“And I am competent. More than that. I’m ready and able to work. And I won’t sell this country out when the going gets tough, like Swinburne wants to do. Not on my watch.”

Ben nodded. He wasn’t sure what was going on with the president. But, at least for the moment, he seemed capable, if not a tower of strength. And he shouldn’t be displaced just because his ambitious vice president differed with him on a matter of foreign policy.

And he had done that favor for Christina. Ben would never forget that.

“All right, then,” Ben said. “I’m sure they’re getting agitated out there. Let’s go back. And I’ll try to do a better job with the next witness than I did with the last.”

Ben reentered the main room, followed by his client, the president of the United States. Now that, he thought, was a line he’d never expected to see on his résumé.

As he made his way back to his station at the table, he passed close to the secretary of defense, Albert Rybicki. He felt something brush up against his hand.

He looked down quickly.

Rybicki had just passed him a note.

What was this, grade school? Was note passing really necessary? But when he thought about it for a moment, he realized that, trapped down here in this pressure cooker with everyone else, it would be very difficult to have a private conversation-and impossible to do it without the others knowing.

So he palmed the note and remained quiet.

As soon as he was back in his chair, Ben casually unfolded the note, careful not to attract attention.

Beware Ruiz, it said. He’ll do anything to get our troops out.

Down at the bottom, in smaller writing, Ben saw a postscript: Ask about Apollo.

The sun god? The corporation Ben used to work for, way back when?

What did it mean?

Ben glanced up at Rybicki and made a curt nod. Rybicki returned nothing. Ben really wanted to ask a follow-up question or six, but he got the distinct impression Rybicki would not welcome it. If he had wanted to chat, he wouldn’t have passed a note.

Rybicki wanted to be helpful without anyone else knowing about it.

Interesting.

What was going on in this cabinet? Was Ruiz another dissident who was not really friendly toward the president? How many others like him and Swinburne were there, people working with this president but more than willing to bring him down given the opportunity?

In a way, Ben was almost sympathetic; he had opposed the latest Iraq war and he had always believed he would do anything to get the troops out. But did that include undermining the commander in chief? In effect, a political coup? Plus Kuraq was not Iraq. What Zuko proposed in Benzai was genocide, pure and simple, and there was little doubt about what would happen to the people who’d gone down in that helicopter if Zuko found them first. Should Kyler be deposed because he didn’t want to see those people slaughtered?

Somehow, that just didn’t seem right, even if the ultimate goal-saving the troops-was understandable.

Ben’s reverie was broken as Swinburne called his next witness. “Your honor, I’ll call Michael Ruiz to the stand.”

Ben couldn’t help wondering about the coincidence-or was it?-as he watched the man take his seat on the makeshift witness stand. First Rybicki had warned him about Ruiz-and now he was being called to the stand. Had Rybicki known he would be next? If so, how much more did he know? Had there been a conversation of import in here while Ben was in the other room?

Swinburne began with an abbreviated run-through of Ruiz’s qualifications. It was even briefer than Albertson’s. Although some of the cabinet members might not have known the president’s doctor, they all knew the secretary of state. Most of them had worked with him at one time or another. He had been in Democratic politics for most of his adult life, had served four years as an ambassador to the Court of St. James, and had briefly served as national security advisor for the last Democratic president. There was no question-when it came to foreign policy, Ruiz knew what he was talking about.

“I’m sure everyone reads the newspapers,” Swinburne said, “and is aware that Kuraq is currently a hot spot of unrest, but they may not know all the salient points about that nation and its dictator, or their relationship to the United States. Could you please give them all a quick and dirty primer on the situation? Sort of a Kuraq for Dummies?”

Ruiz smiled slightly, then complied. “Kuraq is located in the Middle East, with one border on the Gulf of Hormuz. Although a relatively small nation, it is a major oil producer and a member of OPEC. It ships millions of barrels of oil each year into the world market via tankers traveling out of the Gulf. This export has made it important to the global economy, not only to the United States but also to Russia, China, and many other nations.

“Unfortunately,” Ruiz continued, “like all too many of the nation-states in this region, its importance to the world economy is accompanied by a perpetually unstable government. Kuraq has been buffeted through a series of different leaders going back to the fifties, many of them theocrats. Diplomatic relations with the United States have varied depending upon the reliability of the government in question.”

“If you would, sir, please give us the essentials about Colonel Zuko.”

“Zuko is a military leader who managed to take over the country from the previous Sunni religious leader. Like Osama bin Laden and so many other honchos in this region, he fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s against the Russian invasion, with the United States. Yes, that’s right. He was on our side back then. His later enmity toward us has nothing to do with Israel and nothing to do with oil. It’s all about Afghanistan, specifically the way the United States abandoned Afghanistan after we won there against Russia. And let’s face it-the man has a point. What we did in Afghanistan was shameful. We left the nation in total disarray. No infrastructure whatsoever. No educational system, no working economy. Our attitude was, as long as the Commies aren’t invading, we’ll take our money and go home. Millions were left destitute, hungry. This tumultuous situation gave rise to groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, many of the strongest terrorist enemies of the United States.

“Colonel Zuko didn’t resort to terrorism, at least not initially. He had lived in the West. Been educated at Oxford. It’s possible this gave him a different perspective on geopolitics. At any rate, he preferred to work with the military and to strengthen his home nation from within. His plan was to build Kuraq up first, then go after revenge against the United States. It was a smart plan. He was one of the first to use the army he controlled domestically to shore up struggling businesses and maximize oil production. As Kuraq’s economy became more robust, so did his control. By the onset of this decade, Kuraq had one of the strongest economies in the region. That was when Zuko decided it was time to control more than just the military. He staged a coup, planned so effectively and efficiently that it was almost bloodless. He removed the religious leaders and took over, though careful the whole time to do so in the name of ‘the one true religion.’ In a sense, he didn’t replace the theocracy. He simply replaced the previous ayatollah with himself. The only difference is, this ayatollah has an iron grip on the army.”

Ruiz looked up. “So you can see the difficulty. When one guy controls a booming economy, the military, and the religious establishment, good luck getting rid of him.”

“Do we want to get rid of him?” Swinburne asked.

“Certainly the president would like to do so.” Ben noticed that Ruiz was looking up and to the right-careful not to let his eyes wander anywhere near the president of whom he spoke. Was he one of the cabinet members not all that attached to their commander in chief? “He’s been obsessed with the desire to topple Zuko almost from the first moment he took office.”