She made her way up to the first floor and into the President's private dining room off the Oval Office. President Hayes was waiting for her, an array of newspapers spread out on each side of his place setting, a bowl of Grape-nuts in the middle and a piping hot cup of coffee on his right. Hayes was a very organized and determined man. He had told Kennedy recently that he wasn't going to let the job destroy his health like it had his predecessors'. He spent thirty minutes on the treadmill and bike four to five days a week. In fact, this was when he normally reviewed the PDB. This morning, however, he had scheduled several early meetings. The situation in Iraq had him on edge. When they were done with their coffee they were to head down to the Situation Room to receive a briefing from General Flood and his staff.

Thus far, Kennedy had talked Hayes into keeping the amount of people involved in the crisis to a bare minimum. The secretary of defense was in Colombia until Saturday. He would be briefed when he returned. The Joint Chiefs and the secretaries of the various services were to be kept in the dark until the last minute and the remaining members of the Cabinet, with the exception of Michael Haik, were also to be left out of the loop. Kennedy had convinced the President that the last thing they wanted to do was give Saddam a heads-up that something might be coming his way.

The President didn't bother to look up from whatever paper he was reading when Kennedy entered the room. "Good morning, Irene. Have a seat. Would you like anything to eat?"

"No thank you, sir. Coffee's fine." Kennedy poured herself of cup from the sterling silver pot sitting in the middle of the table. These early morning meetings with the President in the small dining room were becoming a weekly event. Kennedy was starting to feel very comfortable in her dealings with the man.

"What's new today?" Hayes shoved a spoonful of the tiny brown rocklike cereal into his mouth.

"Well," Kennedy extracted a key from her jacket and started to open the pouch. "Pakistan is making threats again to launch another offensive to take back the disputed land with India ..."

The President waved his hands in the air and then wiped a drop of milk from his lip. With his napkin still in hand, he said, "Put the brief away. I'll look at it later. Unless there's something that needs my immediate attention, I'd like to talk about this mess your Israeli friend has dumped in our laps."

Kennedy briefly wondered if the use of the word friend was more than a random selection. It was apparent that the looming crisis with Iraq had the President upset. "What would you like to know, sir?" Hayes set his napkin down and pushed his cereal out of the way. He took a second to rearrange the things in front of him while he organized his thoughts. "I want to throw something at you, and I want you to keep an open mind." Hayes made direct eye contact and added, "I want you to give me your

honest answer."

Kennedy kept her expression neutral, her brown eyes locked on the Presidents. She nodded for him to continue.

"Can we trust the Israelis on this thing?"

Kennedy instantly disliked the question. It was fraught with problems, too broad to give a well-crafted answer. "Could you be a little more specific, sir?"

"This information they've given us, can we trust it? Is it possible they have it wrong ... or that they've been fed this information by the Iraqis?"

She thought about the question for a moment and answered, "As you know, sir, anything is possible, but I think this information is pretty accurate."

Hayes grimaced. He wanted a more concrete answer than what she'd just given him. "What makes you say that? Is it because you trust Colonel Freidman?"

Kennedy got her first hint of what might be bothering the President. "I trust Ben Freidman, sir, but only so far. I know better than anyone where his loyalties lie. He does nothing unless it helps Israel."

"That's what worries me. I don't like being manipulated by any country, but I especially don't like it by a country that owes us its very existence. Quite a few of my predecessors allowed Israel to lead them around by the nose, and several of them weren't even aware of it. Not me." Hayes angrily shook his head. "I won't allow it. I want to make damn sure this information is correct before we start dropping bombs. Do we have anyone in Baghdad who can confirm what Freidman told us?"

"This is awkward, sir." Kennedy hesitated for a second. "Our resources in Iraq are limited. As you know, we have a few people in the regime who are on our payroll, but to ask them to look into this would be extremely risky." "Isn't that their job?" asked the President with a hint of irritation in his voice. "Isn't that what we pay them to do?"

"Yes," Kennedy conceded, "but for them to go outside their area of concern and start asking questions ..." her voice trailed off and she uncharacteristically grimaced. "It would almost certainly get them tortured by Saddam's secret police."

The President was undeterred. "Well, listen, before we start dropping bombs on a hospital I'd like to be absolutely sure that those nukes are in fact there."

"Sir, I can ask one of them to look into it, but I think they will ignore me. It's too risky. Besides, we have no reason to doubt the Israelis on this."

"I can think of several reasons why I should doubt them." Hayes rolled his eyes.

Kennedy ignored the comment and extracted a file from the pouch. "I thought you might be interested in these." She slid a sheaf of black and-white satellite photographs across the table. They were of downtown Baghdad. The Al Hussein Hospital was circled in white. "I had my people go back through the files to see what they could dig up on the hospital. This is what they found." Kennedy removed the first photo, revealing a second one that showed just the hospital and the surrounding one-block radius. On the east side of the hospital, where the alley was located, several vehicles were bracketed in white and next to them were two simple words: Dump Truck.

"This all started a little over three years ago. Dump trucks all day long for a month straight. My experts estimate that over a thousand tons of earth was removed from beneath the hospital." Kennedy flipped to the next photo. It was the same setup, except this time the vehicles in the alley were labeled as cement trucks.

"My people counted the number of trucks that came to the site and feel pretty confident that they weren't just laying a new foundation. They say the only time the Iraqis use this much cement is when they are trying to build a bunker."

"How in the hell did we miss this?" Hayes asked angrily. "Isn't this why we spend billions on the spy satellites?"

"The problem, sir, is that we leveled a good portion of the country. Since the end of the Gulf War it's been a nonstop succession of dump trucks and cement trucks."

The President flipped through the remainder of the photographs without comment. When he was finished he took his time putting them back in a neat stack and then handed them to Kennedy. "You think this corroborates what Freidman told us?"

"Yes, I do."

The President stood and walked over to the window. He gazed across the way at the Executive Office Building. Kennedy watched him in silence, speculating if he wasn't telling her something. She was in the midst of wondering if the Israelis had done something she didn't know about, when the President turned around and spoke.

"How many people are in this hospital?"

"I'm not sure, sir." Her answer was less than truthful. One other analysts had given her a range, but she didn't think now was the time to tell the President the number.

"Hundreds?"

"Possibly"

The President turned around again and looked out the window. Kennedy felt for him. It would probably be aviators who would drop the bombs, but they were trained from day one of flight school to deal with it. Not the President. He was ultimately the one who would be ordering those people to their deaths. Kennedy feared that he was going through the hospital wondering how many children would be killed, how many mothers, fathers and grandparents. It was an ugly business they were in.