The governor looked at him for a moment, then said, “Virgil?”

Virgil said, “Well, you all know most of the rest of it. The Viets killed Warren last night. I’d discovered that they’d bugged my car, with a bug that looks like it was designed right here in the good ol’ USA. I used the bug, which was still operating, to convince them that I didn’t know where the last man was. Then we flew to the guy’s place and set up an ambush. The Viets walked into it this morning, three of them were killed, and two escaped to Canada, one of them wounded. So here we are.”

“And that’s just about nowhere,” Arenson said.

Virgil said, “We’ve got Sinclair. We’ve got him cold. He’s willing to turn state’s evidence.”

Cartwright looked straight across the table at Virgil. “That won’t happen.”

“Already happened. I accepted his offer, and he gave me a brief statement,” Virgil said. “I recorded it.”

Arenson pushed back from the table and said in a mild voice, “I don’t think you folks understand quite what is going on here. We represent the Homeland Security Agency. We’re not asking you what we’re going to do. We’re telling you what we’re going to do. What we’re going to do is, we’re going to smooth this whole thing over. The Vietnamese provided us with a key contact-”

The governor broke in: “Wait a minute. A whole bunch of Minnesotans are dead. Two were completely innocent. Five, maybe, were involved in a crime thirty years ago, but they get a trial.”

“Governor, in the best of all possible worlds, that’s the way it would work,” Arenson said. “Post-9/11, some things have changed, and this is one of them. I’m authorized, and I’m doing it-I’m classifying this whole matter as top secret. We will help you develop an appropriate press release.”

“You can’t… this is our jurisdiction,” the governor began.

“There’s been a tragedy, but a minor one,” Cartwright said. “What was done was necessary. We may have saved hundreds of lives. If the al-Qaeda plan had gone through…”

The governor said, “I can’t accept-”

Arenson snapped: “Let me say it again, in case you didn’t get it the first time: we’re not asking you, we’re telling you. What part of telling don’t you understand?”

THERE WAS A moment of silence, then the governor cleared his throat and said, “Rose Marie, Neil, Lucas, Virgil, let me talk to you in Rose Marie’s office for a moment.” He stood up and said to the two Washington guys, “Just take a moment. I think we can come to a satisfactory resolution of this.”

The governor led the way out the door and down the hall to Rose Marie’s office, closed the door behind Virgil, the last one in, then turned and bellowed, “Those MOTHERFUCKERS think they can come into MY state and kill MY people and they tell me that THEY’RE saying how it is? They don’t tell ANYBODY how it is in MY state… I say how it is-they don’t say a FUCKIN’ THING.”

The governor raged on and Virgil looked away, embarrassed. The tantrum lasted a full thirty seconds, then the governor, breathing hard, red-faced, looked around, looked at Rose Marie, looked at Mitford, and Mitford smiled and said, “Glad we got that cleared up.”

“What are we going to do?” the governor asked him, his voice rough from the tantrum.

Mitford shrugged. “You’re a liberal, God bless your obscenely rich little soul. How does it hurt you to go up against a bunch of fascists from Homeland Security?”

“Uh-oh. What are you thinking?” Rose Marie asked.

Mitford said to the governor, “You don’t have much political runway left here in Minnesota. What will you do when you’re not governor anymore?”

“I thought I’d just be a rich guy,” the governor said. “If somebody dies, I could run for the Senate.”

“Will that make you happy?” Mitford asked.

“Neil, skip the dime-store psychology,” the governor said. “What are you thinking?”

“We could arrest these two guys and charge them with conspiracy to commit murder in the planned execution of five Minnesotans, with two more murdered in the process. Before anybody has time to react, you have a press conference. You give an Abe Lincoln speech about protecting our precious freedoms, about how we don’t turn our laws over to a bunch of Vietnamese killers. You’d take some heat, but by this time next week, you’d be a national name. You’re on the cover of Time magazine. You’d be a hero to a lot of people in the party. Play your cards right over the next four years…”

The governor looked at him a long time, then said, “What’s the downside?”

Rose Marie said, “They arrest you for treason and you’re executed.”

The governor laughed and said, “Really.” That didn’t worry him; he was far too rich to hang.

Davenport turned to Virgil: “You did turn off that recorder, didn’t you?”

Virgil said, “Jeez, boss… I forgot.”

Davenport: “Wonder what they’re in there saying?”

“They already said enough,” Virgil said. “But… I wouldn’t be surprised if they said a few more things. Being in there by themselves.”

THEY ALL contemplated him for a few seconds, then Rose Marie shook her head, turned to the governor, and said, “Neil raises an interesting possibility. But you would take some heat. A lot of people think security is all-important-they’d absolutely throw six or eight people overboard if it might stop an al-Qaeda attack. As long as it wasn’t them getting thrown.”

“That can be handled,” Mitford said. “That’s all PR. Our PR against their PR, and we’ll have a big head start. Do it right, and they’ll be cooked before they can even decide what to do. We’re talking televised congressional hearings.”

The governor mulled it over, then cocked an eye at Mitford. “A national name by next week?”

“Guaranteed.”

Rose Marie said, “A national name isn’t the same as a national hero. Lee Harvey Oswald is a national name. Benedict Arnold-”

Mitford snarled, “You think I’m so lame with the PR that we’d wind up as Benedict Arnold? For Christ’s sakes, Rose Marie, I ran the negative side in the last campaign.”

“I’m just saying,” she said.

The governor said, “Let’s sit here and think about it for two minutes. All right? Two minutes.”

At the end of the two minutes, the governor covered Rose Marie’s hand with his own and said, “Weren’t you getting a little bit bored? How long has it been since we’ve been in a really dirty fight?”

“You got me there,” she said.

THEY TROOPED BACK into the conference room, where Arenson and Cartwright were slouched in their chairs, barely containing their impatience. The governor said, “Virgil?”

Virgil said to Cartwright and Arenson, “Well, guys, I’ve got some bad news.”

Cartwright: “What’s that?”

Virgil threw his arms wide, gave them his best Hollywood grin, and said, “You’re under arrest for murder.”