"I'm sure the other guys started it," Javna said.

"This isn't funny, Ben," Heffer said. "And it's getting less funny by the minute. You said that this Creek fellow would handle everything under the radar. Shooting up the Arlington Mali and killing people is not under the radar."

"All the eyewitness reports say that Harry wasn't the one who started shooting," Javna said. "Whatever happened, he was defending Robin Baker. He was working under the radar. Whoever is working against us were the one to made mis happen."

"You don't have any idea where he is now. Where they are now," Heffer said.

"No," Javna said. "I left him a message to get low last night and told him to wait until I sent for him."

"Well, try locating him now, if you don't mind," Heffer said.

Javna pulled out his communicator and tried to connect. "It's no good. The system says his communicator is off the system, and I'm getting no response from his home connection. I would imagine all his equipment has been impounded by the police."

"No messages?" Heffer asked.

"I'll check," Javna said.

Heffer's executive assistant entered the room with a blue slip of paper and handed it to Heffer.

"We've got a court date," Heffer said. "Bright and early tomorrow morning at eight forty-five. I want you to handle this, Ben. Time to exercise that law degree of yours. Dig up what you can on this precedent and then bury that lizard with it. 'Hammurabi,' my ass."

"Odd," Javna said, still looking at his communicator.

"What?" Heffer said.

"I just got a text message from Dave Phipps over at Defense," Javna said. "He wants to have lunch and discuss 'our mutual friend.'"

"You don't have mutual friends?" Heffer said.

"I try not to have mutual friends with him," Javna said.

"You should have lunch with him," Heffer said.

"Yeah, I should," Javna said. "And double up on the antacid."

"Here you go," Dave Phipps said, handing Javna his hot dog.

"Thanks," Javna said, taking it. "You know, Dave, the Defense Department pays hundreds of dollars for hammers and toilet seats. It seems like it should be able to spring for something more than a hot dog from a stand on the Mall."

"How can we?" Phipps said. "All our money is in seats and hammers. Anyway, the Pentagon's not paying for your lunch today, I am."

"Well, in that case, it's a meal fit for a king," Javna said.

"Damn right," Phipps said, taking his hot dog from the vendor and handing him his cash. "That's a Kingston's Bison Boar hot dog you're eating there, Javna. No ground-up pork sphincters for you. And all the condiments you can stand. I'll even spring for a soda."

"Well, shit, Dave," Javna said. "Keep this up and people will say we're in love."

"Not likely," Phipps said, taking his change and grabbing two Cokes. "Come on, let's sit." The two men angled toward a bench and ate silently for a minute, watching joggers run past on the Mall.

"Good dog," Phipps said, after a minute.

"No sphincters," Javna agreed.

"I've got a funny story about Bison Boar," Phipps said. "I got it from Kingston's Pentagon supplier. He said that when Bison Boar came on the market, there was a rabbinical debate about whether Jews could eat it."

"Well, it's pork," Javna said. "At least it's partly pork. Isn't it?"

"That was the question. The Torah forbids eating meat from animals with cloven hooves, but someone pointed out that technically speaking, Bison Boar didn't come from an animal with hooves, and in fact it didn't really come from an animal at all. It came from genetically spliced and sequenced DNA that was tweaked to produce muscle tissue in a vat. One of the animals the DNA came from had split hooves, but the other one didn't, and since there never was an actual Bison Boar animal, no one knew whether theoretically the animal would have split hooves or not."

"They could look at the corporate mascot," Javna said.

"They did, apparently," Phipps said. "It wasn't helpful. It wears boots."

"Fascinating," Javna said. "What did they decide?"

"They didn't," Phipps said. "Eventually one of the rabbis pointed out that the Torah was silent on the subject of DNA splicing, so what they were doing was just speculation. Kind of the Jewish equivalent of arguing whether how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. So the question wasn't whether the meat was from a cloven-hooved animal or not, but why they were arguing about it in the first place."

"Smart man," Javna said.

"Well," Phipps said. "He was a rabbi."

"Does this story have application to our situation," Javna said, "or are we just making lunchtime chit-chat?"

"I have an idea here, and I want you to tell me what you think of it," Phipps said. "Let's pretend we're on the same side and talk like we might want to keep our jobs longer than the end of the week. What do you say?"

"I think that's a tremendous idea," Javna said. "You first."

"Over the last couple of days you might have noticed you had some difficulty accomplishing a particular task you've been working on," Phipps said.

"Now that you mention it, yes," Javna said.

"I imagine that you'll find from here on out your difficulty will be alleviated," Phipps said. "And before you ask, let's just say that while we over at Defense believed it was in our strategic interest to have your department fail in its task, the facts on the ground have changed substantially in the last several hours."

"You mean six Nidu destroyers up and vanishing into n-space all at the same time has got your balls in a clench, too," Javna said.

"I wouldn't have put it that way, but yes," Phipps said. "Defense and State have different ideas on the desirability of staying close to our good friends the Nidu, but at this point we'd rather stay close than go toe-to-toe."

"There is the little problem that we don't know where the object of our task, as you delicately put it, is at this particular moment."

"I'll get that information for you," Phipps said. "But it's going to have to wait until after Webster's briefing tonight. There are people I need to talk to first. Projects I have to close down."

"The sooner I can get it, the happier I am," Javna said. "But I don't imagine this sudden inter-departmental cooperation comes at no cost."

"No cost," Phipps said. "Just a favor. If anyone asks, this little squabble between our departments never happened."

"Who do you imagine asking?" Javna said.

"You never know," Phipps said, between a mouthful of hot dog. "The press. A Senate committee. An independent investigator. Whoever."

"Just to be clear," Javna said. "And to avoid any comfortable euphemisms here on our nice little park bench, Defense spent the last week trying to fuck up our relationship with our closest ally—which worked, incidentally, and I have court date tomorrow morning to prove it—and to put the cherry on top, you attempted to kill a member of the State Department, who is, incidentally, a very good friend of mine. And I suspect that you would have killed an innocent woman as well if you could have gotten away with it And you want me to just forget about it."

Phipps nodded and slugged back some of his Coke. "Yeah. That's pretty much our position, Ben. Just forget about it."

"It's kind of a hard thing to forget, Dave," Javna said. "Especially with most of the Nidu battle fleet probably bearing down on us. And even if we decide to forgive and forget, someone's going to have to take the blame."

"I've got someone to blame," Phipps said. "And as an added bonus he is actually guilty."

"Nice to see the Defense Department subcontracts for attempted murder, too," Javna said.

"Look," Phipps said. "When all this is over, you and I can go in a back alley with a couple of beers and a couple of lead pipes and have it out, all right? But right now we're having a 'hang together or hang separately' moment. So if it's all the same, I'd like to stay focused on the task at hand. I'll help you find your pal and his girlfriend. In return, we all make like we're friends. Under oath, if necessary. That's how this is going to work, if it's going to work at all."