educate the newcomer from Peoria—that he would not listen to such people, ever. Told the man himself. In another context it would have been an amusing story. Such people occasionally came to Washington with such purity of purpose as to justify a white horse, but in due course they would learn that horses were out of date—and in most cases, they were merely doing it for show anyway.
But not this time. The story had spread. First reported in the local D.C. papers with whimsy, it had been picked up in Indianapolis as something genuinely new and decidedly 'Hoosier,' and then respread through a couple of the news syndicates. This new senator had talked forcefully with his new colleagues, and won a few converts. Not all that many, but enough to be worrisome. Enough to give him a chairmanship of a powerful subcommittee, what was too bully a pulpit for one such as he, especially since he had a flair for the dramatic and an effective, if not exactly nice, turn of phrase that reporters couldn't avoid quoting. Even reporters in the Great Network enjoyed reporting genuinely new things—which was what «news» meant, something everyone mainly forgot.
At the parties, people joked that it was a fad, like hula hoops, amusing to watch and soon to fade, but every so often one of them would worry. The tolerant smile would freeze on his or her face in mid-joke, and they'd wonder if something genuinely new might be happening.
No, nothing genuinely new ever happened here. Everybody knew that. The system had rules, and the rules had to be obeyed.
Even so, a few of them worried at their dinner parties in Georgetown. They had expensive houses to pay off, children to educate, and status to maintain. All had come from somewhere else, and none wanted to go back there.
It was just so outrageous. How did the newcomers expect to find out what they needed to, without lobbyists from the Network to guide and educate them—and didn't they represent the people, too? Weren't they paid to do exactly that? Didn't they tell the elected representatives— worse, these new ones weren't elected, they were all appointed, many of them by governors who, in their wish to get reelected themselves, had bowed to President Ryan's impassioned but utterly unrealistic televised speech. As though some new religion had broken out.
At the parties in Chevy Chase, many of them worried that the new laws these new senators would pass would be… laws, just like the ones produced by the system, at least in their power if not in their wisdom. These new people could actually pass new laws without being 'helped.' That was so genuinely new an idea as to be… frightening. But only if you really believed it.
And then there were the House races, just about to start around the country, the special elections required to repopulate the People's House, as everyone liked to call it, which was Disneyland for lobbyists, so many meetings all in one convenient complex of buildings, 435 lawmakers and their staffs within a mere twenty acres. Polling data that had been reported mainly in local papers was now being picked up by the national media in shocked disbelief. There were people running who had never run for anything before; businessmen, community leaders who had never worked the system, lawyers, ministers, even some physicians. Some of them might win as they spewed forth neo- populist-type speeches about supporting the President and 'restoring America' — a phrase that had gained wide currency. But America had never died, the Network people told themselves. They were still here, weren't they?
It was all Ryan's doing. He'd never been one of them. He'd actually said more than once that he didn't like being President!
Didn't like it?
How could any man—'person' to the Network Establishment in the new age of enlightenment—not like having the ability to do so much, to pass out so many favors, to be courted and flattered like a king of old?
Didn't like it?
Then he didn't belong, did he?
They knew how to handle that. Someone had already started it. Leaks. Not just from inside. Those were little people with lesser agendas. There was more. There was the big picture, and for that, access still counted, because the Network had many voices, and there were still ears to listen. There would be no plan and no conspiracy per se. It would all happen naturally, or as naturally as anything happened here. In fact, it had already begun.
FOR BADRAYN, AGAIN, it was time on his computer. The task, he learned, was time-critical. Such things often were, but the reason was new in this case. The travel time itself had to be minimized, rather than arranged in such a way as to meet a specific deadline or rendezvous. The limiting factor here was the fact that Iran was still something of an outlaw country with surprisingly little in the way of air travel options.
Flights with convenient times were astoundingly limited: KLM 534 to Amsterdam left just after one A.M., and arrived in Holland at 6:10 A.M. after an intermediary stop; Lufthansa's nonstop 601 left at 2:55, and got to Frankfurt at 5:50; Austrian Airlines 774, leaving at 3:40 A.M., arrived in Vienna nonstop at 6:00 A.M.; Air France 165 left at 5:25 A.M., arrived at Charles de Gaulle at nine A.M.; British Airways 102 left at six A.M., stopping en route, arriving at Heathrow at 12:45 P.M.; Aeroflot 516 left at three A.M. for Moscow, arrived there at 7:10.
Only one nonstop to Rome, no direct flights,to Athens, not even a nonstop to Beirut! He could have his people connect through Dubai—remarkably, Emirates Airlines did fly out of Tehran into its own international hub, as did Kuwait's flag carrier, but they, he thought, were not a very good idea.
Just a handful of flights to use, all of them easily observed by foreign intelligence services—if they were competent, as he had to assume they were, either they'd have their own people aboard the flights or the cabin staff would be briefed on what to look for and how to report it while the aircraft was still in the air. So, it wasn't just time, was it?
The people he'd selected were good ones; educated for the most part, they knew how to dress respectably, how to carry on a conversation, or at least to deflect one politely—on international flights the easiest thing was to feign the need for sleep, which most often wasn't feigned anyway. But only one mistake, and the consequences could be serious. He'd told them that, and all had listened.
Badrayn had never been given a mission like this one, and the intellectual challenge was noteworthy. Just a handful of really usable flights out, and the one to Moscow wasn't all that attractive. The gateway cities of London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, and Amsterdam would have to do—and one flight each per day. The good news was that all five of them offered a wide choice of qonnec-tions via American and other flag carriers. So one group would take 601 to Frankfurt, and there, some would disperse through Brussels (Sabena to New York-JFK) and Paris (Air France to Washington-Dulles; Delta to Atlanta; American Airlines to Orlando; United to Chicago) via conveniently timed connecting flights, while others took Lufthansa to Los Angeles. The British Airways team had the most options of all. One would take Concorde Flight 3 into New York. The only trick was getting them through the first series of flights. After that, the whole massive system of international air travel would handle the dispersal.
Still, twenty people, twenty possible mistakes. Operational security was always a worry. He'd spent half his life trying to outfox the Israelis, and while his continued life was some testimony to his success—or lack of total failure, which was somewhat more honest—the hoops he'd had to leap through had nearly driven him mad more than once. Well. At least he had the flights figured out. Tomorrow he would brief them in. He checked his watch. Tomorrow wasn't all that far away.
NOT EVERY INSIDER agreed. Every group had its cynics and rebels, some good, some bad, some not even outcasts. Then there was also anger. The Network members, when thwarted by other members in one of their endeavors, often took a philosophical view of the matter—one could always get even later, and still stay friends— but not always. This was especially true of the media members who both were and were not part of it all. They were, in the sense that they did have their own personal relationships and friendships with the government in and out people; they could go to them for information and insights, and stories about their enemies. They were not, in that the insiders never really trusted them, because the media could be used and fooled—most often cajoled, which was easier for one side of the political spectrum than the other. But trust? Not exactly. Or more exactly, not at all.
Some of them even had principles.
'Arnie, we need to talk.'
'I think we do,' van Damm agreed, recognizing the voice that had come in on his direct line.
'Tonight?'
'Sure. Where?'
'My place?'
The chief of staff gave it a few seconds of consideration. 'Why not?'
THE DELEGATION CAME just in time for evening prayers. The greetings were cordial and modest on both
