed out.

"Yeah, in the fuckin' factory!"

"Well, we just have to find out where they went." On the face of it, the statement was reasonable enough. They just had to determine how many and where, and oh, by the way, whether or not there were really nukes riding on the nose. No big deal. All they knew was that they were SS-19-type launchers, the new improved version thereof, and that they'd left the factory by rail.

Of course, the country had over twenty-eight thousand kilometers of rail lines. It would have to wait. Intelligence officers often worked banker's hours, and this was one of those cases. Clark decided to get into the shower to clean off before heading for bed. He didn't know what to do, yet, or how to go about it, but worrying himself to death would not improve his chances, and he'd long since learned that he worked better with a full eight hours under his belt, and occasionally had a creative thought while showering. Sooner or later Ding might learn those tricks as well, he thought, seeing the expression on the kid's face.

"Hi, Betsy," Jack said to the lady waiting in his office's anteroom. "You're up early. And who are you?"

"Chris Scott. Betsy and I work together."

Jack waved them into his office, first checking his fax machine to see if Mary Pat had transmitted the information from Clark and Chavez, and, seeing it there, decided it could wait. He knew Betsy Fleming from his CIA days as a self-taught expert on strategic weapons. He supposed Chris Scott was one of the kids recruited from some university with a degree in what Betsy had learned the hard way. At least the younger one was polite about it, saying that he worked with Betsy. So had Ryan, once, years ago, while concerned with arms-control negotiations. "Okay, what do we have?"