The dignitaries followed Deng through the maze of silos, most of them dumbfounded that, at least by all appearances, he had actually succeeded with his plan.

Deng described the targeting strategy in general terms, naming a number of American military installations, and finished by saying, “The American military-industrial complex will be rendered impotent for at least months, and possibly years. As though struck,” he said, “by a blunt fist.” Deng liked this part, so he repeated it, trusting that in some form the translation would take:

“As though struck,” he said, “by a blunt fist.”

Deep in the cavern, near the back, stood a guest who had for-gone the walking tour. He leaned against a wide opening in the wall of the cave where, behind him, there stood the calm waters of an underwater docking bay. The conning tower of a medium-size submarine bereft of national insignia protruded from the water in the bay.

This man, like the others, wore a headset. He had been following the tour on audio, but had only come as far from his submarine as the position he occupied now.

In the world of the communist brotherhood Deng had recruited, there were few VIPs, and even fewer men-including those found throughout history-who qualified to function as royalty. The man leaning against the cavern wall, however, was to these men, as Deng well knew, quite literally a symbol of revolution itself.

An aging fossil of defiance in the face of capitalism, friend to all Marxist-Leninist regimes, the man had now, thanks to Vice Premier General Deng Jiang, inherited the role of royal mascot for the next phase of the revolution. As Deng’s tour came around the forty-second silo, the man stepped forward and raised a hand to his brethren. One by one, the faces of the other dignitaries in the procession registered precisely the look Deng had sought: a combination of shock, awe, and self-satisfaction. The man’s beard was thick and gray-even unruly-but he didn’t look nearly as old as most of the dignitaries had pegged him for.

At that point the mascot from Cuba grinned through teeth yellowed from too many years of gluttonous cigar consumption and joined his comrades for the conclusion of the tour.

Pete, you stay for a bit?”

The remainder of CIA’s senior staff departed the conference room adjoining Lou Ebbers’s executive suite, leaving Peter M. Gates alone with the DCI. Gates replaced his ass in the seat he’d held for the past two hours as Ebbers stood at the head of the table and waited for the last deputy director to leave.

When the door had closed, Ebbers slid a photocopy of a letter across the table.

“Inquiry from Senator Kircher,” Ebbers said. “Came to me.”

Ebbers was a man who looked more virile at sixty than he had at twenty-five. He had a stripe of gray stretching back from each temple but was otherwise bald. A pair of wire rims rested high on his nose.

“Copied the president,” Ebbers said, “and most of the NSC. It’s a request, as you can see, for a ‘comprehensive summary of all CIA intelligence related to China’s readiness and/or intention to annex Taiwan.’ Wants it in a week, report to remain classified, his eyes only. No committee review. He’ll accept a blacked-out version.”

Gates immediately understood the letter to be a warning shot intended for the president. When requests like this were made, it usually meant the congressman in question already had the goods, and sought either verification of what he already knew or, more likely, to make a point. Kircher, in copying the administration, was telling the nation’s chief executive he knew something the president didn’t, or that he knew something the president hadn’t wanted him to find out about. Either way, Kircher was going back-channel to fight a skirmish the senator was confident he would win, Gates hearing it in the trademark accent of the ubiquitous guest star of prime-time cable debate shows: Just puttin’ it out there, Mr. President-lettin’ you know a conversation’s comin’.

The way Kircher was playing it, Gates guessed the senator intended to pressure the president into backing out of his proposed U.S.-China corporate-partner initiative, which Kircher opposed, though the senator could have been shooting for any of a number of benefits serving the citizens of the great state of North Carolina.

None of this was out of the ordinary-routine Beltway activity. What disturbed Gates was the topic of the inquiry.

Could he possibly have so grossly underestimated her?

Following his reprimand, had Julie Laramie gone off-rez and handed classified intel to a senator known to be the president’s arch-rival? If so, he’d slap a treason investigation on her ass so fast her head-and career-would spin.

When Gates looked up from reading the letter he found Ebbers looking at him.

“If the gentleman from North Carolina is doin’ some fishin’,” Ebbers said, “my guess’d be he knows where they’re bitin’. We have any idea what he’s got?”

Gates shook his head, giving the impression he was trying to think of anything he might have heard about.

“Think I’ll need to check, Lou,” he said.

“You got anybody sitting on anything, now’s the time.”

Gates didn’t think he hesitated, but it felt that way to him. Ebbers wasn’t always so direct. “I’ll dig,” Gates said, “and whatever he’s got, if it’s anything at all, we’ll find it.”

“I want whatever you have in three days. We clear?”

“As ice. This will not be a problem, Lou.”

“All right, then.” Gates knew this to be Ebbers’s standard end-of-meeting remark. “Lemme know.”

Gates procured a tall coffee from the Starbucks kiosk and returned immediately to his office. On his way through the executive waiting room, he fired an order at Miss Anders without looking at her.

“Get Rhone up here,” he said, then stopped before charging through the door to his office. Miss Anders, he realized, had not reacted to his order with her usual fervor. In fact, she hadn’t reacted at all.

The typically stone-faced assistant was flush with either embarrassment or anger, the color of her face approaching the shade of her candy-apple-red blazer.

“What is it,” Gates said.

“There’s a caller holding.”

She didn’t say anything more.

“Well?” Gates said. “Who?”

“He says his name is ‘Lunar Eclipse.’ He doesn’t seem to accept that I’m not able-”

“Fine.”

“I’ve told him you’re not-”

“I’ll take the damn call, Miss Anders.”

For Gates it hadn’t been the worst day of his life, but it sure as hell wasn’t his best.

During his third year in the Directorate of Operations, he’d been trying to install a leader his staff had told him would be the right man for a certain Central American nation. The problem was that there was no election in that particular nation for another four years, and the nation’s current prime minister, who had no interest in America’s views, was in perfect health. For Gates the solution was simple: remove the misguided leader and install the correct one in his place.

It was a complicated operation, but in Gates’s view he orchestrated it brilliantly, even in failure. At least this was what he had come to believe once he’d consumed the gushing round of compliments fed him by his men’s club comrades after the fact.

In one of the few successful covert CIA assassinations in history, his team had succeeded in taking out the errant leader, doing it, in fact, under the cover of night at the very palace where he slept. Unfortunately, Gates had overlooked the leader’s very powerful minister of defense who, upon getting wind of the assassination attempt, allowed the American agents to waltz into the leader’s palace and take him out with no resistance whatsoever. The only resistance that occurred came after the minister of defense confirmed the prime minister was muerto, at which point he sealed the palace perimeter and captured or killed the entire American team.