The men were led downstairs under heavy guard; in the meantime, Macklin’s people had begun interviewing neighbors for information.

“Nice computers,” said Paesano.

And they were: three brand new Dells, all lined up on the kitchen table. Wires snaked off the cracked Formica top of the table across a chair to a router; there was a DSL modem strapped to a shelf on the wall where a phone had once hung.

“Hey, don’t touch!” shouted Macklin as Fisher went to tap one of the keyboards. “They may have them rigged to erase the contents of the drives, or maybe explode.”

“You think?”

“Fisher!”

“I’m just seeing what they were doing before the screen savers went on,” said Fisher. “Relax.”

One of the computers had not been on. The second had a word processing program active; it looked as though the user had been typing a letter home to Mom.

The third had a game called Red Rogue on the screen. A terrorist with a gas mask pointed a souped-up Mac 11 point-blank at the viewer.

“Computer guy is on his way,” said Macklin. “We’ll have everything analyzed. Don’t screw with it.”

“We’ll wrap all this stuff up, get the crime scene guys in, dust around for prints,” added Kowalski. “Very good operation. Very good.”

“Why would you dust for prints?” asked Fisher.

“We don’t know who else might have been here.”

“You’ve had the apartment under surveillance for almost a week,” said Fisher. “You know who was here.”

“Yeah, but I want to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. Right, Macklin?”

The Homeland Security agent nodded but then looked at Fisher. “Don’t we?”

“Sure.” Fisher lit a fresh cigarette. If they wanted to waste their time, who was he to argue? Besides, crime scene guys usually got paid by the hour, and most of them could probably use the overtime.

There was a pile of computer games on the floor. Fisher bent to examine the boxes.

“Have these computer games checked out, too,” he said, “since you’re dusting for prints. Then give them to geeks and see if anything else is on them.”

“Think there’s something there?” asked Macklin.

“Probably not,” said Fisher. “But they’re bootlegs. I just want to make sure that’s all they are.”

“How do you know they’re bootlegs?” asked Kowalski.

“No holograms,” said Fisher, pointing at the boxes. “You know. Those shiny things.”

“I know what a hologram is,” said Kowalski.

“They could have messages, right? I’ve heard of that,” said Macklin.

“Yeah,” said Kowalski. “We’ll ship them over to the NSA, get them decoded.”

Fisher squatted down in front of the screen, examining Red Rogue. “One thing I always wondered…”

“What’s that?” asked Macklin.

“Why would someone put a high-power scope on an Ingram Mac 11? I mean, isn’t that kind of beside the point?”

Just over twenty-four hours had passed since the President had set the plan in motion. In that time, the situation in North Korea had deteriorated to the point that neither the CIA nor South Korean intelligence knew where Kim Jong Il or his family were. Two armored units, each with about two dozen tanks, were guarding roads to the capital, though it was not clear who beyond themselves they were loyal to.

American troops were now on high alert, not just in Korea, but throughout the world. Two aircraft carriers and their assorted escorts were offshore, and two more were quietly but quickly steaming toward the peninsula. No less than six submarines with Tomahawk missiles and several surface ships were prepared to launch against North Korean targets on the President’s command. The Air Force had round-the-clock patrols and a host of contingency plans: With a single word from the President, an attack could be launched that would make the opening salvos of Gulf War II look like nothing more than a few rounds of target practice.

President D’Amici had ruled out the use of nuclear weapons, even as a retaliatory measure. He saw no point: America ’s awesome conventional capacity could level the country, and nuclear weapons would only complicate the aftermath, endangering the Americans and South Koreans who by necessity would have to pick up the pieces.

“If Truman didn’t use them, I’m not going to,” the President told Blitz as they strode downstairs to the White House situation room, actually a suite of rooms with secure links and access to intelligence gathering around the globe.

Under other circumstances Blitz might have asked the President if he thought Truman should have used the weapons. But this was not the time for what-if scenarios.

The demise of the North Korean dictatorship-however much that was a good thing for the world-meant considerable uncertainty and danger for the South Koreans, the Japanese, and the Americans. Blitz was overwhelmed with estimates, questions, reports, bulletins: Tacit Ivan seemed almost small potatoes in the context of the situation.

Almost.

Homeland Security, the FBI, and local police had raided a New York City apartment the day before, following up leads on the E-bomb situation. The raid had not yielded anything beyond what the specially prepared eyes-only summary declared “potential leads.” But the NSA had picked up several offshore cell phone conversations over the past ten days that used the words black out. One of the interceptions had been traced to a phone connected to a credit card believed to be used by Caliph’s Sons. The information remained maddeningly vague, the connections convoluted, and the evidence elusive. True intelligence analysis required time and perspective; neither was available nor likely to be in the coming days.

When they reached the wood-paneled conference room at the heart of the suite, the President walked over to a cluster of Air Force officers to discuss the latest target list that had been developed for the B-2 bombers stationed in South Korea. The Air Force was shuttling bombers into the air around the clock to maintain coverage of critical targets. The two warheads that the American forces knew about were triple-targeted; both of those weapons would be destroyed within ten minutes of the President’s direct and specific order to do so. Cruise missiles and air-to-ground weapons aboard other fighters would be aimed at nearly one hundred additional top-priority sites, including the suspected additional nuclear warhead missile sites. Missiles that managed to get off despite this would be handled by one of two airborne laser Cyclops aircraft, one over South Korea and one off the coast. An additional line of Patriot antimissile and aircraft batteries protected Seoul.

Twenty minutes for everything to be hit, one of the intelligence officers had said to Blitz. Minuscule in the history of warfare; an eternity if you were in the enemy’s crosshairs.

The President hunched over the shoulder of one of the military analysts going over the latest satellite photos showing North Korean troop movements. There were positive signs: One division near the border seemed to have mutinied and its vehicles were heading away from the demilitarized zone. They could see men following on the roads in the dust, and the sharpest-eyed analysts said a few had thrown away their guns.

“So, Professor, do we move ahead with Tacit Ivan or not?” asked the President.

“Yes, of course,” said Blitz. He put more confidence in his voice than he felt; somehow the atmosphere of the Pentagon always did that to him.

“Even in the face of a coup and mutiny?”

“That’s the best argument to proceed,” said Blitz.

“I agree.”

The President’s face changed momentarily, the heavy mask of responsibility melting. He smiled in a way that reminded Blitz of their much earlier days, ancient history now, spent discussing geopolitics in the dark days after Vietnam. Oddly, he could no longer remember the substance of the talks, but he could remember where they’d taken place: several watching the Orioles, a whole host in Syracuse, where the President spent a brief period as a college professor before running for Congress.