America

doesn't say a whole lot. If that house was bugged and the Russian ambassador was listening, he can tell Moscow that Ilin didn't betray a solitary secret.'

'Did he say anything of substance?'

'Not so you'd notice. He said he thought the theft of the submarine was an inside job. Hell, that's my opinion too.'

When Callie went to get ready for bed, Jake sat down in his easy chair and tilted the thing back. He closed his eyes, recalling Ilin's words, how he had said them.

Ilin may have suspected the day was a show for his benefit, or worse, a ploy to trap him into making statements that could be used to blackmail him. Even so, did he point the way?

When Callie came back into the room ten minutes later she found her husband asleep. She spread an afghan over him and left him there.

He awoke several hours later. From the window he looked out at the dark city, silent except for occasional passing cars. The governor of Virginia had ordered out the National Guard to help prevent looting in the Virginia suburbs that were still without power, so occasionally an olive-drab truck or Humvee went slowly down the street.

Billions of dollars in damages in Washington and New York, several hundred people dead here, probably some dozens in New York, a submarine lost. . for what?

He thought he had the pieces of the puzzle. If he could just put them together in the proper way.

The stakes were huge. That was obvious. Whoever was behind this was betting the ranch, so the payoff must be equally huge.

Think big, Jake. Big.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In the days following the attack on New York, Americans held their breath, waiting for the ax to fall again.

When it became plain that months would be required to return electrical service to normal levels in New York and Washington, people abandoned the cities in mass exoduses, overwhelming transportation and human services agencies. The simple truth that everyone was discovering was that modern cities require electricity to function; without it, they are uninhabitable.

The towns and cities that surrounded the dead urban metroplexes were flooded with refugees, many of whom were without a place to live or the means to pay for it. The inability of the authorities to deal with the sheer numbers of people who needed food, water, and a place to sleep resulted in a survival-of-the-fittest attitude that led, in some of the most crowded places, to a breakdown in law and order.

In addition to the emptying of the stricken cities, people in significant numbers throughout the eastern United States fled undamaged cities, choking highways and gridlocking public transportation. There was little panic, but the people leaving the cities had made up their minds and were not dissuaded by urgent entreaties from elected officials, or by less subtle closings of key roads and bridges by state police on orders from governors trying to manage the mess. Determined knots of people ignored and taunted police officers, pushed police vehicles out of the way, and went where they wanted to go.

This massive displacement of people was unprecedented in American history. Some commentators were reminded of the scenes of people fleeing from the advancing Nazi armies during World War II.

It was obvious that armed force was going to be necessary to enforce order, but elected politicians were unwilling to take that step for a variety of reasons, not the least of which, the president told his cabinet, was that the men and women in uniform might refuse to obey orders if those orders required firing on unarmed civilians. This danger was real, General Alt advised.

Huddled at Camp David with his advisers, the president realized that if he lost control of the armed forces, the federal and state governments in America would collapse in the resulting anarchy. What might happen then was too horrible to contemplate. Still, he had already ordered National Guard units to patrol Washington, D.C., and New York City, so he federalized more guard units to patrol the major cities that were being abandoned: Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Savannah, Richmond, Norfolk, and a host of others.

He also made a speech, quoting the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' The words did have a quieting effect, but they weren't enough. The economy was coming unwound, businesses were laying off employees by the thousands, the stock market was in free fall, and all over America people realized that the country was on the cusp of an economic depression.

USS America was somewhere in the Atlantic, and everyone knew it. Any day, any hour, more Tomahawk E-warheads could burst… anywhere.

So everyone waited.

Two days after the strike on New York, Vladimir Kolnikov brought America up under a storm system in the central Atlantic and raised the communications mast above the surface. He kept it there for five minutes, just long enough to record a dose of CNN's headline news on the hour.

He and Turchak listened, then erased the tape.

'We can't launch a missile without Rothberg to program the flight path,' Turchak said, pointing out the obvious, more to stimulate Kolnikov than anything else.

Kolnikov grunted. He had said little in the last two days, preferring to keep his own counsel.

'They don't know that,' Turchak continued, waving generally eastward.

'Umm.'

'Of course, we don't know where the attack submarines are, where the Americans have placed their ASW forces.'

'I don't want them to catch us shallow,' Kolnikov said finally. 'Let's go back down, slowly, updating the sonar model.'

'Same course as before?'

'Yes.'

With that, Kolnikov wandered toward the captain's cabin to try again to take a nap. He hadn't been sleeping well. He hadn't mentioned it to anyone, but he was exhausted. A guilty conscience, he told himself. You'll get over it.

Toad Tarkington brought a television from home — he lived in Morningside, far enough from the locus of the E-warhead blasts that the electronics in his home had not been affected. With a satellite dish on the windowsill and some fancy jury-rigging, the office crowd got it up and running. They kept the idiot box tuned to CNN.

Jake Grafton was at his desk studying the information on the files Tommy Carmellini had stolen from the Jouany firm in London when Toad stuck his head in the door. 'They're interviewing Jouany, Admiral. You might be interested in this.'

Jake stood in the doorway and watched. Carmellini was there, as was the rest of the staff. Stranded in a dead city, everyone seemed to want to come to the office. To visit, even if no productive work could be accomplished.

Antoine Jouany was a short, rotund sixtyish man with only wisps of hair on his perfectly round head. He spoke excellent English with a French accent.

'Of course I am making a fortune trading currencies on behalf of my investors. I apologize to no one. Our economic models suggested that the American economy was overextended, so we sold dollars and purchased euros. Events beyond our control have left us looking quite brilliant. Today. Had the dice rolled the other way, no one would have shed a tear for us.'

The interviewer asked just how many billions Jouany's activities had generated, and he refused to answer. 'This is not the time or place for such a discussion.'

'What is your prediction? Will the dollar continue to slide?'

'I have no crystal ball. Common sense suggests that the decline is not over.'

'You must admit, Monsieur Jouany, that your massive bet against the dollar was fortuitous, to say the