"Uh, don't I get any say in the matter?"

"Haven't you said enough today?"

"All I did was stand up and ask a question. I still haven't gotten any answers."

"Did it ever occur to you that there may not be any to give?" He stood up. "You wait here." And he exited again.

This time I didn't have to wait as long. The door slid open and Major Lizard Tirelli stuck her head in. "McCarthy?"

"Huh? Yeah-hi!"

She looked annoyed. "Come on," she said. I followed her out into the darkened hall and to the right. Now where were we going? The door was back the other way.

We stopped in front of an elevator alcove. The door slid open at our approach. I followed her in. There was only a single button on the control panel. She pressed it and the door closed. The elevator slid upward.

"Where are we going?"

"Thirteenth floor," she said.

"Huh? Hotels don't have thirteenth floors."

"This one does," she said. Her voice was brittle. Obviously, she didn't want to talk. At least, not to me.

I shut up and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

THE THIRTEENTH floor looked like any other floor of the hotel-except it only had one elevator door.

My dad had told me about controlled-access architecture a long time ago. I'd just never seen any firsthand. Apparently, the builders of this hotel had intended the architectural camouflage for business purposes, probably to provide a floor of private suites and offices for visiting dignitaries and other celebrities who needed tight security.

If someone were to notice that there was a physical gap between twelve and fourteen, and were to ask about it-and he'd probably have to walk the fire stairs to figure it out-he'd probably be told it was a "service area." Which it was, sort of. He just wouldn't be told what service. The purloined letter again. Like a lockbox with a false bottom.

I would bet, however, that the present occupants of the thirteenth floor were not the ones for which it had been originally intended. Or were they?

We stopped before a featureless gray metal door. Room 1313. "Am I going to be locked in?" I asked.

Lizard ignored me as she slid the room card into the slot. She punched a number and the door slid open. She handed me the card. "You can change the combination if you want. You can leave if you want."

"But I thought-"

"What?"

"-that Colonel Wallachstein wanted me to wait."

"Who?"

"Colonel Wallachstein-the man who pulled me out of the auditorium and interrogated me and-"

She stepped close to me. "Listen, stupid. The man you're talking about doesn't exist. There's nobody in Denver by that name. Do you understand?"

No, I didn't. "Uh, I guess so. Can I ask something?"

She looked annoyed and impatient. "What is it?"

"What the hell is going on?"

"I can't answer that."

"Am I under arrest?"

"You're free to go any time you want. It just wouldn't be a good idea. There are people looking for you-some of them you wouldn't like very much."

"Oh. Then I'm being held in protective custody?"

"You're not being held at all."

"Then why am I here?"

"I don't know. It's not my job to answer your questions."

"Is anyone going to answer my questions? Or am I just going to be shoved from place to place until I'm out of everyone's way?"

"That sounds like a good idea. Oh, you can't phone out from here without clearance, but you can get room service."

"Which is the way out?"

"For you? Take the fire stairs up to fourteen or down to twelve and catch an elevator from there. But you won't be able to get back. My advice is for you to do exactly what you're told and wait here." She turned to go.

"Um-Major?"

She stopped and looked at me.

"Am I in trouble? I mean, should I be worried?"

I guess I was scared. I guess it showed in my voice, because she caught herself. A flicker of annoyance had started to cross her face, a reflex reaction to another stupid question, but then she realized the concern behind the question and softened. She said, "You didn't do anything that at least half a dozen other people didn't want to do. You just didn't know why you shouldn't have." I felt the pain of embarrassment flooding into my face-of being identified as the guy who'd screwed things up.

"Is anyone ever going to tell me?" I asked.

She wanted to go, I could see that, but instead she took my arm and dragged me into the room, closing the door behind us. "Sit down." She looked at her watch. "All right, I have time. You want coffee? No? Well, I do." She stepped over to the apartment's kitchenette and opened a cupboard. "You'd better enjoy your coffee today, Jim-there won't be much of it tomorrow."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Listen-what did you major in?"

"Biology. Software. Humanity Skills. Problemantics. The usual."

"Right. Did you take any history?"

"Only the basic requirements."

"Damn." She was silent a moment. I didn't know if her outburst was because I hadn't taken any history or because she'd spilled some water. She turned back to me.

"Did you have a Global Ethics course?"

"Yeah. Everybody did. It was required study."

"Uh huh. Do you know why?"

"To prevent another Apocalypse."

"Right. What do you know about the Apocalypse?"

"Um, not a lot, I guess. Just what we were taught in class."

"Go on," she encouraged.

"Well-you sure you want to hear this?"

"I said, go on."

"Well-um, there was a war. In the Middle East. There are always wars in the Middle East, but this one got out of control. It was between Israel and I forget who, but there were a lot of other countries lined up against Israel. And there were African and Chinese mercenaries involved. And finally it got so bad that Israel had no choice but to threaten to use nuclear weapons. And finally they did."

"And then what happened?"

"The United States withdrew its support for Israel and Israel had to surrender."

"And?"

"Everybody was so scared at what had almost happened that they all went to Russia and signed the Moscow Treaties."

"Yeah." She looked skeptical and turned back to the coffee. "You want milk or sugar?" she asked as she poured. I shook my head. As she handed me the cup, she said, "That version is the one they teach in the schools-but it's so simplified, it's almost a fairy tale. Israel didn't drop those bombs. We did."

"Huh? But that's not-"

"Of course that's not. But the truth is a little less palatable. That was our war and we told Israel to drop those bombs, because we thought it would bring an end to the war. Well, it did-but not the way we thought it would. What they didn't tell you is that the President lost his nerve."

"Huh?"

"What did they teach you in class?"

I shrugged. "The way we heard it, there was a midnight Cabinet session and all of his advisors were arguing loudly back and forth about how many people would die in each exchange and whether or not our third-strike capability would survive, and the President was just sitting quietly at the end through all of this, puffing on his pipe like he always did. And finally, after several long hours, one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff summed it up by saying, `The moral arguments are irrelevant here. The war is inevitable.' And that's when the President said, 'Like hell it is!' "

"Yeah, that's the story. But it's not true. That is, it's only half true. The part you don't hear is about the ultimatum that the Soviet ambassador had handed him just that afternoon. If Israel launched any more nuclear weapons against Soviet allies, the Soviet Union would view those attacks as originating in the United States, and would respond accordingly. It was the same ultimatum that john F. Kennedy handed Nikita Khrushchev in October of 1962, when Russian missiles were discovered in Cuba-and the Russians were aware of the irony of the situation. They used the exact same phrasing in their note."