The Revolution Business

Wednesday?' It was one of the older field-expedient codes: ignore negatives, treat them as emphasis. Mike just hoped the colonel had been to the same school.

'Maybe sooner,' Smith reassured him. 'I'll see you around.'

When he hung up, Mike almost collapsed on the spot. He'd been on the phone for two minutes. His arms were aching and he could feel the sweat in the small of his back. Shit. He

pulled out the antibacterial gel wipes and applied them vigorously to the mouthpiece of the phone-he'd held the receiver and dialed the numbers with a gloved hand, but there were

bound to be residues, DNA sequences, whatever-then mentally crossed it off his list of untapped numbers, for good. That left the polygraph, but, he figured, raising chain-of-command concerns with one's immediate superior isn't normally a sacking offense. And Dr. James hadn't told him not to, either.

He'd hoped the colonel would deduce the urgency in his invitation and he was right. Barely half an hour after he arrived home the doorbell rang. Too soon, way too soon! his nerves gibbered at him as he hobbled towards the entryphone, but the small monitor showed him a single figure on the front step. 'Come on up,' he said, eyeballing the top of his boss's head with trepidation. A moment later, he opened the door.

'This had better be good,' said Smith, standing on the front step with a bag that contained-if Mike was any kind of judge-something from Burger King.

Mike hung back. 'To your knowledge, is this apartment bugged?'

'Is-' Smith raised an eyebrow, an expression of deep concern on his face: concern for Mike's sanity, in all probability. 'If 1 thought it was bugged, I wouldn't be here. What's up?'

'Maybe nothing. To your knowledge, was there anything hinky about the mobile phone you dropped off with me last time you visited.'

'Was there'-Mike had never really seen a man's pupils dilate like that, up close-'what?' He could see irritation and curiosity fighting out in Smith's face.

'Let me get my coat. You're driving.'

'You bet.' Smith shook his head. 'This had better be good.'

The colonel drove a Town Car-anonymous, not obviously government issue. He didn't say a word until they were a mile down the road. 'This car is not bugged. I swept it myself. Talk.'

Mike swallowed. 'You're my boss. In my chain of command. I'm talking to you because I'm not from the other side of the fence-Is it normal for someone higher up the chain of command to do a false-flag pickup and brief a subordinate against their line officer?'

Smith didn't say anything, but Mike noticed his knuckles whiten against the leather steering wheel.

'Because if so,' Mike continued, 'I'd really like to know, so I can claim my pension and get the hell out.'

Smith whistled tunelessly between his teeth. 'You're telling me someone's been messing with you-Dr. James. Right?'

'That's the one.'

'Shit!' Smith thumped the center of the steering wheel so hard Mike twitched. 'Sorry. I thought I'd cured him of that.' He flicked a turn signal on, then peeled over onto an exit ramp. 'What did he want you to do?'

'It's what I've already done, as much as anything else-the mobile phone you gave me, to pass on to the other side? Did you know it had a bomb in the earpiece? At least, that's what Dr. James told me. He also told me he was reassigning me to some kind of expeditionary force. Do you know anything about that?'

'You sure about the phone?' Smith sounded troubled.

'That's what he said. It gets worse. When I handed the thing over, my contact actually came out and asked me to my face whether there was a bomb in it. I said no, of course, but it sounds like they're about as paranoid as the doctor. If they check it and find there is a bomb in it…'

'That's a matter for the policy folks to deliberate on,' Smith said as he changed lanes. 'Mike, I know what you're asking and why, and I've got to say, that's not your question-or mine-to ask. Incidentally, you don't need to worry about any fallout; we've got a signed executive order waiting to cover our asses. But let me spin you a scenario? Put yourself in the doctor's shoes. He knew they had a stolen FADM and he wanted it back, and he had to send them a message that he meant business. You were talking to their, their liberals. But we don't want to talk to their liberals. Liberals are predisposed to talk; the doctor wants to get the attention of their hard-liners, get them to fold. We'd already told them that we wanted the weapon back. Negotiation beyond that point was useless: They could hand it over and we'd think about talking, but if not, no deal. So… if you look at it from his angle, a phone bomb would underline the message that we were pissed and we wanted our toy back. To the doctor's way of thinking, if they found it, no big deal: It underlines the message. If it worked, waxing one weak sister would send a message to their other faction that we mean business. At least, that's how he works.' He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel air bag cover.

'With respect, sir, that's crazy. The Clan doesn't work that way; what might work with a criminal enterprise or a dictatorship is the wrong way to go about nudging a hereditary aristocracy. He's talking about assassinating someone's mother or brother. They'll see it as cause for a blood feud!'

'Hmm. That's another way of looking at things. Only it's already out of date. Mike, you swore an oath. Can I rely on you to keep this to yourself?'

Fleming nodded, uncertain. 'I guess so.' Part of him wanted to interrupt: But you're wrong! He'd spent two stinking days running a fever in a horse-drawn carriage with Miriam's mother and the Russian ice princess with the sniper's rifle, and every instinct screamed that the colonel's scenario setup was glaringly wrong-that to those folks, the political was personal, very personal indeed, and a phone bomb in the wrong ear wouldn't be treated as a message but as grounds for a bloody feud played out by the assassination of public figures-but at the same time, the colonel obviously had something else on his mind. And he had a sick, sinking feeling that trying to bring conflicting facts to the colonel's attention, much less Dr. James's, would lead to dismissal of his concerns at best. At worst-don't go there, he told himself.

'You didn't hear this from me, and you will not repeat it, but a few days ago we did an audit. The bad guys didn't stop at just one nuke. We're fairly certain our quiver is missing six arrows-that's how many are missing, including the one we recovered, and the MO was the same for each theft.'

'Six-shit! What happened?'

'Too much.' Smith paused for a few seconds, cutting in behind a tractor-trailer. 'The doctor sent the one we found back to them: Another of his little messages. He has, it seems, got some special friends in Special Forces, and contacts all the way up to the National Command Authority. He's gotten the right help to build his own stovepiped parallel command and control chain for these gadgets, and he's gotten VPOTUS's ear, and VPOTUS got the president to sign off on it… Hopefully it killed a bunch of their troops. There's been a determination that we are at war; this isn't a counterterrorism op anymore, nor a smuggling interdiction. They've even gone to the Supremes to get a secret ruling that Posse Comitatus doesn't apply to parallel universes.

'To VPOTUS's way of thinking, these guys are as much a threat to us as Chemical Ali was-hell, even more of a threat. The closest thing to a weapon of mass destruction he had was Saddam's head on a stick, but he had to go, visibly and publicly, and these guys have to go, too. Even when it was just one nuke, if they'd given it back to us when we asked nicely, and sued for terms… it was going to be difficult. Anyway, there's no use crying over spilt milk. The five remaining bombs aren't enough to hurt us significantly-but they're more than enough justification for what's coming next. There's a lab out west that's been making progress on a gizmo for moving stuff between, uh, parallel universes. And you know what the price of gas is. If we can make it work, it'll be a lot easier to get at the oil under their version of Texas than to deal with the Saudis. That'll be what WARBUCKS is thinking, and it's going to be what he's telling James to expedite. When Wolfowitz gets through fixing up Iraq… do I need to draw you a diagram?'

At war. Mike shook his head. 'So you're telling me this is just another oil war? Has anyone told Congress that they're supposed to have authorized this?'

'You know as well as I do that that's not how things happen in this administration. They're looking to our national security in the broadest terms, and when they've got their ducks lined up in a row, well: They've got a majority in Congress, they're even in the Senate, and the other side have given them the most pliable minority leader in decades. Lieberman's terrified of not looking tough on security issues, and lets WARBUCKS play him like a