lightweight boxing champion of the Naval Academy, father of seven children and one of the twenty most knowledgeable amateur numismatists in the country. None of these achievements, all-American as they were, had earned him a forty-foot-square office in E Ring. He could also captain any nuclear submarine currently in service. But that ability had not won him his very own secretary with her own connecting office. Bryson was a very special kind of engineer-architect, a doctor of marine design. It was his talent for designing magnificent machines of death, rather than his ability to pilot them, that had earned him the wall-to-wall plush carpeting, the leather couch and armchairs, the executive desk, the private telephone line, the mahogany bookcases, the trophy case, the soundproofed walls and ceiling, and the heavy blue-velvet drapes at the window-with-a-view.
Bryson was not here tonight. Which was just as well. He would not have liked the idea of his office being turned into an interrogation chamber.
There were four people in the room. An armed marine guard, cleared for top-security matters, was standing to the right of the door; the holster at his hip was unsnapped and the revolver in it looked like a howitzer to McAlister. Major Arnold Teffler, night-duty physician at the Pentagon, was sitting on the couch with his black bag; he was also security-cleared all the way up to eyes-only material. Bernie Kirkwood was slumped in an armchair, his feet propped up on a coffee table, his eyes closed, and his hands folded in his lap. McAlister sat behind Admiral Bryson's desk and played with a scale model of a Trident submarine. No one spoke. They had nothing in common and no reason for being here until the fifth man arrived.
Rice.
McAlister still had a bit of trouble believing it.
The telephone rang.
McAlister grabbed it. “Yes?”
“This is the door sergeant at the Mall Entrance,” the man on the other end said. “Mr. Rice just came through here.”
“Thank you.”
McAlister hung up, got to his feet, and came around from behind the desk. “Gentlemen, we're about to begin.”
The marine and the doctor remained where they were.
Bernie Kirkwood stood up and stretched.
A minute passed. Then another.
Someone knocked sharply on the door.
The marine opened it.
Two other marines stood in the corridor, and Andrew Rice stood between them. Rice came into the office and the two marines stayed in the hall and the marine already in the room closed the door behind the President's chief advisor.
Rice looked at the doctor and then at McAlister and then around the room. He seemed perplexed. “Where's the President?”
“He couldn't make it,” McAlister said.
“But he called me less than an hour ago!”
“He had some important reading to do.”
“What about the Russian—”
“There is no Russian problem,” McAlister said.
Frowning, Rice waited and said nothing more.
“Don't you want to know what the President is reading?”
“What sort of game is this?” Rice blustered.
McAlister picked up one of Hennings' magazines from the desk and held it out toward Rice.
The fat man just stared at it.
Kirkwood said, “There's also a most interesting article in Friday's Washington Post.”
Rice looked at him.
“Some poor hooker got nearly beat to death,” Kirk-wood said.
At last McAlister had the pleasure of seeing a quick flicker of fear pass through Rice's eyes.
“I haven't any idea what you're talking about,” the fat man said.
McAlister said, “we'll see.”
Chai Po-han got off the train. Slinging his single sack of belongings over his left shoulder, he walked along the concrete platform, past huge pillars bedecked with political posters, up the skeletal steel stairs, and into the public area of the main terminal.
His mother, father, brother, and one of his three sisters were waiting for him. They all wore different expressions. His father was smiling broadly. His brother was quite solemn, as if to say, “What happened to you might as easily have happened to me.” His beloved mother and lovely sister were crying with joy at the sight of him.
It was a very Confucian scene, the kind discouraged by the Party. Love of country must take precedence over love of family.
Chai Po-han began to weep too, although his tears were shed because he knew that once he left China as he planned to do, he would never see any of them again.
At nine o'clock Canning and Lee Ann went up to their rooms, ostensibly to get a few hours' sleep before General Lin Shen-yang came back to them in a rage. But at her door his goodnight kiss metamorphosed into a long, soft, moist battle of lips and teeth and tongues.
“You aren't really sleepy?” she asked.
“Not in the least.”
“Me either.”
She got her suitcase, and they went quietly down the hall to his room.
Inside, she said, “I feel like a high-school girl sneaking off on a forbidden date.”
He held her and kissed her, but that was not enough. His fingers tugged at the buttons of her blouse and slid behind her to unhook her bra. He held her warm breasts in his hands.
She pulled away from him then and said, “I feel all grimy. Let's have a bath together first.”
“In that ugly tub?”
“I'll make it beautiful,” she said unabashedly.
And she did: she made it beautiful.
Later they made love on the four-poster bed while George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln watched.
At the end of it, while he was going limp but was still snug within her, he said, “When we get back to the States — will you come stay with me?”
She smiled. “I think that might be good for me.”
“And wonderful for me.”
“I could have a talk with that son of yours.”
“I don't know,” he said. “I've been thinking about him. Maybe most people in the world should believe in black and white morality. Maybe they shouldn't ever be fully aware of all the animals ready to prey on them. A handful of people like you and me can do the dirty work to keep the balance. If everyone was aware of the nature of the jungle, not many people would be happy.”
“No more talk,” she said.
They stretched out side by side and pulled the covers over themselves.
He thought of Dragonfly…
But then he thought of Lee Ann and knew that he would always have her, knew it in his bones and and blood and muscle, reached out and touched her, and dozed for a while.
McAlister felt malarial — worse, cancerous — as if he belonged in the terminal ward of a hospital. Every one of his joints ached. His head ached. His eyes were grainy and bloodshot. He was sweaty and rumpled; his face
