Politika

and sat back down. He stared into his cup without drinking for several more seconds, then looked up at the others.

“I may as well be the first to say what’s on everybody’s mind,” he said at last. “It’s conceivable that it could be Russia. Or factions within the Russian government, anyway. Starinov has any number of political opponents who would like to see him get egg on his face… and who’d have access to money, materials, and highly proficient operatives.”

He noticed that Megan’s eyes had narrowed in thought.

“Meg?” he said.

“It’s just that the whole thing isn’t coming together for me. Nobody’s claimed responsibility for the bombing —”

“And it could be nobody ever will, if I may interject,” Nimec said. “The trend for the past decade has been for terrorist groups to avoid drawing attention to themselves, the idea being to keep their enemies guessing, and jumping at shadows.”

“I’m aware of that,” Megan said. “But in this instance the act would have been committed with very specific aims in mind — namely a chilling of relations between our two countries, and the weakening of Starinov’s prestige and authority within his own government. Seems to me, there’d be no sense in it unless the finger of blame very clearly pointed in his direction. Furthermore, why would Starinov have engineered the strike, unless he wanted to bring about his own downfall? Like I said, it doesn’t gel. There’s no damn logic to it.”

“Not apparently, and not yet,” Nimec said. “But our players might have a subtle strategy that we just aren’t grasping at this juncture.”

“I agree,” Nordstrum said. “It may feel like forever since the bombing, but the fact is it’s barely been twelve hours. We have to wait for more information, see how everything develops—”

“And do what in the meantime? Sit on our hands?” Scull said. “Gord, listen to me. Can you imagine the negative impact on our plans for the ground station if the blast is pinned on Starinov? I’m the one in Russia. I’ve got a close-up view of what’s going on politically. And I can tell you, there are a lot of people in high positions who’d love for our Yankee asses to ride on out of here on horseback.”

“Jesus, Scull,” Megan said. “Hundreds of innocent people were killed last night, we’ve been discussing a situation that could destabilize an entire region, and you’re—”

“What? Being up front about why I’m talking to my videophone at midnight Kaliningrad time and trying to figure out the big picture? If we aren’t concerned about our interests in Russia, who’s gonna be? And how come Gord called this coffee klatch in the first place?”

Nordstrum sighed and rubbed his eyelids. “Obviously we all know why we’re here, Scull. But I think Megan was trying to add some perspective to the—”

“Wait,” Gordian said, holding up his hand. “I’m sure that none of us have had much sleep, and everybody’s frazzled. But some extremely important issues have been raised, and I’m glad we didn’t postpone this discussion. Somebody, I think it was Julius Caesar, once said that the art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, and what I’ve always thought he meant was that you’ve got to meet the unexpected head-on, grapple with it, rather than try to tiptoe around it. That’s the reason we developed the Sword project.” He paused for comment, received none, and turned toward Nimec. “Pete, I want Max Blackburn to assemble a team that will gather information about who may have been responsible for the bombing. He’s to spare no expense.”

Nimec nodded. There was a look Gordian occasionally got in his eyes, a tight, hard focus, that always evoked a mental image of someone holding a magnifying glass into the sunlight to set a leaf on fire. A look that made whoever it was turned upon feel as if he were being bathed in combustible heat. It was a look that he was giving Nimec right now.

“I think it’ll be best if Max flies to Russia as soon as possible. He can coordinate things from there, use the ground station as our primary base of operations,” Gordian continued. “At the same time, Pete, you track down whatever leads you can here in the U.S. I’m hoping for fast progress.”

Nimec nodded again.

“We keep a low profile, okay?” Gordian said. “If the intelligence community gets the slightest hint we’re conducting an independent investigation, they’ll shut us down.”

Gordian swung his gaze around the table.

“Any comments?”

“Only one,” Nordstrum said.

Gordian looked at him, waiting.

“You know that quote about the wrestler and the dancer?”

“Right.”

“It comes from Marcus Aurelius, not the emperor Julius.”

Gordian looked at him another moment. Then he slowly lifted his coffee to his lips, drained the cup, and nodded.

“Appreciate that, my friend,” he said.

* * *

The Blue Room at New York’s City Hall, where official press briefings normally took place, was too small to hold the crowd of print and film journalists who wanted to attend the city’s first press conference since the explosion. Figuring out where to hold this briefing had been only one of a hundred decisions that had to be made by the mayor’s office.

But the mayor was gone. Dead. Killed in the blast like a thousand others.

The deputy mayor was in the hospital and expected to be there for at least a week. Internal injuries. He’d taken a chunk of the bleachers in the gut and was considered to be lucky to be alive. Nobody knew when he’d be back on the job.

Half of the borough presidents were too battered to attend, and the police commissioner was both too shattered by his personal tragedy and too focused on the actual investigation to, as he put it, waste his time on PR bullshit.

But the news media was clamoring for anything. For crumbs. So Press Secretary Andrea DeLillo had spent the last fifteen hours pushing her coping skills to world-class levels. She’d fended off politicians determined to make political hay in the glare of the spotlight focused on Times Square. She’d gotten numbers from the crews at the site, from all of the hospitals, and from the EMS sites that had survived. She’d pushed the pain of her own losses into the background, not to mention the fear that she’d probably lose her job as soon as a new mayor took office. If anything she could do would shake loose the killers who had brought the angel of death down on her city, she would do it. She would feed the media the facts as she knew them, and turn them loose to find the perps. It was all she could manage right now. She could only pray it was enough.

The mikes were set up at a podium at the top of the City Hall steps. A huge crowd of reporters of all kinds, all bundled up against the cold, flowed down the stairway and into the street, which had been blocked off and barricaded by the police department. Flanked by representatives from the police, the fire department, the city council, and the FBI, Andrea surveyed the crowd.

Finally she stepped up to the mike and began her presentation. As the grim statistics rolled off her lips, she made a silent vow: Somebody would pay for this if she had to see to it herself.

TWENTY

WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 2, 2000

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:

FBI Official Leaves Questions of Fifth Bomb Unanswered

Fuels Conjecture With Statements About Evidence at FBI Explosives Lab

Washington — During a news conference today at the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, Assistant Director Robert Lang remained vague about whether the FBI is in possession of physical clues to the identity of the bomber or bombers responsible for the bloody New Year’s Eve attack that left an estimated 700