America

and backup batteries worked as advertised, soaking up excess voltage. Two hard drives crashed, only two. Zelda grabbed the telephone, felt relief wash over her when she got a dial tone. Then the power failed. Although the Hudson employees feared the worst, seven minutes later the electricity came back on.

As the crew divided their attention between diagnostic efforts and the television monitors, Zip Vance told Zelda, 'That was too damned close.'

Indeed, had they known when the Tomahawks were coming, Vance could have had all the equipment shut down and grounded. And immediately inflamed the suspicions of everyone in the room. Coincidences like that don't just happen. So it worked out for the best, Zelda thought. She picked up the telephone, checked again for the dial tone. Still there, although the switches would soon be overwhelmed with people calling relatives.

It took several hours to verify that the main storage units were unaffected, with their files intact. Only when that was done did Zelda shoo out the employees. They charged for the elevator, anxious to go to their homes and ascertain the damage there.

When the last elevator load was out the front door, Zip brought the elevator back up and killed the power switch. 'So far so good,' he said and dropped into a chair.

'I thought we were going to have to use the rope,' he added. 'Always wondered if Freda could make it down.' Freda was forty pounds overweight, the heaviest woman in the crew. 'She always said she wouldn't try. Guess you would have had a roommate for the duration.'

Zelda didn't want to talk about Freda or the rope.

'With incentives, Jouany owes us more than four hundred million,' she said lightly. 'Or did before those Tomahawk missiles hit. By tomorrow the number will be over five. Think of it! A half a billion dollars!'

'Money? Is that all you think about?'

'In America money is how you keep score. We're winning big, baby.'

'There's more to life than money,' her partner shot back, meeting her eyes.

'Zip, we've been through all this before. I just never thought of you that way.'

Vance got out of his chair and headed for the elevator. He talked as he walked. 'In two or three weeks this will be all over, one way or the other. We'll be in jail or filthy rich.'

He threw the switch to power up the elevator, opened the door, and climbed in. 'What are you going to do with the rest of your life, Zelda? Have you even thought about it?'

He didn't wait for an answer. The elevator hummed, and down he went.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The wide road ran on and on toward the distant blue mountains, until it rounded a far curve or topped a rise and disappeared from view. Even then the road was still there, even if out of sight. It would faithfully reappear when you rounded the curve or crested the hill. That was the promise of America. In America there was always the road.

Jake Grafton was thinking of the road as he drove along in the government sedan with Janos Ilin in the passenger seat. Neither man had much to say. Ilin had readily agreed with Jake's suggestion of a drive for lunch when he intercepted him on the fifth-floor landing of the office building stairs. He looked almost relieved as he spun around and descended the stairs that he had just trudged up.

Jake headed west on Interstate 66. They were passing the Beltway exit when Ilin asked their destination.

'I thought we might have lunch in Strasburg,' Jake said, 'the hotel there.'

'Fine,' Ilin replied and asked no more.

They drove with the radio off. They had no audio cassettes or disks, so the only sounds were the hum of the engine and tires and the snore of truck diesels. As they passed Manassas the interstate narrowed to two lanes in each direction, the traffic thinned, and they were left with the September day, with its dissipating overcast and mild breeze, and the road. Always the road.

Jake knew what he wanted from Janos Ilin. He wanted to know what the Russian knew about the theft of USS America. He wanted to know who was behind the theft and what they hoped to accomplish. If they were Russians, he wanted to know. If they weren't, he was even more curious. Alas, he didn't know how to go about getting what he wanted.

The guy was so foreign! Oh, he spoke decent English, could understand and be understood, but Jake Grafton had been to Moscow and seen the place. Ugly, inhospitable, polluted, filled with people speaking an incomprehensible language and fighting like rats for the bare necessities, Moscow was as foreign to Jake Grafton as any spot he had ever been. Thinking about Moscow as he drove this morning, he remembered that sense of hopelessness that he had felt when he visited there years ago, immediately after the collapse of communism. At that time the population was still living in the shadow of the absolute dictatorship, an oppressive tyranny from which humanity and common sense had long ago been squeezed, if indeed there had ever been any. A more cheerless place he couldn't imagine.

And Moscow was Ilin's home, his national capital, the place where he had spent his life learning and pulling and climbing the ropes.

What, exactly, did he and Ilin have in common? Explain that, please.

'Your embassy,' Jake said, breaking the silence, 'does it have electrical power?'

'Oh, yes,' Ilin said, grinning ruefully. 'We Russians have worried for years about American intercept methods, so we hardened the wiring inside the building and installed extra generators. The lights will be on there even if the sun burns out.'

'One assumes that contingency is extremely unlikely.'

'No doubt, but if it happens, we will be ready. The ambassador will be able to see to write his report to Moscow: 'Today in America the sun burned out.' That is the way of a bureaucracy. When someone somewhere predicts a possible crisis, that prediction assumes a life of its own. Regardless of the likelihood of that crisis occurring, regardless of the cost in effort or money to guard against it, someone will build a career minimizing the damage that crisis could cause, if it ever happens.'

I see.

'The bureaucracy rules.'

'And the microphone in your belt buckle? Was that hardened against electromagnetic pulses?'

'Alas, no. It is history, as you Americans say.'

'Why the microphone in the first place? All the liaison officers were free to return to their embassies whenever they wished and presumably reported everything that they saw or heard.'

'Always the bureaucracy. By listening to what I heard, the bureaucrats could guard against incompetence or betrayal by me.'

'Don't they trust you?'

'They trust me within reason. But the bureaucrats know that the world is a tempting place and people are weak.'

'Are they listening now?'

'No,' Ilin said and grinned. 'I am free as an American, at least for a little while.'

'And those little soliloquies outside my house in Delaware? What were they about?'

'Sol — what? Excuse me. I do not know that word.'

'Soliloquy. A conversation with yourself.'

Ilin grinned. 'I tease the listeners, who cannot talk back.'

Grafton smiled. At last he had a glimpse of the human being.

'So who stole our submarine?'

'Vladimir Kolnikov and Georgi Turchak and the rest of your CIA Blackbeard team.'

'How did the Russian government find out about the Blackbeard team?'

Ilin grinned again. 'Now I ask you — is this car wired? Are your people listening?'

'I don't know,' Jake said. He drove in silence for about a minute, then when a place offered itself, pulled over