Red Phoenix

Pilot: “Better. Nose level. Tell him to bank left twenty-five degrees and go to full power … (static) … What’s his airspeed now … (unintelligible)”

Control: “Switching now …”

— Transmission Frequency Changed, End of Intercept —

NOTE: US E-3 Sentry Delta five niner five on patrol over the Sea of Japan confirms aircraft at 20–30,000 feet at transmission origin coordinates.

Simpson marked the section for Captain Carlson’s attention and sat back in his chair. North Korea and the Soviet Union were getting entirely too chummy for his taste. Not that he could do much about it.

His intercom buzzed. “Admiral, your car is here to take you up to the Hill.”

Simpson tossed the report into his out box and stood up, reaching for his briefcase. It was time to go to Capitol Hill and jabber at the Senate Armed Services committee about manpower retention rates. He looked at his calendar. This was his fourth congressional appearance of the week. He often thought it was a goddamned wonder that he ever got any work done.

OCTOBER 4 — CNN HEADLINE NEWS

The CNN reporter, a pretty brunette, stood in the marble-lined corridor outside a hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building.

“This is Connie Marlowe for CNN Headline News. In a surprise development here today, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Stephen Nicholson announced that his committee would not seek jurisdiction over the South Korea sanctions bill. The move, which caught most Capitol Hill observers off guard, clears the way for the bill to go to the House Rules Committee. From there it would move to the full House of Representatives.

“The bill’s chief sponsor, Congressman Ben Barnes of Michigan, was understandably pleased when I spoke with him earlier.”

The film cut to taped footage of a smiling Ben Barnes in the same corridor.

“Naturally I’m delighted that my distinguished colleague Congressman Nicholson has seen the importance of swift and decisive action by the House in this matter. America’s roads and stores cannot continue to be flooded with shoddy South Korean imports while students are murdered in Seoul’s streets. We must send a clear message to the South Korean government. No more violence. No more repression. No more free ride.”

The picture cut back to Connie Marlowe.

“In other news here on the Hill today, a similar bill moved a step closer to consideration by the full Senate by winning approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Conservatives have threatened a filibuster if the bill reaches the floor. But Senate Majority Leader Dickinson of Arkansas remains confident that he has enough support to invoke cloture, a move that would shut off any prolonged debate and bring the issue to an up-or-down vote within a set time frame.

The screen split, showing both the CNN anchorman stationed in Atlanta and the reporter in Washington.

“Connie, doesn’t it take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to end a filibuster? Does the Korea sanctions bill have that much support in the Senate?”

“You’re right, John. Normally, the majority leader’s confidence would indicate overwhelming support for the bill. But this is a special case. With the election coming up, a lot of challengers have been pummeling Senate incumbents with charges that they never do any work. So even senators who don’t plan to vote for the legislation are eager to avoid a long, wearing filibuster. And right now, it’s just not clear who has the votes to win on this issue in the Senate. I’m Connie Marlowe for CNN Headline News.”

OCTOBER 6 — THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

“Mr. Chairman, this proposed rule is outrageous and you know it!” Henry Fielding, the ranking minority member of the House Rules Committee sounded angry but not surprised. The white-haired representative from Missouri glared out across the handful of congressional staffers rapidly scribbling notes on legal pads.

The Rules Committee always met in a small, cramped room to hold the number of spectators down to an absolute minimum. In a way that was a true measure of its power. This committee could make or break legislation in a single hour. It set the terms, the rule, under which a given bill would be considered by the full House of Representatives. Legislation that the Speaker liked would get a rule that sharply limited debate and made it impossible to offer so-called killer amendments. Legislation that the Speaker didn’t like wouldn’t ever get a rule, period.

To make sure of that, the majority party in the House always maintained a two-to-one plus one edge on the Rules Committee — no matter what the real ratio of Democrats to Republicans might be.

And the Speaker liked the Korea sanctions bill.

Fielding knew the fix was in, but he had sworn to put up at least a token fight. “Mr. Chairman, the rule you and your friends have concocted would prevent members of the House from offering even the most reasonable amendments to this legislation. That is not the way we should be conducting business on this kind of issue. And there is no conceivable excuse for the absurd time limitations you’ve placed on the debate.”

The chairman, Representative Kerwin Bouchard of Louisiana, interrupted him. “Mr. Fielding, the issues contained in this bill have been fully considered in committee.” Unconsciously he ran a wizened hand through the remaining strands of his hair. His Southern drawl thickened. “There is no reason for further delay and no necessity for extended debate.”

Fielding struck back. “With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, that is nonsense. We’re not elected to be rubber stamps for the committees. This is supposed to be a deliberative body, and your rule would prevent a thorough and reasoned consideration of this legislation. The issues in this Korea sanctions bill are too complex and too important to be handled in this callously partisan fashion.”

The chairman listened with interest. Fielding at his best was very good. And the chairman had no doubt he would hear the same phrases and arguments again on the floor when the full House debated this rule. But his instructions from the Speaker were clear, and he hadn’t gotten this far in the House by crossing the Speaker. He sat back to enjoy the show with complete confidence in the outcome.

It took nearly an hour of pro forma argument, but in the end the committee approved the rule by a party-line vote of nine to four. No one on the inside was at all surprised.

OCTOBER 7 — THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Putnam tossed the bulky report back across his desk. “Damn it, Blake. This isn’t what I asked you for.”

Blake Fowler looked down at the document and then back to the red face of the national security adviser. He sat down in one of Putnam’s chairs without an invitation.

“You asked for the Working Group’s recommendations to the President. And that” — he pointed to the paper — ”is what you’ve got sitting on your desk.” The report was nearly two weeks overdue, but even that had required a minor miracle and countless hours of overtime.

The actual writing involved in the analysis of the Barnes Korean sanctions bill hadn’t taken more than a couple of days of hard, steady work. But getting the precise wording approved by five cabinet departments and intelligence agencies had been nightmarishly complex. Each wanted to leave its stamp on the report, so each made its own set of editorial changes. Changes that required approval by all the rest, and that often prompted a whole new series of rewrites. Blake had circulated so many different drafts that he now knew every classified-documents courier on the interagency — White House run.

The minor miracle had come in salvaging anything that was clearly written. The members of the Interagency Working Group were solid professionals, but they weren’t writers, and they’d all learned to use bureaucratese. In bureaucratese, people weren’t affected, “population subgroups were impacted.” The risks of full-scale warfare weren’t increased, “the probability of significant geopolitical and military interaction” underwent an “upward modification.” Blake had dug in his heels to fight off meaningless gibberish like that wherever he could, and he’d won more fights than he’d lost.

But he knew that none of that mattered to Putnam. Putnam was upset because the State Department had refused to sign off on the report. State’s representative, Tolliver, hadn’t bothered to attend more than one out of every two or three Working Group meetings, and he’d been a pain in the ass every time anyway.

After a while it had become clear that the secretary of state, a former congressman, was more interested in domestic political polls showing rising public support for some action against South Korea than he was in the foreign