Dragonfly

ONE

The International Date Line made it all very complicated. In order to minimize the effects of ordinary jet lag compounded by the radical change of clock-calendar time, David Canning allowed himself only five hours of sleep in Honolulu, rose at six in the morning, had an early breakfast, and read a paperback novel until it was time for him to go to the airport. His flight for Tokyo departed shortly after noon. Aboard the plane, he ate a light lunch and drank two martinis. Then he settled back for a nap, and because he had not allowed himself a full night's sleep in Honolulu, dozed off almost as soon as he closed his eyes. He was asleep when the jet crossed the International Date Line, switching instantly from Thursday to Friday. After nearly a five-hour nap he woke forty minutes out of Tokyo and had a third martini while the aircraft worked into its landing approach. They touched down in Japan at two o'clock Friday afternoon, which was seven o'clock Thursday evening in Hawaii and midnight Thursday-Friday in Washington, D.C.

Just after he had passed through customs, with the aid of his State Department credentials, Canning saw the first Committee agent. Any Westerner would have found it impossible to run a surveillance on Canning in this airport without his noticing it. In the predominantly Asian crowd, the man's pallor and height made him as obvious as a dead fly atop an uncut wedding cake. He was standing near the boards that listed the departures and arrivals, and he stared openly at Canning.

Canning stared back at him and nodded.

The agent looked through him.

Smiling grimly, Canning walked out into the crowded main hall of the terminal. He sensed rather than felt the man fall into step behind him, and he walked with his shoulders tensed.

But there would be no killing here — and for the same reason that they could not possibly run a secret surveillance of him. The killers were tall and white, and they could not count on anonymity to help them escape through the hundreds of incoming and outgoing passengers. Furthermore, the Japanese were generally not as apathetic about crime as were most Americans. They admired tradition, stability, order, and law. Some of them would surely give chase to anyone who tried to commit murder in a public air terminal. And although the Japanese police — stationed throughout the building — relied for the most part on the sort of nonviolent techniques of the British bobbies, they were capable of swift and terrible action when it was necessary. The Committeemen, therefore, would merely follow him to be certain that he went to the Imperial Hotel, where, having had his real and cover names for more than twenty-four hours, they would surely have traced his Otley reservation. Then, at the hotel, in the comparative privacy of a corridor or an elevator, or perhaps in his own room, they would make a hit.

Or try.

He wouldn't be an easy target.

Outside the terminal, there were more people than cabs at the taxi line. Most of them were Westerners who had too much luggage or not enough self-confidence to use the city's bus system. Canning walked to the back of the line, stepped off the curb, and put down his suitcases. He held up three fingers and waved them prominently at the taxis that were just turning into the approach lane: this was a sign that told the drivers he would pay three times the meter price, and it was often the only way to get a cab in Tokyo, where the drivers worked as much as sixteen hours a day for quite modest wages. He got a taxi at once, much to the consternation of the people who had been waiting there some time before he arrived.

“Konnichiwa,” the driver said, smiling at him as he climbed into the taxi.

“Konnichiwa,” Canning said, smiling back at him. The automatic cab door closed and locked behind him. He asked the driver to take him to the Imperial Hotel.

The Committee agent also knew the three-fingered trick. His taxi followed immediately behind Canning's cab.

The driver spoke no English, and Canning spoke only a few words of Japanese; therefore, the ride into the city was silent, and he had nothing to do but take in the scenery — what there was of it. On both sides of the road there were shabby houses, unpainted warehouses, gray factories, gasoline stations, and power lines. There were no cherry trees, landscaped gardens, or flower-encircled temples as seen in all popular illustrations of the Orient.

The tourist guidebooks did not lie; there was great beauty in Tokyo, but it existed in pockets, like oases in the desert of urban sprawl. This was possibly the only city in the world where great mansions could flourish with shacks on both sides of them. The imperturbable Japanese, so quick to smile and so eager to help strangers, had somehow managed to transform the planet's most crowded and polluted metropolis into one of the most pleasant capitals in the world. The Tokyo Tower came into view, a monstrous blot on the skyline, taller than the Eiffel Tower which had inspired it, yet just incongruous enough to be charming. Then they entered the narrow, unbelievably congested streets of the central city area that made the busy avenues of midtown Manhattan seem like quiet country lanes. As usual, the pollution index was high: the gray-yellow sky hung so low that it looked like a roof spanning the boxlike high-rise buildings. At first Canning had a vague but quite discomforting feeling of suffocation; however, that soon turned into a not unpleasant sense of hivelike protection. Then they breezed along Hibiya Park, weaved wildly from lane to lane, and stopped with a squeal of brakes directly in front of the magnificent Imperial Hotel.

The taxi driver said “Domo, domo” when he was paid; and the hotel doorman welcomed Canning with a smile and nearly perfect English. He picked up Canning's two suitcases, and Canning followed him inside.

The Committee agent entered close behind them. He didn't trail Canning all the way across the huge lobby to the front desk. Instead, he sat on one of the comfortable divans where tourists of all nationalities were consulting maps and guidebooks, and he remained there while Canning checked in. In fact, he stayed there, his legs crossed, his hands folded on his lap, when Canning boarded the elevator with the bellhop a few minutes later.

Canning waved at him as if telling him to hurry before the lift doors slid shut.

The agent merely stared at him, blank-faced, humorless as an alligator.

He thinks he doesn't have to follow me any farther because I'm trapped now, Canning thought.

And maybe he's right.

Five minutes later Canning tipped the bellhop and was alone in his room. It was a fairly large room, well furnished, with a nice big Japanese-style bathroom. There was a walk-in closet, a linen closet, and a locked door with a brass key in it. He used the key and found another door beyond; this one locked from the far side and apparently connecting to the adjoining room. He closed the door on his side, locked it again, and used the desk chair to form a wedge between the floor and the knob. At the main door he slipped the chain latch into place and made certain that the night lock was properly engaged. Switching on the lights as he went, he crossed the room and drew the heavy maroon-and-white brocade drapes over the windows that faced out on Hibiya Park.

He looked at his watch: three o'clock.

He went into the bathroom and used the toilet.

He washed his face in cold water.

He looked at his watch: five minutes past three.

He combed his hair.

He came back out into the main room, went to the windows, parted the drapes, and watched the people walking and cycling through Hibiya Park.

He sat down on the edge of the bed.

He listened to the hotel sounds.

He looked at his watch: three-twelve.

Where in the hell was Tanaka?

General Lin Shen-yang, chief of the Internal Security Force for the People's Republic of China, leaned back in the large oval-shaped copper washtub and sighed as more hot water was poured into his bath. He closed his eyes and breathed in the steam. When the woman began to scrub his chest with a soft-bristled brush and rose-petal soap, he opened his eyes and smiled at her. He touched her cheek and said, “You are a perfect jewel of great value.”

She blushed with happiness and said, “I am pleased that my Tai-Pan is so happy with me.”

“Delirious.”

The scent of rose petals was so rich that he felt almost drunk with it.

“But I am praised too much. I am no jewel. I am just an old, faithful cow.” Her lovely face was set in a scowl, as if she were castigating herself for not being the precious jewel that he thought she was.

“If you are an old cow, then what am I?” he asked as her small hands dropped the brush and began to scoop up water with which to rinse his chest.

“You are Tai-Pan of this house,” she said. “Master of this house and my master too.”

“An old dinosaur,” he said.

“Not at all old,” she said, dismayed.

Teasing her, he said, “But if you are old, then so must I be.”

She frowned more fiercely than ever. “Well, I am young, then. I change my mind. I am a young, faithful cow.” She finished rinsing his chest. “Because you are not old.”

He was, in fact, sixty-four years old. He had been a young lieutenant at Mao's side when Chiang had been driven from the mainland many years ago, and he had been in a position of power within the People's Republic ever since. He was a squat, powerfully built man, with a closely shaven head, deep-set black eyes, a wide nose, lips broad and flat like strips of hammered metal, and a round, blunt chin. He did not look sixty-four years old or even fifty-four. And he felt like a young man — especially when he was with her.

Her name was Yin-hsi, and she was lovely beyond words. Her oval face was graced with a wide, sensuous mouth and almond-shaped eyes as clear and dark as the night between the stars. Her hair was piled high atop her head and held in place by antique jeweled pins that were the same sapphire shade as her silk robe. Her skin was far silkier than the robe: warm yellow-brown, taut, scented with a delicate Western perfume. She was only twenty-three years old, young enough to be his granddaughter.

In 1949 her real grandparents and her mother — who was then still a child — had fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek's followers. Her mother had grown up on the island and had married Yin-hsi's father there. The newlyweds had then emigrated to South Korea, where, in the aftermath of the United Nations' war against North Korea, there were many golden opportunities. Her father had become a moderately successful businessman, and her mother had settled down to raise a family, one son and two daughters.

Yin-hsi had been born in Seoul, and her parents had raised her much as Chinese girls had been raised before Mao's revolution. She had never been meant for factory work or for farm work on some dust-choked commune. She was too soft for that, too delicate, too like a flower of flesh and hair. She had none of the virtues of an emancipated Communist woman — but those were not the only virtues that a woman might rightfully cultivate. Yin-hsi's great strength lay in her desire to serve her master, be he her husband or only her owner. She gloried in giving her Tai-Pan all the pleasure she could produce with her woman's knowledge, obedient nature, personal devices, and body. And because this was what she had been educated to do, Yin-hsi was a very great credit to her father, mother, and to herself.

After extensive and prolonged negotiations, General Lin had purchased Yin-hsi six years ago, shortly after she had turned seventeen. He had given many tasteful gifts and considerable cash to her father. He had promised to treat her well always and to keep her always unspoiled. He had bought a four-room, gracefully designed pine bungalow two doors from her family, and there he had set her up in housekeeping with a female servant and all the necessities. Before Yin-hsi, there had been another mistress of whom the general had grown weary. He didn't think he would ever grow weary of his Yin-hsi, even if he were to live well into his eighties.

The general considered himself to be a good Communist, yet he did not feel guilty about owning another human being. This was, of course, an inexcusable sin in the eyes of other Communists. General Lin knew, however, that he owned the girl only in the most abstract sense. He never treated her as a slave; and he had impressed upon her that if she should ever want to quit this life in favor of the more modern and conventional path of marriage and suburban life, he would free her instantly upon her request.

Nevertheless, had any officials in China known about Yin-hsi, General Lin would have been stripped of his authority and drummed out of the Party. Quite likely, he would also be put on trial and found guilty and sentenced to prison or to “reeducation” on a pig farm.

Which would have been terribly tragic, for the general really was a good Communist. He believed that the Party had fed, clothed, housed, and educated the masses better than any capitalistic system could have done. He deeply desired a lasting Communistic future for China.

What he did not believe in or desire was the joyless, sexless, robotistic Communism that had grown out of the Maoist State. Mao Tse-tung had always been a crushing bore and a prude: a brilliant and admirable political leader but a rather shallow human being. Lin had been close enough to him to see this much from the start of the revolution. But to think that in just a few short decades Mao and his most ardent followers had managed to lead an entire nation of nearly a billion people into voluntary sexual self-denial and outright self-repression! Incredible! And more than incredible, he thought, it was nonrevolutionary. Criminal. If you allowed yourself to be programmed as an asexual automaton, you were no different from capitalism's programmed worker-drones who had been propagandized into denying themselves the full rewards and joys of their own labors.

From the beginning of his association with the Maoist cause, General Lin had rejected asexuality and had, indeed, assiduously cultivated his erotic drives. At sixty-four he was still an extremely active man — and quietly proud of it.

His cover was perfect. He had been made chief of the Internal Security Force in 1951, and from the earliest days of the ISF he had done field work just like the agents who were answerable to him. He was the ISF's leading expert on South Korea and made regular monthly undercover missions into that country, often remaining there for a week or ten days at a time. This activist role was applauded by the Party's highest executives. As they saw it, any general who took the same risks as those he required of his subordinates was in no danger of being corrupted by power or by a sense of elitism. (And, in fact, this was part of the reason why he had always worked in the field as well as behind the desk.) He was, they said, an excellent example of revolutionary Communism at work. Accepting this constant praise with calculated modesty, the general continued his field work in South Korea, where, until such a time as the Korean dictator could be overthrown, he could enjoy a vigorous and very non-Maoist sex life beyond the sight and suspicion of his superiors.

“I am a failure,” Yin-hsi said.

“Are you fishing for more compliments?”

“I am a failure.”

“That isn't true.”

“It is true.”

“Why is it true?”

“You think too much.”

“How does that reflect on you?”

“If I were a good woman to you, I should be able to take your mind off all your troubles. But I am no good. I am a failure. You sit there frowning, worrying.”

He stood up in the bath while she dried him with a large, thick towel. “I frown only because I can think of no way to be with you more often.”

She tilted her head and looked at him coquettishly. “Are you telling the truth?”

“Yes.”

“This is why you were frowning?”

“Yes.”

“Then I am not a failure?”

“Indeed, you are too much of a success.”

Smiling, she finished drying him.

“Stand before me,” he said.

She did, her arms at her sides.

He removed the jeweled pins from her hair. Rich, shining, dark crescents of hair fell about her face.

“You desire me?” she asked.

“Perhaps.”

“Only perhaps?”

“I have not decided.”

“Oh?”

“I have high standards.”

She looked down at his thick erection and giggled.

“Ah, woman,” he said in mock exasperation. “Where is your modesty? Have you no shame?”

She pouted and said, “I am a failure.”

Laughing, he untied the sash of her robe and slipped the silk from her. Her sweet breasts quivered before him. He took them in his gnarled, scarred hands and gently massaged them.

“Should I turn down the bed?” she asked.

“Yes — unless you want to be taken on a brick floor.”

“You would bruise me?”

“If necessary.”

“But you would not like me with bruises.”

“Then I would leave you.”

“Oh?"'

“Until the bruises had vanished.”

“You are a cruel man,” she said teasingly.

“Oh, terribly cruel.”

She crossed the softly lighted room to the low-standing bed and pulled back the quilted blankets. The sheets were yellow silk. She stretched out on them, her golden thighs slightly parted, the shaven petals of her sex visible in dust-soft shadows. Her hair was fanned across both pillows. Smiling at him, she put the tip of one finger against her right breast and murmured wordlessly as the nipple rose and stiffened under it.

So beautiful! he thought. So exquisitely beautiful!

She patted the mattress beside her.

The general was a good, unselfish lover. He did for her all the things he wanted her to do for him; and after they had spent nearly an hour preparing each other, he mounted her. His compact, muscular body was powerful yet gentle in the act. She had no need to pretend a long, shuddering climax, for it came to her almost as soon as he began to thrust within her. And a few minutes after she had convulsed beneath him a second time, he groaned softly and emptied his seed deep into her.

“Tai-Pan,” she said.

He kissed her neck.

Later they sat up in bed and sipped mint tea which she had made in a silver pot. They ate miniature cakes sprinkled with honey, raisins, and toasted almonds.

When he was full of cakes, he got out of bed and retrieved a small box and a long beige envelope from his clothes. He placed the envelope on the mirrored tray atop her vanity and brought the box back to the bed. He gave it to her and said, “An imperfect gift for a perfect woman.”

As delighted as a child, she put down her teacup and unwrapped the box. She withdrew from it a long, fine-linked gold chain at the end of which was suspended a single jade teardrop. Carved in the stone were the basic features of a lovely oriental woman. “Oh,” she said breathlessly, “it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

“It is nothing.”

“But it is magnificent!”

“It is unworthy of you.”

“I am unworthy of it.”

“You deserve far more.”

“You are too generous.”

Gradually, each allowed himself to be flattered. Yin-hsi slipped the chain around her neck, and the jade fell between her smooth, heavy breasts. They agreed that the jewelry was perhaps the most beautiful piece of its kind in the world — and that it looked more beautiful between her breasts than it could have looked on any other woman who had ever lived. Both of them blushed and smiled.

After they had sipped brandy for a few minutes, he said, “How have your household funds been holding up? Am I giving you enough to meet the bills?”

She was surprised, for he had never asked about this during the last six years. “More than enough. You are too generous with me, Tai-Pan. I have accumulated a large surplus in the bank. Would you like to see my records?”

“No, no. The surplus is yours.”

“I manage the accounts well. You can be proud of me.”

He kissed her cheek. “Today I am leaving an envelope which contains four million Korean won.” At the current exchange rate, four hundred and fifty won equaled one United States dollar.

“That is too much!” she said.

“Is it sufficient to run the house for one year?”

“Perhaps two years! And stylishly!”

“Good. I would not want you to be in need of anything.”

Worry lines appeared in her face. “You are not going away for an entire year?”

“I hope not.”

“But maybe?”

“Maybe forever.”

The worry lines deepened. She bit her lower lip. “You are teasing me.”

“There is serious trouble in Peking.”

She waited.

“A great danger,” he said, thinking of the Americans and their Dragonfly project. “Perhaps the problem will be quickly dealt with. If not… Many of my people will die, and there will be months of chaos, disorder.”

“Do not go back,” she said.

“I am Chinese.”

“So am I!”

“I am a Communist.”

“You cannot really believe in Communism, not deep in your heart.”

“But I do. I do not expect you to believe, but I do. And a man cannot run away from his philosophy.”

“You love Communism more than you love me.”

“I have been with you six years,” he said softly. “And I love you more than I ever ever loved a woman. But Communism has been my entire life, and to deny it would be to deny myself.”

Tears shimmered on her eyelashes.

“Do not cry.”

She cried.

He raised his voice and became sharp with her. “You are disgracing your family. You are supposed to improve my spirits, not deflate them. What manner of concubine are you? Either you will stop crying at once, or I will punish you severely.”

She rolled off the bed and ran from the room.

Leaning back against the pillows, he tossed off the rest of his brandy and managed to hold back his own tears. Damn these Americans! What fools! What maniacs!

Ten minutes later she returned and climbed into bed with him. Her eyes were clear. She had refreshed the light coat of makeup that she wore. “I am a failure,” she said.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes,” he said with mock severity. “You are such a failure, a terrible failure. Oh yes!”

Her smile was weak; her lips trembled.

He put one hand on her firm breasts.

She said, “Must you return today?”

“Within the hour. I should never have left Peking in the middle of such a crisis. But I had to see you once more and be sure that you were provided for. If I get back tonight, I will not have been too derelict in my duties.”

Without another word she slid down in the bed until her face was in his lap. She began to kiss him there. A few minutes later she said, “Do you desire me again?”

“Would you have me say no when the proof of the lie is in your hand?” he asked.

“Indisputable proof,” she said, squeezing his erect member.

“Come to me.”

Soon after they had finished, he got out of bed and began to dress. When she started to get up too, he said, “No. Lie down. I want to look at you while I dress. I want to take away with me the picture of you naked on my bed.”

She smiled for him.

“At the end of a year,” he said, “consider yourself free. Wait twelve months, but no longer.”

She said nothing.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” she said all but inaudibly.

“I will most likely return in a month.”

She nodded.

He hugged her to him once more before he left. Outside, as he walked away along the pine-shrouded alley toward the lower slopes of Seoul, he felt as if some creature with razored talons had torn him open and scooped out the contents of his chest.

In the house, in the bedroom, Yin-hsi felt even more miserable than her Tai-Pan. She sat on the edge of her bed, her slender brown shoulders hunched, her face in her hands. She wept and shuddered and cursed herself. She knew that she would never see him again. She wished that she had told him what awful things she had done, and she could almost hear the conversation that might have been:

— Tai-Pan, you do know that no other woman could love you as well and deeply as I love you?

— You're a good woman, Yin-hsi.

— Try not to hate me.

— Why should I hate you?

— I am a wretch. I have betrayed you to your enemies.

— What game is this?

— It is true.

— What enemies?

— They came here to see me.

— When?

— Months ago. In the winter.

— Who were they?

— A South Korean and an American. They wanted me to help them destroy you… somehow. I don't know how. I never learned how it was to be done. I refused. They said they would kill my mother and my father. They said they would rape and kill my sister, murder and mutilate my brothers. At first I didn't believe them. But they convinced me that they were the kind of men who would do anything. They raped me and hurt me badly in other ways. Very badly. They frightened me, Tai-Pan. And in the end, awful wretch that 1 am, I cooperated with them. I betrayed you.

But it was pointless to imagine a confession that had not been made. She had not spoken to him about these things, not even when she suspected that, somehow, this crisis in Peking was connected with the men who had first come to see her last winter. It was in this current crisis that Shen-yang was to be destroyed. Somehow. Some way. She was certain of it, yet she had kept her silence. Fear was stronger than affection. Terror drove out love. After he had given her so much pleasure, while his warm semen was still oozing from her, she had let him walk out the door to his fate without giving him one word of warning.

She loathed herself.

She wished that she had the courage to commit suicide. But she knew that she was too much of a coward to even prick her skin. She would collapse at the sight of blood.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her feet on the cool brick floor, and she wept.

And she prayed that however her master was to be destroyed, he would go quickly, with dignity, and without pain.

In the book-lined first-floor study of his elegant town-house in the Georgetown section of the capital city, Robert McAlister poured himself a third bourbon on the rocks and returned with it to his desk. He sat down and had time for one sip before the telephone rang. It was the call that he had been waiting for since ten o'clock. He said, “Hello, Mr. President.”

“I'm sorry to be late, Bob.”

“That's all right, sir.”

“It's this flare-up in the Mideast.”

“Certainly.”

“Ever since they discovered those new Israeli oil deposits, it's been a nightmare.”

“Yes, sir.”

The President sighed and clicked his tongue. “Any progress on your end of the Dragonfly mess?”

“Not much,” McAlister said. “It's been a bad day right from the start — thanks in part to your Mr. Rice.”

The President clicked his tongue against his teeth again. “Andy? What did Andy do?”

McAlister closed his eyes and held the glass of bourbon against his forehead. “I'm sorry, sir. It's a small thing. Inconsequential, really. I shouldn't even have mentioned it. But I'm so tensed up—”

“I want to know.” He clicked his tongue.

“Well, he was supposed to round up a dozen federal marshals—”

“He didn't?”

“He did. But he didn't call them until around ten o'clock last night. Now, some of them weren't scheduled for duty, and they'd made plans for an extra-long weekend. They went home yesterday and packed suitcases and loaded up campers… and then had to unload and unpack when Rice called them late last night. They weren't happy this morning, and the apologies were mine to make.” He lowered the glass of bourbon to the desk. “Oh, what the hell, it's really nothing. I'm just frustrated by all of this, and I'm trying to find a convenient punching bag.”

“No, you're right, Bob. There was no reason he couldn't have called the marshals before five yesterday. I'm going to mention this to Andy in the morning.” Click! went his tongue.

“Well, it really is petty of me. After everything that has happened today, the murder and all—”

“Murder?” the President asked.

“You don't know about that?”

“I've been tied up on this Mideast thing.”

McAlister swallowed some bourbon. “The best investigative lawyer I have is a man named Bernie Kirk-wood.”

“I've met him. He's done a great job for you these last six months,” the President said. He didn't click his tongue.

What was he doing instead? McAlister wondered. Boring at his ears? Drumming his fingers on the desk? Or perhaps he was picking his nose—

“Bob? Are you there?”

“Sorry, sir. Wool gathering.”

“Bernie Kirkwood.”

“Yes, sir. Early this afternoon Bernie came up with what we thought was a damned good lead. He was working on a list of names — scientists with experience in biological-weapons research. And he discovered that a man named Potter Cofield had once worked for Dr. Olin Wilson. Furthermore, Cofield had received a promotion at the Pentagon almost entirely on the recommendation of Wilson.”

“Ah,” the President said.

“Next, Bernie learned that Dr. Cofield had retired from his job at the Pentagon two years ago.”

“How old was he?”

“Fifty.”

“It's possible to retire from government service that young.”

“Yes, sir. But Cofield wasn't the kind of man to pack it up and lie in the Caribbean sun. Bernie studied his record and talked to a few of Cofield's friends. The man lived for his research.”

“I see.”

“So Bernie, two other lawyers, and the federal marshal who's protecting them, went to talk to Cofield. He was dead.”

“How?”

“Stabbed repeatedly in the chest and throat.”

“My God!”

McAlister swallowed some bourbon. He felt lousy. “His house had been torn up a bit. As if a burglar had been going through the drawers looking for cash and valuables.”

“But you don't think it was a burglar?”

“The place hadn't been torn up enough. It was a very hasty job, a cover, nothing more. Besides, Co-field still had his wallet, and there was seventy dollars in it.”

“Any clues?”

“We brought in the FBI,” McAlister said. “They've got some of the best forensic men combing the house. But I don't have much hope that anything'll come from that. For one thing, we can't trust everyone in the FBI. And for another, these killers are professionals. They don't leave fingerprints.”

“What about the police?”

“We didn't inform them,” McAlister said. “If we had, the press would have been crawling all over the house. And sure as hell, someone from the Times or the Post would pick up on the whole Dragonfly mess by tomorrow morning.”

“They're good reporters,” the President said.

“One other thing about Cofield.”

“What's that?”

“He was killed no more than half an hour before we got to him.”

The President clicked his tongue: he had come full circle. “So it isn't just a case of The Committee routinely killing off the men who worked with Wilson.”

“That's right. Cofield was killed because the other side knew we wanted to talk to him. And the only way they could know that is if they've got somebody inside my organization.”

“Who?”

“I haven't any idea.” He rattled the ice cubes in his glass and wished he could put the phone down to go get another drink. He was ordinarily a light drinker, but these last several months had given him a taste for Wild Turkey.

After clicking his tongue twice, the President said, “What are you going to do?”

“Just be careful, watch everyone closely, and hope the damned son of a bitch will trip himself up sooner or later.” Ordinarily, he was no more of a curser than a drinker. But that had changed too.

“It's not likely that he will,” the President said after a few seconds of thought. “Trip himself up, I mean.”

“I know. But I don't see how else I can handle it.”

“What about the agent that Berlinson killed out there in Carpinteria? Anything on him yet?”

“No leads at the moment. Not on him or his partner. We're verifying the whereabouts of every current and ex-agent, but this is going to take a good deal of time.”

“Have you heard from Canning?”

“His cover is blown.”

“But how is that possible?”

“I don't know,” McAlister said wearily. “The only people who knew about him were me, you, and Rice.”

“Where is he now?”

“Tokyo.”

“Then it's about time for us to send his name along to the Chairman.”

“No, sir. Canning just arrived in Tokyo. He's a full day behind schedule, thanks to some trouble he ran into in Los Angeles.” He quickly explained about that.

“Yes, Bob, but now that his cover has been blown, I don't see any reason for us to keep his identity a secret from the Chairman until the very last minute.”

“Well, sir, the Chairman's going to want to know how Canning will be arriving in Peking. You can tell him our man will be aboard one of the two dozen authorized flights from Tokyo to Peking. But I'd like to keep that a secret until the plane is in the air.”

“Okay,” the President said. “We'll send all the data except the name of the flight — and we'll stat that by satellite as soon as it takes off from Tokyo. Which flight is it?”

“For now,” McAlister said, “I'd like to keep it a secret from you as well as the Chairman, sir.”

The President hesitated, sighed, and said, “Very well. Is there anything else?”

Once more the President had stopped clicking his tongue. McAlister was happier when he could hear that sound, for then he didn't have to wonder what the man was doing. He longed for another series of clicks. He thought; I'm going mad. And he said, “Sir, there's something I believe we have to do, but it's beyond my jurisdiction. Are you open for a suggestion?”

“I'm always open for suggestions.”

“Arrest A. W. West.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Sir,” McAlister said, “we strongly suspect that he's one of the men behind The Committee, behind Dragonfly. Arresting him might throw the organization into confusion. That might buy us time. And they might panic, start making mistakes.”

“We have no proof against him,” the President said sternly. “We may suspect that West is behind it, but we have nothing that would convince a judge.”

“Then arrest him for the Kennedy assassinations. We know that he was one of the people who financed all of that.”

“We have circumstantial proof. Only circumstantial proof. We may know that he was part of a conspiracy, but again we have nothing to show a judge, nothing concrete. Furthermore, I thought we had all made a policy decision not to open that can of worms and throw the country into a turmoil.”

McAlister sagged in his chair.

“Do you agree, Bob?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, exhausted. The bourbon was getting to him. His mind was clouded.

“I'll leave instructions with my secretary to put you through to me at any hour. If something comes up, call me at once.”

“Yes, sir. And, Mr. President?”

“Yes?”

“If you have any speaking engagements over the next few days — cancel them.”

“I have none,” the President said soberly.

“Don't even go for walks on the White House grounds.”

“And stay away from windows too?”

“Sir, if you were assassinated now, we'd be thrown into such turmoil that we'd never be able to stop Dragonfly — if it's stoppable under any conditions.”

“You're right, of course. And I've had the same thoughts myself. Did you take my advice about a bodyguard?”

“Yes, sir,” McAlister said. “There are five men stationed in my house tonight.”

“FBI?”

“No, sir. I don't trust the FBI. These are Pinkerton men. I hired them out of my own pocket”

“I suppose that's wise.”

McAlister sipped some of the melted ice in his glass. “We sound like true psychotics, thoroughbred paranoids. I wonder if we're ready for an institution?”

“Someone once said that if you think everyone is out to get you, and everyone is out to get you, then you're not a paranoid but merely a realist.”

Sighing, McAlister said, “Yes, but what are we coming to? What are we coming to when wealthy men can hire the assassination of the President — and get away with it? What are we coming to when private citizens and crackpot elements of the CIA can find the means to wage biological warfare against a foreign country? What are we coming to when all this can be happening — and you and I are so relatively calm about it, reasonable about it?”

“Bob, the world isn't going to hell in a handbasket — if that's what you're saying. It got pretty bad there for a while. But we're straightening it up, cleaning it up. That's what my administration is all about.”

And how many times have I heard that before? McAlister wondered.

The President said, “Bit by bit we're putting it all back together, and don't you forget that.”

“I wonder,” McAlister said. He was seldom this morose, and he realized that Dragonfly was the final catalyst necessary to start major changes in him. He didn't know what those changes might be; they were still developing. “Sometimes I think the world just gets crazier and crazier. It certainly isn't the world that I was taught about when I was a young man in Boston.”

“You're just tired.”

“I suppose.”

“Do you want me to relieve you? Would you like someone else to take over the agency?”

McAlister sat up straight. “Oh, Christ, no! No, sir.” He wiped one hand across his face. “I can't think of any other poor son of a bitch" — and here he was cursing again—"who could have stood up to these last six months as well as I have. That's not egomania — it's just fact.”

“I have faith in you.”

“Thank you.”

“We'll get through this.”

“I hope you're right.”

“I want to be informed the moment there are any major developments. And if you don't call me, if nothing comes up, I'll still give you a ring around five o'clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get some rest.”

“I'll try.”

“Goodnight, Bob.”

“Goodnight, sir.”

The President clicked his tongue and hung up.

While McAlister was on the telephone with the President, Andrew Rice was in his car, cruising around one of the unofficial red-light districts of Washington. He drove slowly past a couple of blocks of cocktail lounges, cheap bars, adult movie theaters and bookstores, boutiques, pawnshops, and shuttered delicatessens. Young and generally attractive girls, alone and in groups of two or three, stood at the curb near the bus stops. Although they were dressed and posed provocatively, many of them were trying to look — for the benefit of the police, who were not deceived but pretended to be — as if they were waiting for a bus or a cab or their boyfriends. They were all prostitutes; and Rice had already driven through the area once before in order to study and compare the merchandise. Finally, he turned a corner, pulled his Thunderbird to the curb, stopped near two flashily dressed young girls, and put down the automatic window on the passenger's side.

A tall blonde in a tight white pantsuit and a short red vinyl jacket leaned in at the open window. She smiled at him and said, “Hello there.”

“Hi.”

“Nice night, after all that rain.”

“Yes, it is.”

She looked him over, studied the leather-upholstered interior of the car. She said nothing more.

“Ah…” His hands were slippery with sweat. He was gripping the wheel so hard that his knuckles were bloodless; they poked up sharp and hard in his fat fingers. “I'm looking for someone.”

“What's his name? Maybe I know him.”

You rotten bitch, he thought. He took his wallet from his inside jacket pocket. “How much?”

She pretended to be confused. “For what?”

“You know.”

“Look, mister, so far as I know you're a cop. And I ain't going to proposition no cop, no way.”

“Sex,” he said.

“Not interested,” she said, turning away from the window.

“Hey! What about your friend?” He nodded at the girl behind her.

“I'll ask her.”

The other girl came to the window. She was a petite brunette, in her late teens or early twenties. She was wearing tight jeans and a long-sleeved white sweater and a short buckskin jacket. “Yeah?”

“How much?”

“You just did that routine with Velma.”

“Okay, okay.” Embarrassed, he told her what he wanted.

She appraised the car and said, “Seventy bucks.”

“Okay.”

“You have a motel room, or what?”

“I thought maybe we could use your place,” he said.

“That's ten extra.”

“Okay.”

“Eighty — in advance.”

“Sure.”

She went over to the blonde, and they talked for almost a minute. Then she came back, got in the car, and gave him her address.

She had three rooms and a bath on the fourth floor of a thirty-year-old apartment house. There was a new wall-to-wall carpet in every room, including the kitchen; but she didn't have much furniture. What pieces she did have were expensive and in good taste.

In the bedroom, when they had both undressed, he said, “I'll stand up. You get on your knees.”

“Whatever makes you happy.” She got down before him and took his penis in one hand.

Before she could bring it to her lips, he chopped a knee into her chin and knocked her backward. As she fell he tried to imagine that she was not a hooker, that she was McAlister, that he was beating McAlister. He kicked her alongside the head and laughed when her eyes rolled back. He imagined that he was kicking McAlister and David Canning and the President and everyone else who had ever gotten the best of him or held authority over him. He even imagined that he was kicking A. W. West — and that made him feel best of all. He stopped kicking her and stood over her, gasping for breath. Then he dropped to his knees beside her and touched the bloody froth at her nostrils. Sighing contentedly, he began to use his fists.

TWO

Someone knocked gently on the door, three times.

Canning stood up. He put one hand under his coat and touched the butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.

The knocking came again, somewhat louder and more insistent than it had been the first tune.

Keeping one hand inside his jacket, he turned away from the door which opened on the hotel corridor. The knocking came from the other door, the one that connected to the adjoining room. He walked over to it and stood against the wall. When the knocking sounded a third time, quite loud now, he said, “Who is it?”

“Tanaka.” The voice was rather soft and high-pitched, just as McAlister had described it.

That didn't mean it was Tanaka.

It could be anyone.

It could even be the man who had followed him from the airport, the man who had watched him board the elevator.

“Are you there?”

“I'm here.”

“Open up.”

Whether or not it was Tanaka, he couldn't just stand here and wait for something to happen; he had to make it happen.

“Just a minute,” he said.

He drew his pistol and stepped to one side of the door. He pushed the chair out from under the knob and out of the way. Then he twisted the brass key, pulled the door open, stepped past it, and shoved the silenced barrel of the Colt against the trim belly of a strikingly lovely young Japanese woman.

“I'm so happy to meet you, too,” she said.

“What?”

“A gun in the stomach is so much more interesting than a plain old handshake.”

“Huh?”

“A saying of Confucius.”

He stared at her.

“Ah, and you're so articulate!”

He blinked. “Who are you?”

“Lee Ann Tanaka. Or would you like me to be someone else?”

“But…”

“Yes?”

He looked at her face carefully and saw that she fit the description that McAlister had given him. A tiny scar marked the left corner of her upper lip — although it was only as wide as a hair and half an inch long, certainly not a souvenir of a fight to the death with broken bottles. High on her left cheek there was a tiny black beauty mark: the “mole” for which McAlister had advised him to look. Finally, her hair was full, rich, and as black as raven wings. McAlister's only sin was one of omission.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

“Oh, then you were worried about my heart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My heart.”

He shook his head.

She said, “Fear is good for the heart. Speeds it up. Gives the heart muscles much-needed exercise. Cleans out the system. How nice of you to be worried about my heart, Mr. Canning.”

He put the pistol back in his holster. '"I'm sorry.”

“But my heart needed the exercise!” she said.

“I'm sorry for almost shooting you.”

“Was it that close?”

“Close enough.”

She put one hand to her breast. “Now you're giving my heart too damned much exercise.” She stepped back a pace and said, “Do you have any luggage?”

“Two pieces.”

“Bring it.”

He fetched the suitcases and followed her into the adjoining room. It was a large, airy bedchamber decorated with imitations of old Japanese rice-paper water-colors and with genuine eighteenth-century Japanese furniture.

“This won't be good enough,” he said.

In the middle of the room she stopped and turned to look back at him. “What won't be good enough?”

“Someone will be watching the door to my room.”

“Right you are, Mr. Canning. You're under surveillance.”

“If I don't come out and make a target of myself, sooner than later there are some goons who'll break in there and try to get me.”

“Break right into your room?”

“One way or the other.”

“What is Japan coming to? It's as bad here as in the States.”

“And if I'm not in my room,” Canning said, “they'll know that I didn't go out the front door. And they'll know I couldn't have climbed out onto the window ledge with two heavy suitcases. So the first place they'll look is in here.”

She clapped her hands. “Marvelous!”

“What's marvelous?”

“Your magnificent exhibition of deductive reasoning,” she said brightly. She gave him a big, very pretty smile.

He felt as if he had stepped into a whirlwind. He didn't quite know how to deal with her, and he couldn't understand why McAlister had put him in the hands of a woman, any woman, and especially this woman. “Look, Miss Tanaka, when these men don't find me next door, they'll simply come over here. They'll find me here. And they'll shoot me.”

“Ah, I have confidence in you,” she said. “You're much too fast on the draw for them.” She rubbed her stomach where he'd held the gun on her.

“Miss Tanaka—”

“They won't shoot you,” she said. “Because you won't be here.” She turned and walked toward what he thought was the bathroom door. Over her shoulder she said, “Come along.”

“Where to?”

“You'll see.”

He followed her out of the bedroom onto a narrow railed deck that overlooked the first-floor living room of a two-floor suite. A bathroom and another bedroom opened onto the deck, and a carpeted spiral staircase wound down to one corner of the living room. A huge crystal chandelier hung from the roof of the gallery.

Downstairs, she turned to him and said, “They will not be expecting you to enter a room on one floor and immediately come out of a room on the floor below.”

“I believe you've got something,” he said.

“Charm,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Come along.”

At the front door of the suite, she reached for the brass knob, then let go of it, turned, and put her back to the door. She held one finger beside her lips. “Sssshh!”

He put down his suitcases and listened to the voices in the hotel corridor.

“Don't go for your gun,” she said, grinning at him. “It's just the bellhop moving new guests into the room across the hall. Killing them might be exciting, but it would accomplish nothing.” She closed her eyes and listened to the voices beyond the door.

He was standing no more than two feet away from her, and he did not close his eyes. For the first time since he'd seen her upstairs, he had an opportunity to study her face, to look beyond the hair-line scar on her upper lip and the beauty mark on her left cheek. Her forehead was broad and seamless. Her eyebrows were two natural black crescents, and her eyes were deeply set for an oriental face. She had a pert nose, very straight along the bridge, delicate nostrils; and her breathing was as quiet as the flight of a moth. With her high perfect cheekbones, aristocratic haughtiness, and shockingly ripe mouth, she might have been one of those high-priced fashion models who periodically took Manhattan, Paris, and London by storm. Her flawless complexion was the shade of aged book paper, and the sight of it somehow made him feel all warm and loose inside.

And what of the body that went with a face like that? he thought.

He looked down at the rest of her. But she was wearing a long belted trenchcoat that concealed everything except the crudely defined thrust of her breasts and the tininess of her waist. When he looked up again, he found that she was watching him.

Her eyes were large and clear. The irises were as black as her hair. They fixed on his eyes and seemed to bore straight through him, pinning him like an insect to a velvet specimen tray.

He blinked.

She didn't blink.

Suddenly his heart was beating so hard that he could hear it. His mouth was dry. He wanted to sit down somewhere with a drink and knit his nerves together again.

“Now,” she said.

“Now what?”

“Time to go.”

“Oh,” he said quickly.

She turned away from him and opened the door. She leaned out, looked left and right, then went into the hall.

Picking up his suitcases, he followed her. He waited while she locked the suite, and then he trailed her down the corridor and through a brightly marked door into a concrete stairwell.

“We don't want to go out through the lobby,” she said. “They think you're in your room, and they won't be expecting you down there — but one of them might be lurking about just the same. I have a rented car parked near the hotel's side entrance.”

Their footsteps echoed flatly off the concrete walls.

At every landing Canning expected to see a man with a gun. But there was no one on the stairs.

Once he had to call to stop to catch his breath. His shoulders ached from the weight of the bags; he rubbed the back of his neck and wished he were sitting in a hot bath.

“Would you like me to take one of those?” she asked, pointing at the suitcases.

“No, thank you.”

“I'm stronger than I look.”

“That's what McAlister told me.”

She grinned again. She had fine, brilliantly white teeth. “What else did he say about me?”

“Well, he said that the scar on your upper lip came from a fight you were in.”

“Oh? A fight?”

“Some mean bastard carved you with a broken bottle.”

Laughing lightly, she turned and went down the stairs, two at a time. She was almost skipping.

He plodded.

Outside, she helped him put his suitcases in a sparkling white Subaru, then went around and got in behind the wheel. When she drove away from the curb, the tires smoked and squealed, and Canning was pressed back into his seat.

He turned around and looked out the rear window. But it was soon evident that they had not been spotted and followed by any of The Committee's agents.

“Where are we going?” he asked, facing front again.

“Hotel New Otani.”

“Where's that?”

“Not far.”

To Canning's way of thinking, even one block was too far. The frenzied Tokyo traffic was not like anything he had seen before — or like anything he wanted to see again. There did not appear to be any formal lanes along which traffic could flow in an orderly manner; instead, strings of automobiles and trucks and buses crisscrossed one another, weaved and tangled with insane complexity. And the motorbikes, of course, zipped in and out between the larger vehicles, as if their operators had never been told about pain and death.

Initially, Canning felt that Lee Ann Tanaka drove like a certifiable maniac. She swung from one informal “lane” of cars into another without looking to see what was coming up behind her; and other cars' brakes barked sharply in her wake. Repeatedly, she stopped so suddenly and forcefully that Canning felt as if he were being cut in half by his seatbelt. She accelerated when there was absolutely nowhere to go, somehow squeezed in between trucks and buses that appeared to be riding bumper-to-bumper, gave a score of pedestrians intimations of mortality, and used the car's horn as if she thought this was New Year's Eve.

Gradually, however, Canning realized that she knew precisely what she was doing. She smiled continually. She did not appear to be frightened by the dozens of near-collisions — as if she knew from experience the difference between destruction and a millimeter. Evidently she was as at home in the streets of Tokyo as he was in his own living room.

He said, “How long does it take to become a carefree driver in this traffic?”

She shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Well, how long have you been driving here?”

“Since the day before yesterday.”

“Oh, sure.”

She glanced sideways at him. “I'm an American,” she said somewhat sharply. “I was born and raised an American. I'm as American as you are. I was never in Japan in my life — until the day before yesterday.”

“Oh, God,” he said miserably.

“I flew in from San Francisco. Took a written test and an eye exam at the licensing bureau's airport office. Rented this car and been winging it ever since.” As she spoke she swerved out of her lane, cut off a city bus and beat it through the intersection under a changing light.

“I thought you'd driven here all your life.”

She cornered hard, nearly running down several pedestrians who had edged out from the sidewalk. “Thanks for the compliment! It's really not as awful as it looks from the passenger's seat.”

“I'll bet.”

“The only time it gets hairy is around nine in the morning and five in the afternoon. Just like in any American city. And you know what the Japanese call the peak traffic hours?”

“I couldn't guess.”

“Rushawa.”

“Rush hour?”

She spelled it for him, switching lanes twice between the first and the final letters.

He smiled appreciatively. “But since you haven't driven here all your life — do you think you could slow down?”

She whipped the car to the right, stood on the brakes, stopped the car on a hundred-yen coin, and switched off the engine.

Lifting his head from his knees, Canning said, “Jesus! I only asked you to slow down—”

“We're here,” she said brightly.

“What?”

“The Hotel New Otani.”

Dazed, he glanced up just as the uniformed doorman opened the door of the Subaru. The man leaned in, smiled at Canning, offered a hand to help him out of the low-slung little car, and said, “Konnichiwa, sir!”

Afternoon, yes, Canning thought. But was it good? And could it be the same afternoon that he had got off a plane from Honolulu? So much seemed to have happened in the frenetic company of Miss Tanaka. Days seemed to have passed. “Konnichiwa yourself,” he said.

As they followed the doorman and Canning's luggage into the hotel, Lee Ann took his arm and said, “We don't have to register. I've done that already. We're traveling as Mr. and Mrs. J. Okrow. I figure that once The Committee's agents know they've lost you at the Imperial, they'll start checking other hotels — but not for married couples. And if they manage to get their hands on the hotel register — well, the name Okrow sounds Western to the Japanese desk clerk at the Otani, but it probably will sound Japanese to most Westerners.”

“It does to me.”

“You see!”

“You think of everything,” he said, genuine admiration in his voice.

“I try to,” she said, beaming up at him and squeezing his arm in a fine imitation of wifely pleasure and devotion.”

The room she had booked for them was attractive and spacious. Two double beds dressed in white chenille and boasting dark caned headboards were set against one wall. A matching caned nightstand stood between the beds and held a twin-necked lamp, a telephone, and menus from the hotel's restaurants. On the other side of the room, there was a combination desk-dresser with a wall mirror above it. There was also a color television set on its own wheeled cart. Two Danish-style armchairs stood on opposite sides of a small round coffee table. The wallpaper was pebble-textured and cream-colored, except for the wall opposite the windows: that was decorated with an abstract brown and green and white mural of mountains and bamboo fields. In the bathroom — with separate tub and shower stall, sun lamps, and bidet — there was a full bottle of whiskey and another of vodka standing on the makeup counter. A small refrigerator hummed to itself in the niche under the sink, and it was stocked with a variety of soft drinks.

Taking off his jacket, Canning said, “You must think I'm a real boozer.”

“I like to drink, myself.”

“The agency never bought me whiskey before.”

“You haven't been playing it right.” She sat down in one of the armchairs and folded her hands in her lap. “You like the room?”

Hanging his jacket in the foyer closet, Canning said, “Well, it isn't as nice as the George V in Paris or the Sherry-Netherland in New York. But I suppose it'll do.”

She was looking quite pleased with herself. “We've got to spend the next sixteen or seventeen hours in here. Can't take a chance of going out to dinner or breakfast and being spotted by your friends from the Imperial. We'll have food sent up. So… If we're going to be imprisoned, we might as well have all the comforts.”

He sat down in the other armchair. “We're going to Peking in a French jet?”

“That's right.”

“Tell me about it?”

“Didn't Bob McAlister tell you about it?”

“He said you would.”

She said, “It belongs to Jean-Paul Freneau, a very classy art dealer who has headquarters in Paris and branch offices throughout the world. He deals in paintings, sculpture, primitive art — everything. He's a valued friend of the Chairman.”

Canning made a face. “Why would the Chairman maintain a close friendship with a rich, capitalistic French art dealer?”

Lee Ann had the rare habit of looking directly at whomever she was talking to, and now her black eyes locked on Canning's. A shiver went through him as she spoke. “For one thing, now that China is at last moving into the world marketplace, she needs contacts with Western businessmen she feels she can trust. Freneau has helped to arrange large contacts for the delivery of Chinese handicrafts to the Common Market countries. More importantly, Freneau has helped the Chairman to buy back some of the priceless Chinese art taken out of the country by followers of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. Every time some wealthy Nationalist puts a piece or a collection on the market, Freneau is there with the highest bid. He's the agent for Red China in its attempt to keep the Chinese heritage from being spread throughout the private collections of the West.”

“And why is Freneau so willing to cooperate with the CIA?”

“He isn't,” she said. “He's cooperating with Bob McAlister. They've been friends for years.”

“When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow morning at nine.”

He thought for a moment. Then: “I guess the only other thing is the list of names. The three agents we have in China.”

“You really want me to go through that now?”

He sighed. “No. I guess tomorrow on the plane is soon enough. But I do want to know about you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“You're a surprise.”

“How?”

“When McAlister described Tanaka… Well, I didn't think…”

Her lovely face clouded. “What are you trying to say? That you don't like working with someone who isn't a nice lily-white WASP?”

“What?” He was surprised by the bitterness in her voice.

“I am as American as you are,” she said sharply.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It isn't your ethnic background that bothers me. I just wasn't expecting a woman.”

Gradually her face unclouded. “That's exactly Bob McAlister's sense of humor.”

“So tell me about yourself.”

“If we're going to sit here and jabber much longer, I want a drink.” She stood up and took off her trench-coat. She was wearing a red silk blouse and a long black skirt, and she looked better than any woman he had ever seen. “Can I get you something?”

“Whatever you're having,” he said.

She came back from the bathroom a few minutes later and handed him his glass. “Vodka and orange soft drink.”

He clinked glasses with her in a wordless toast. After he had taken a good swallow of the concoction, he said, “Once in the car and then again just a few minutes ago, you got very hot under the collar when you thought I was questioning your Americanism. Why so sensitive?”

Hesitating for a moment, pausing to sip her drink she finally said, “I'm sorry. It's a problem I have, a psychological problem I understand but can't lick.” She took another drink. She seemed unwilling to say anything more, then suddenly explained it with a rush of words that came almost too fast to be intelligible: “My mother was Japanese-American, and my father was half Japanese and half Chinese. He owned a small shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. In 1942, about the middle of May, they were taken from their home and put in a concentration camp. You must know about the camps where Japanese-Americans were kept during World War Two. They called them 'assembly centers' but they were concentration camps, all right Barbed wire, armed guards, machine-gun posts guarding them… They spent more than three years in the camp. When they got out, after V-J Day, they found my father's store had been stripped of merchandise and rented to someone else. He received no compensation. They had also been evicted from their home and lost their personal possessions. They had to start all over again. And it wasn't easy — because banks and businessmen just weren't in the mood to help any Japanese-Americans.”

Leaning forward in his chair, Canning said, “But you aren't old enough to have lived through that.”

“I'm twenty-nine,” she said, her eyes never wavering from his. There was a thread of fear woven through those black irises now. “I wasn't born until well after the war. That's true. But I was raised in an emotionally torn hoursehold. My parents were quietly proud of their Asian ancestry, but after their ordeal in the camp they were anxious to prove themselves 'native' Americans. They became over-Americanized after that. They even stopped writing to relatives in the Old World. They taught me Chinese and Japanese in the privacy of our home, but they forbid me to speak it outside the home. I was to speak only English when I was out of their company. I was twenty-four before anyone but my mother and father knew I was multilingual. And now I seem to have this need to prove how American I am.” She smiled. “About the only good thing to come of it is a very American drive to achieve, achieve, achieve.”

And she had achieved a great deal by the age of twenty-rune. While she was still twenty she had graduated from the University of California. By twenty-five she'd obtained a master's and a doctorate in sociology and psychology from Columbia University. She had done some speech-writing for a successful Vice-Presidential candidate, and it was in that capacity that she had met and become friends with Bob McAlister and his wife. When she was twenty-six she had applied for a position with the CIA, had passed all the tests, and had backed out at the last minute when she'd accepted a proposal of marriage from one of her professors at Columbia. The marriage had failed a few months ago, and she had been more than available when McAlister had asked for her help in the Dragonfly investigation.

“I took the oath and signed the secrecy pledge the first time I applied for work with the agency,” she said. “So there was really no technical reason why Bob couldn't tell me everything and ring me in on this.”

Canning stood up and said, “Another drink?”

“Please.”

When he came back with two more vodka atrocities, he said, “I'm damned glad he did ring you in. You're the most efficient partner I've ever worked with.”

She didn't blush or demur, and he respected her for that. She just nodded and said, “That's probably true. But enough about me. Let's talk about you.”

Canning was not the sort of man who liked to talk about himself, and especially not to people whom he had just met. Yet with her he was talkative. She sat with her head tilted to the left and her mouth slightly open as if she were tasting what he said as well as listening to it.

Around seven o'clock they stopped drinking and talking long enough for her to order their dinner from room service. While she did that, he took a hot shower, brushed his teeth, and shaved. When he came out of the bathroom in fresh slacks and a T-shirt, the room-service hot cart was set up and the food was ready.

While he was in the shower, she had changed into a floor-length silk lounging robe which had a peaked hood after the fashion of a monk's habit. The silk was forest-green, with a decorative gold zipper all the way down the front. She was striking, exotic.

They ate mizutaki, the white meat of the chicken stewed in an earthenware pot and flavored with many herbs. When the chicken was gone, they drank the excellent broth. This was accompanied by piping hot sake which was delicious but which — Lee Ann explained — tasted like a spoiled sauterne when it was cool. For dessert, there were mandarin-orange slices and shredded almonds. To finish the meal and stretch out the evening, there were six small bottles of Kirin, the excellent lager that was an equal to the best European beers.

At some point, they adjourned to one of the beds, where they stretched out side by side, each with a bottle of Kirin. The conversation continued nonstop, and Canning found that the sound of her voice was like a tranquilizer.

Shortly before ten o'clock she went to use the bathroom, and when she came back she was nude. She was exquisite. Her breasts were small but perfectly shaped, upthrust, with nipples as dark as baker's chocolate. Her stomach was as flat as that of a young boy. Her navel was convex rather than concave; a sweet, protruding nubbins. Her pubic thatch was thick and dark, and her legs were as smooth and sinuous as any he had ever seen in Las Vegas showrooms or in the Crazy Horse Saloon or in the airbrushed pages of Playboy. Yet for all of this, there was something childlike and vulnerable about the way she stood before him.

He said, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe it's the wine.”

“No.'

She switched off all but one light.

“I'm too old for you.”

“You're younger than you are. And I'm older than I am.”

“It's so fast.”

“That's the American way. I'm an American woman, and American women get what they want. I want you.” She knelt on the bed beside him. “Relax. Enjoy. Remember that we could be in Peking when Dragonfly is detonated. We could be dead tomorrow.”

“Is that the only reason for this?” he asked.

“No. I like you.”

He reached for her.

She stretched out on top of him.

He tasted her mouth.

After a while she undressed him.

His erection was like a post. When she touched it he felt a quick flash of guilt and remembered Irene. But that passed, and he slipped into a pool of sensation.

Afterward, she got two fresh bottles of Kirin. They sat up in bed, drinking. They touched one another, gently, tentatively, as if to reassure themselves that they had been together.

At some point in the night, after the Kirin was gone, when she was lying with her head upon his chest, he said, “I told you about my son.”

“Mike.”

“Yes. What I didn't tell you was that he thinks of me as a murderer.”

“Are you?”

“In a sense.”

“Who have you killed?”

“Agents. The other side.”

“How many?”

“Eleven.”

“They would have killed you?”

“Of course.”

“Then you're no murderer.”

“Tell him that.”

“The meek don't inherit the earth,” she said. “The meek are put in concentration camps. And graves.”

“I've tried to tell him that.”

“But he believes in pacifism and reason?”

“Something of the sort.”

“Wait until he finds most people won't listen to reason.”

He cupped one of her breasts. “If I told him about Dragonfly, Mike would say the world has gone mad.”

“I think poor Bob McAlister feels that way. At least a little bit. Don't you think?”

“Yes. You're right.”

“And of course, it hasn't gone mad.”

“Because it's always been mad.”

She said, “You know why I wanted you?”

“Because I'm handsome and charming?”

“A thousand reasons. But, maybe most of all — because I sensed violence in you. Death. Not that you're fond of death and violence. But you accept it. And you can deal it.”

“That makes me exotic, exciting?”

“It makes you like me.”

He said, “You've never killed anyone.”

“No. But I could. I'd make a good assassin if I believed the man I was to kill had to die for the good of mankind. There are men who need to die, aren't there? Some men are animals.”

“My liberal friends would think I'm an animal if they heard me agree with you,” he said. “But then, so would some of my conservative friends.”

“And your son. Yet without you and a few others like you, they'd all have fallen prey to the real animals a long time ago. Most men who can kill without guilt are monsters, but we need a few decent men with that ability too.”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe we're megalomaniacs.”

“I don't know about you,” he said. “But I don't always think I'm right. In fact, I usually think I'm wrong.”

“Scratch megalomania.”

“I think so.”

“I guess we're just realists in a world of dreamers. But even if that's what we are, even if we are right, that doesn't make us very nice people, does it?”

“There are no heroes. But, Miss Tanaka, you're plenty nice enough for me.”

“I want you again.”

“Likewise.”

They made love. As before, he found in her a knowledge and enthusiasm that he had never known in a woman, a fierce desire that was beyond any lust that Irene had ever shown. None of the very civilized, very gentle lovers he had had were like this. And he wondered, as he swelled and moved within her, if it was necessary to see and accept the animal in yourself before you could really enjoy life. Lee Ann rocked and bucked upon him, gibbered against his neck, clutched and clawed at him, and worked away the minutes toward a new day.

At twelve-thirty he put through a call to the desk and asked for a wake-up message at six the next morning. Then he set his travel clock for six-ten.

Lee Ann said, “I gather you don't trust Japanese hotel operators.”

“It's not that. I'm just compulsive about a lot of things. Didn't McAlister warn you?”

“No.”

“I have a well-known neatness fetish which drives some people crazy. I'm always picking up lint and straightening pictures on the walls…”

“I haven't noticed.”

Suddenly he saw the room-service cart, covered with haphazardly stacked, dirty dishes. “My God!”

“What's the matter?”

He pointed to the cart. “It's been there all night, and I haven't had the slightest urge to clean it up. I don't have the urge now, either.”

“Maybe I'm the medicine you need.”

That could be true, he thought. But he worried that if he lost his neuroses, he might also lose that orderliness of thought that had always put him one up on the other side. And tomorrow when they got into Peking, he would need to be sharper than he had ever been before.

Steam blossomed around the wheels of the locomotive and flowered into the chilly night air. It smelled vaguely of sulphur.

Chai Po-han walked through the swirling steam and along the side of the train. The Hsian station, only dimly lighted at this hour, lay on his right; aureoles of wan light shimmered through a blanket of thin, phosphorescent fog. The first dozen cars of the train were full of cargo, but the thirteenth was a passenger cab.

“Boarding?” asked the conductor, who stood at the base of the collapsible metal steps that led up into the car. He was a round-faced, bald, and toothless man whose smile was quite warm but nonetheless unnerving.

“I'm transferring from the Chungking line,” Chai said. He showed the conductor his papers.

“All the way into Peking?”

“Yes.”

“And you've come from Chungking today?”

“Yes.”

“That's quite a trip without rest.”

“I'm very weary.”

“Come aboard, then. I'll find you a sleeping berth.”

The train was dark inside. The only light was the moonlike glow which came through the windows from the station's platform lamps. Chai could not really see where he was going, but the conductor moved down the aisle with the night sureness of a cat.

“You're going the right direction to get a sleeping berth,” the toothless man said. “These days the trains are full on their way out from the cities, on their way to the communes. Coming in, there are only vacationers and soldiers.”

In the sleeping cars, where there were no windows, the conductor switched on his flashlight. In the second car he located a cramped berth that was unoccupied. “This will be yours,” he said in a whisper.

All around them, three-deep on both sides, men and women snored and murmured and tossed in their sleep.

Chai threw his single sack of belongings onto the bunk and said, “When will we reach Peking?”

“Nine o'clock tomorrow evening,” the conductor said. “Sleep well, Comrade.”

Lying on his back in the berth, the bottom of the next-highest mattress only inches from his face, Chai thought of his home, thought of his family, and hoped that he would have good dreams. But his very last thought, just as he drifted off, was of Ssunan Commune, and instead of pleasant dreams, he endured the same nightmare that had plagued him since the end of winter: a white room, the gods in green, and the scalpel poised to dissect his soul…

THREE

Andrew Rice ate a macaroon in one bite while he waited for McAlister's secretary to put the director on the line. He finished swallowing just as McAlister said hello. “Bob, I hope I'm not interrupting anything.”

“Not at all,” McAlister said guardedly.

“I called to apologize.”

“Oh?”

“I understand that you had to sweet-talk those federal marshals because I called them so late Wednesday evening.”

“It's nothing,” McAlister said. “I soothed everyone in a few minutes. It didn't even come close to a fist-fight.”

“Yes, but with everything you've got on your shoulders right now, you don't need labor problems too.”

“Really, I was being petty. I should never have mentioned it to the President.”

“No, no. He asked me to call and give you an explanation. And you deserve one. Besides, the truth of it will let me off the hook, at least somewhat.” He took another macaroon from the bag in his desk drawer and turned it over and over in his fingers as he spoke. “Fredericks at Justice was supposed to send me a list of marshals in the D.C. area, and he took his time about it. His messenger didn't get to my office until nearly six o'clock.”

“I see.”

“Then, of course, I wanted to get some background material on each of the marshals so we could be damned sure that none of them had past connections with the CIA. By the time I had twelve men I was sure I could trust, most of the evening had disappeared. If Fredericks had gotten that list to me earlier… Well, I should have been on the phone to him every fifteen minutes, pushing and prodding. I wasn't, so part of the blame is mine.”

McAlister said, “Now I'm doubly sorry that I mentioned this to the chief.”

“As I said, you deserved an explanation.” He waved the macaroon under his nose. “Any new developments?”

“Unfortunately, no,” McAlister said.

“Your man should reach Peking shortly.”

“Then the fireworks start.”

“Let's hope not,” Rice said, meaning something much different than McAlister would think he meant. “Sorry again about any problems I may have caused you.”

“Sure. Be seeing you.”

“Goodbye, Bob.”

The moment he hung up he popped the macaroon into his mouth and instantly ground it to a sweet paste.

He felt pretty good today. For one thing he had worked off most of his nervous tension with that whore last night. She was his first woman in four months and the first he had ever picked up in Washington. He had always felt that he would be risking too much by taking his satisfaction here in the capital. In Washington D.C., where the juiciest gossip and the main topic of conversation was nearly always about politicians, even a prostitute was likely to be somewhat politically aware; there was always the chance that even a seldom-photographed Presidential aide would be recognized on the street. But his need had been too great to delay, and he'd had no time or excuse for a trip to New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore. And after all, the affair had gone well: she had been attractive; she hadn't recognized him; and she'd helped him to get rid of the awful pressure that had been building within him. Now, this morning, the news about Dragonfly had suddenly taken a turn for the better, and Rice felt as well as a five-foot-ten, two-hundred-eighty-pound man could ever feel.

“Mr. Rice?”

He swallowed another macaroon, pressed an intercom button, and said, “Yes?”

“Mr. Yu is here.”

“Send him right hi.”

Mr. Yu Miao-sheng, Formosa's ambassador to the United States, was a short, wiry man who wore excellent Hong Kong suits and thick wire-framed glasses. He smiled quite a bit; and his teeth were very sharp, almost canine.

Rice greeted him at the door, and they shook hands. “Please have a seat, Mr. Yu.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rice.”

“Can I get you something to drink, Mr. Yu?”

“Would you possibly have any dry sherry, Mr. Rice?”

“Certainly.”

“Dry Sack, perhaps?”

“I believe it is.”

“Could I possibly have some of that over ice?”

Rice got the drink, put it on the coffee table, and sat in the armchair opposite the ambassador. When Mr. Yu had taken a sip of his drink and smiled approval, Rice said, “How was your meeting with the President?”

“Very strained,” Mr. Yu said. He was quite amused by this; he laughed softly. “The President insisted that I knew something about a CIA plan to overthrow the government of the People's Republic of China. And I insisted that I knew nothing. We were both adamant, but we managed to behave like statesmen.”

Rice smiled. “I am happy to hear that.”

Frowning, Mr. Yu said, “However, the President made one point which causes me great concern.”

“Oh?”

“According to intelligence reports from which he quoted, the Russians are now aware of Taiwan's preparations for war.”

“Yes.”

“And the Soviet army is making preparations of its own.”

“That's true enough; however, there is really nothing to worry about, Mr. Yu.”

“But might not the Russians sweep in from the west and take a substantial part of the homeland before we can secure and defend it? The Russians are far better armed, far better prepared for war than are the Communist Chinese. You must know that if the Russians decided to take such risks — even if they were to forsake nuclear weapons — they would be too powerful an adversary for our Taiwanese forces.”

“Yes, of course. But remember that mainland China is a vast country. The Russians will need weeks if not months to consolidate their gains in the west. Before they can get near Peking or the other eastern cities you will seize in the invasion — well, we will have taken care of the Russians.”

Mr. Yu blinked stupidly for a long moment. Then: “There is a Dragonfly for Russia too?”

“Something of that sort,” Rice said. “We hadn't planned to launch that operation for a few years. But if the Russians take advantage of the confusion in China to acquire some new territory, we'll have to advance our schedule.”

“I am amazed.”

Rice smiled tolerantly. “Now, tell me, how are things coming along in Taipei?”

“I received a coded message from the capital just this morning,” Mr. Yu said. “We are virtually one hundred percent prepared.”

“Excellent.”

“Two thousand paratroopers will be in the air within three hours of your go-ahead signal. Within nine to twelve hours they will have seized every one of Communist China's nuclear weapons.”

“The seaborne troops?”

Pausing only to take an occasional sip of sherry, Mr. Yu spent the next ten minutes discussing the preparations which had been made for the invasion. When he had nothing more to report, he said, “As you can see, we need no advantage except the confusion caused by the plague in Peking.”

Rice said, “I too, have received a coded message.”

“From Taipei?”

“From Peking.”

“Sir?”

“Dragonfly is on the move at last,” Rice said. “He will arrive in Peking around nine o'clock Saturday night, their time.”

Mr. Yu was delighted. He slid to the edge of his chair. “And when will he be triggered?”

“As soon as possible,” Rice said. “Within twenty-four hours of his arrival in the capital.”

“I will alert my people.” Mr. Yu finished his sherry and got to his feet. “This is a momentous occasion, Mr. Rice.”

“Momentous,” Rice agreed as he struggled out of his chair.

They shook hands.

At the door, Rice said, “How are your wife and daughters, Mr. Yu?”

“Quite well, thank you, Mr. Rice.”

“Will you give them my best, Mr. Yu?”

“I certainly will, Mr. Rice.”

“Good day, Mr. Yu.”

“Good luck, Mr. Rice.”

After giving the President a progress report by telephone at five o'clock, McAlister had gone straight to dinner. He was not at all hungry, but dinner gave him an excuse for drinks. By six he was at his favorite corner table in an expensive Italian restaurant that was popular with Cabinet officials, White House aides, senators, congressmen, and reporters. This early in the evening, there were very few customers. McAlister sat alone with his back to the wall, the Washington Post in front of him and a glass of iced bourbon ready at his right hand.

As it had been for more years than he liked to think about, the news was sprinkled liberally with insanity, with signs of a society enduring a prolonged attack of schizophrenia. In Detroit three men had been killed when a group of young Marxist factory workers, all of whom earned salaries that provided them with a Cadillac-standard of living, planted a bomb under a production-line conveyor belt. In Boston, an organization calling itself The True Sons of America was taking credit for a bomb explosion in the offices of a liberal newspaper, where a secretary and bookkeeper were killed. And in California the left-wing Symbionese Liberation Army had surfaced once again. Eight SLA “soldiers” had crashed a birthday party in a wealthy San Francisco suburb and murdered two adults and five small children. They had kidnapped three other children, leaving behind a tape recording which explained that after much consideration and discussion among themselves about what would be best for the People, they had decided to stop the capitalist machine by either murdering or “reeducating” its children. Therefore, they had kidnapped three children for reeducation and had slaughtered those for whom they had no available SLA foster parents.

McAlister picked up his bourbon and finished nearly half of it in one long swallow.

In the past he had read this sort of news and had been appalled; now he was outraged. His hands were shaking. His face felt hot, and his throat was tight with anger. These SLA bastards were no different from the crackpots who were behind the Dragonfly project. One group was Marxist and one fascist, but their methods and their insensitivity and their self-righteousness and even their totalitarian goals were substantially the same. Was it possible for even the most single-minded liberal to support fair trial, mercy, and parole for these bastards? Was it possible for anyone to try to explain their behavior as having its source in poverty and injustice? Was it possible, even now, for anyone to express equal sympathy for killers and victims alike? He wished it were possible to execute these people without trial… But that would be playing right into the hands of men like A. W. West — who, of course, deserved the same treatment, the same quick and brutal punishment, but who would probably wind up administering it to the left-wingers. None of these people, revolutionaries or reactionaries, deserved to live among men of reason. They were all animals, throwbacks, forces for chaos who had none but a disruptive function in a civilized world. They should be sought, apprehended, and destroyed—

Yes, but how in the hell did that sort of thinking mesh with his well-known liberalism? How could he believe in the reasonable world his Boston family and teachers had told him about — and still believe in meeting violence with violence?

He quickly finished the last of his bourbon.

“Bad day, was it?”

McAlister looked up and saw Fredericks, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, standing in front of his table.

“I thought you were pretty much a teetotaler,” Bill Fredericks said.

“Used to be.”

“You ought to get out of the CIA.”

“And come over to Justice?”

“Sure. We whittle away hours on anti-trust suits. And even when we've got a hot case, we aren't rushed. The wheels of justice grind slowly. One martini a night eases the tension.”

Smiling, McAlister shook his head and said, “Well, if you've got it so damned easy over there, I wish you'd make an effort to help take the pressure off me when you get the chance.”

Fredericks blinked. “What'd I do?”

“It's what you didn't do.”

“What didn't I do?'

McAlister reminded him of how long he'd taken to send that list of federal marshals to Andrew Rice.

“But that's not true,” Fredericks said. “Rice's secretary called and asked for the list. No explanations. Very snotty. Wanted to have it sooner than immediately. National security. Fate of the nation at stake. Future of the free world in the balance. Danger to the republic. That sort of thing. I couldn't get hold of a messenger fast enough, so I sent my own secretary to deliver it. She left it with Rice's secretary.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “I know she was back in my office no later than four o'clock.”

McAlister frowned. “But why would Rice lie to me?”

“You'll have to ask him.”

“I guess I will.”

“If you're dining alone,” Fredericks said, “why don't you join us?” He motioned to a table where two other lawyers from Justice were ordering drinks.

“Bernie Kirkwood is supposed to join me before long,” McAlister said. “Besides, I wouldn't be very good company tonight.”

“In that case, maybe I better join you, Bill,” Kirk-wood said as he arrived at McAlister's table.

Kirkwood was in his early thirties, a thin, bushy-headed, narrow-faced man who looked as if he'd just been struck by lightning and was still crackling with a residue of electricity. His large eyes were made even larger by thick gold-framed glasses. His smile revealed a lot of crooked white teeth.

“Well,” Fredericks said, “I can't let any newsmen see me with both of you crusaders. That would start all sorts of rumors about big new investigations, prosecutions, heads rolling in high places. My telephone would never stop ringing. How could I ever find the time I need to nail some poor bastard to the wall for income-tax evasion?”

Kirkwood said, “I didn't know that you guys at Justice ever nailed anyone for anything.”

“Oh, sure. It happens.”

“When was the last time?”

“Six years ago this December, I think. Or was it seven years last June?”

“Income-tax evader?”

“No, I think it was some heinous bastard who was carrying a placard back and forth in front of the White House, protesting the war. Or something.”

“But you got him,” Kirkwood said.

“Put him away for life.”

“We can sleep nights.”

“Oh, yes! The streets are safe!” Grinning, Fredericks turned to McAlister and said, “You'll check that out — about the list? I'm not lying to you.”

“I'll check it out,” McAlister said. “And I believe you, Bill.”

Fredericks returned to his own table; as he was leaving, the waiter brought menus for McAlister and Kirkwood, took their orders for drinks, fetched one bourbon and one Scotch, and said how nice it was to see them.

When they were alone again, Kirkwood said, “We found Dr. Hunter's car in a supermarket parking lot a little over a mile from his home in Bethesda.”

Dr. Leroy Hunter, McAlister knew, was another biochemist who had connections with the late Dr. Olin Wilson. He had also been on friendly terms with Potter Cofield, their only other lead, the man who had been stabbed to death in his own home yesterday. He said, “No sign of Hunter, I suppose.”

Kirkwood shook his woolly head: no. “A neighbor says she saw him putting two suitcases in the trunk of the car before he drove away yesterday afternoon. They're still there, both of them, full of toilet articles and clean clothes.”

Sipping bourbon, leaning back in his chair, McAlister said, “Know what I think?”

“Sure,” Kirkwood said, folding his bony hands around his glass of Scotch. “Dr. Hunter has joined Dr. Wilson and Dr. Cofield in that great research laboratory in the sky.”

“That's about it.”

“Sooner or later we'll find the good doctor floating face-down in the Potomac River — a faulty electric toaster clasped in both hands and a burglar's knife stuck in his throat.” Kirkwood grinned humorlessly.

“Anything on those two dead men we found in David Canning's apartment?”

“They were each other's best friend. We can't tie either of them to anyone else in the agency.”

“Then we're right back to square one.”

Kirkwood said, “I called the office at six o'clock. They'd just received a telephone call from Tokyo. Canning and Tanaka took off in that Frenchman's jet at five p.m. Friday, Washington time — which is nine o'clock tomorrow morning in Tokyo.”

McAlister handed him a section of the Washington Post. “Let's make a pact: no more talk about Dragonfly until after dinner. The world's full of other interesting crises and tragedies. I would advise, however, that you skip all that negative stuff and look for the harmless human-interest stories.”

Nodding, Kirkwood said, “You mean like 'Hundred-Year-Old Man Tells Secret of Long Life.'”

“That's exactly it.”

“Or maybe, 'Iowa Man Grows World's Largest Potato.' ”

“Even better.”

The waiter returned, interrupting their reading long enough to take two orders for hearts of artichokes in vinaigrette, cheese-filled ravioli, and a half-bottle of good red wine.

Just before the artichokes arrived, McAlister was reading about a famous Christian evangelist's ideas for the rehabilitation of the thousands of men in American prisons. The evangelist wanted to surgically implant a transponder in each prisoner's brain so that the man could be monitored by a computer. The computer would not only keep track of the ex-prisoner but it would listen in to his conversations wherever he might be — and give him an electric shock if he used obscene language or tried to break the terms of his parole. The minister thought that, indeed, such a device could benefit a great many Americans who had never been to prison but who had engaged in hundreds of minor violations of the law all their lives. The evangelist also felt — and said that he was certain God agreed with him — that the punishment for various crimes should be brought into line with the nature of the original transgression. For example, a rapist should be castrated. A thief should have some of his fingers chopped off. A pornographer should have one eye poked out because it had offended God. A prostitute—

“What in the hell?” Kirkwood's voice was uncharacteristically breathless, quiet.

McAlister looked up from his section of the newspaper. “It can't be as bad as what I'm reading.”

After he'd taken a moment to reread a paragraph, Kirkwood said, “Last night, right near here, a prostitute was badly beaten by one of her Johns.”

“Don't read about prostitutes,” McAlister said. “Read something uplifting. I'm reading about this evangelist—”

“She couldn't talk very well because her mouth was swollen,” Kirkwood said. “But she was plucky. While they worked on her at the hospital, she insisted on trying to tell the cops a few things about her assailant. Do you know what this John kept saying, over and over, while he beat up on her?”

“I guess you're going to tell me.”

“He kept saying, 'You can't stop Dragonfly, you can't stop Dragonfly.'”

They stared at each other.

Finally Kirkwood said, “The police think he was just raving, that it doesn't mean anything.”

“Maybe it doesn't.”

“Maybe.”

“I mean even to us.”

“Maybe.”

“Could be coincidence.'

“Could be.”

McAlister said, “Let me see that.”

Kirkwood handed the newspaper to him.

After he had read a few paragraphs, McAlister said, “Did she give a description of the man?”

“Top of the second column.”

McAlister read what the girl had told the police: her assailant had been fat, she meant really fat, three hundred pounds or more, and he was middle-aged, sloppily dressed, didn't belong in that expensive car, probably stole the car, she didn't know what kind of car, maybe a Cadillac or a Continental, all those luxury cars looked the same to her, she knew nothing about cars, she just knew he was fat and strong and kept saying she couldn't stop Dragonfly, whatever in the hell that was… With each word he read, McAlister felt the blood drain out of his face.

Kirkwood leaned over the table and said, “Hey, do you recognize this guy?”

No. It was impossible. It was crazy. It made no sense. He would never have taken such a risk.

Rice?

No.

Rice?

McAlister began to remember things and to connect them: Rice had been so eager to know whom McAlister was sending to Peking, even more eager than the President had been; the Committeemen had tried to kill Canning at his apartment within a couple of hours after Rice had been given his name; and Rice had lied about Bill Fredericks and the list of federal marshals who lived — Good Christ, the federal marshals!

“Bob? Are you there?”

The waiter brought their hearts of artichokes and the half-bottle of red wine.

McAlister sat very still: stunned.

The moment the waiter had gone, Kirkwood said, “You look like you've been pole-axed.”

Softly, McAlister said, “I don't know… I may be wrong and… I have to be wrong! It would be such a foolish thing for him to do! What a risk to take in his position! Yet if he's as unbalanced, as completely crazy as he'd have to be to get involved in this, and if he's feeling the pressure half as much as I'm feeling it, he just might…” His voice trailed off.

Frowning, Kirkwood said, “What in the name of God are you talking about?”

McAlister stood up. “We don't have time for dinner.” He dropped his napkin and turned away from the table.

“Bob?”

McAlister hurried toward the front of the restaurant, weaving between the tables, nearly running.

Bewildered, Kirkwood followed close behind him.

In the second-floor study of a stately old house in Peking, a man sat down at a large mahogany desk and unfolded a sheet of paper. He placed the paper squarely in the center of the green felt blotter. It was a list of numbers which had been transmitted by laser wireless in Washington, bounced off a relay satellite high over the Pacific Ocean, and picked up by a receiver in this house.

The man at the desk smiled when he thought that the Chinese counterintelligence forces had surely monitored and recorded this same transmission at half a dozen different points along the Eastern Seaboard. Even now a score of code specialists would be trying to break down the numbers into some sensible message. But none of them would ever crack it, for there was no intrinsic alphabetic value to the numbers. They referred to chapters and page numbers within a certain book which was known only to the man in Washington and the man in this house.

He poured himself some whiskey and water from the bottle and pitcher that stood on the desk.

He opened the center drawer of the desk and took from it a pencil and a small brass pencil sharpener. Holding both hands over the wastebasket in order to keep the shavings from falling on the carpet, he put a needlelike point on the pencil and then placed it beside the list of numbers. He dropped the brass gadget into the desk, closed the drawer, and dusted his hands together.

Still smiling, he tasted his whiskey.

He was savoring the moment, drawing out the thrill of anticipation. He was not at all worried, for he knew precisely what the message would be, what it had to be. He felt fine.

At last he turned around in his chair and took a copy of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows from the bookshelves behind him. This was the 1966 slipcased Grosset and Dunlap edition, illustrated by Dick Cuffari. In Washington, Andrew Rice had had the same edition at hand when he'd composed the message which had come in on the laser wireless.

The first line of Rice's message read:

8000650006

The man at the desk opened The Wind in the Willows to Chapter Eight, which was titled “Toad's Adventures.” He counted to the sixty-fifth line from the start of that chapter and then located the sixth word in that line. He picked up the pencil and wrote:

snapdragon

He drank some more of the whiskey. It was excellent, due in large measure to the water with which he had cut it. You had to mix fine whiskey with the proper water; otherwise, you might just as well drink vinegar or moonshine — or that absolutely terrible rice wine which the Chinese fermented and served with such great pride. He had gone to considerable trouble to obtain the right water for this whiskey, and now he took time to enjoy it. After another sip, which he rolled on his tongue, he said “Ahhh,” and put down his glass.

The second line of the number code read:

10003210004

Consulting The Wind in the Willows, he found that the fourth word in the three-hundred-twenty-first line of the first chapter was “fly.” He wrote that down and looked at what he had thus far:

snapdragon fly

He crossed out the first four letters and drew the rest of it together in one word:

dragonfly

He had another sip of whiskey.

600030007

He worked that out rather quickly and wrote the word “to” after “dragonfly.”

600030008

10002100003

11000600010

Gradually he worked his way down through the list of numbers, taking time out to sample his drink, now and then reading a passage out of which Rice had plucked a word. In half an hour he had decoded the entire message:

dragonfly to be used

as soon as possible

stop

within twenty-four

hours maximum

essential

stop

city will be unsafe

for ninety-six hours

after dragonfly

is triggered

stop

save self

but staff must be

abandoned

stop

risk all

end

Humming softly and tunelessly, the man at the desk read the brief message several times, savoring it as he savored the whiskey. Then he put it through the paper shredder and watched the pieces flutter into the wastebasket.

The largest and yet quickest war in history was about to begin.

FOUR

“I still don't see what the hell Sidney Greenstreet has to do with this,” Bernie Kirkwood said, leaning over the back of the front seat as the sound of the car's engine faded and the night silence closed in around them.

Burt Nolan, the six-foot-four Pinkerton bodyguard who was behind the wheel of McAlister's white Mercedes, said, “Do you want me to come in with you, sir?”

“There won't be any trouble here,” McAlister said. “You can wait in the car.” He opened the door and got out

Scrambling out of the back seat, Kirkwood said, “I suppose I'm allowed to tag along.”

“Could I stop you?” McAlister asked.

“No.”

“Then by all means.”

They went along the sidewalk to a set of three concrete steps that mounted a sloped lawn.

“You've been damned close-mouthed since we left the restaurant,” Kirkwood said.

“I guess I have.”

“The description in the newspaper… You recognized the man who beat up on that hooker.”

“Maybe I did.”

At the top of the three concrete steps, there was a curving flagstone walk that led across a well-manicured lawn and was flanked on the right-hand side by a neatly trimmed waist-high wall of green shubbery.

“Who is it?” Kirkwood asked.

“I'd rather not say just yet.”

“Why not?”

“It's not a name you toss around lightly when you're discussing sex offenders.”

“When will you toss it around, lightly or otherwise?”

“When I know why Beau called him 'that Sidney Greenstreet.'”

The house in front of them was a handsome three-story brick Tudor framed by a pair of massive Dutch elm trees. Light burned behind two windows on the third floor. The second floor was dark. On the ground level light shone out from stained, leaded windows: a rainbow of soft colors. The porch light glowed above the heavy oak door and was reflected by the highly polished pearl-gray Citroen S-M that was parked in the driveway.

“Who is this Beau Jackson?” Kirkwood asked as McAlister rang the doorbell.

“Cloakroom attendant at the White House.”

“You're kidding.”

“No.”

“This is an accountant's neighborhood.”

“What kind of neighborhood is that?”

“Right below a doctor's neighborhood and right above a lawyer's.”

“It isn't exactly what I was expecting,” McAlister admitted.

“What does he do on the side, rob banks?”

“Why don't you ask him?”

“If he does rob banks,” Kirkwood said, “I'd like to join up with his gang.”

A dark face peered at them through a tiny round window in the door. Then it disappeared, and a moment later the door opened.

Beau Jackson was standing there in dark-gray slacks and a blue sport shirt. “Mr. McAlister!”

“Good evening, Mr. Jackson.”

“Come in, come in.”

In the marble-floored foyer, McAlister said, “I hope I'm not interrupting your dinner.”

“No, no,” Jackson said. “We never eat earlier than nine.”

McAlister introduced Kirkwood, waited for the two men to shake hands, and said, “I'm here to talk to you about a man you once compared to Sidney Green-street.”

Jackson's smile faded. “May I ask why you want to talk about him?”

“I think he's involved in a major criminal conspiracy,” McAlister said. “That's all I can tell you. It's an extremely sensitive and top-secret matter.”

Jackson pulled on his chin, made up his mind in a few seconds, and said, “Come on back to my den.”

It was a large, pleasantly stuffy room. On two sides bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling. Windows and oil paintings filled the rest of the wall space. The desk was a big chunk of dark pine full of drawers and cubbyholes; and the top of it was littered with copies of The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and other financial publications.

Picking up a Journal, Kirkwood said, “You don't rob banks, after all.”

Jackson looked puzzled.

“When I saw this beautiful house, I said you must rob banks on the side. But you're in the stock market.”

“I just dabble in stocks,” Jackson said. “I'm mostly interested in the commodities market. That's where I've done best.” He pointed to a grouping of maroon-leather armchairs. “Have a seat, gentlemen.” While they settled down, he looked over the bookshelves and plucked several magazines from between the hard-bound volumes. He returned and sat down with them. To McAlister he said, “Evidently you've learned who Sidney Greenstreet was.”

“Bernie told me,” McAlister said. “Greenstreet was one of the all-time great movie villains.”

“A fat man who was seldom jolly,” Jackson said. “His performance as Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon is one of the greatest pieces of acting ever committed to film.”

“He wasn't bad as the Japanese sympathizer in Across the Pacific” Kirkwood said.

“Also one of my favorites,” Jackson said.

“Of course,” Kirkwood said, “he wasn't always the villain. He did play good guys now and then. Like in Conflict, with Bogart and Alexis Smith. You know that one?”

Before Jackson could answer, McAlister said, “Bernie, we are here on rather urgent business.”

The black man turned to McAlister and said, “When I referred to Mr. Rice as 'that Sidney Green-street,' I meant that he is very cunning, perhaps very dangerous, and not anything at all like what he seems to be. He pretends liberalism. At heart he is a right-wing fanatic. He's a racist. A fascist.” Jackson's voice didn't rise with the strength of his judgments or acquire an hysterical tone; he sounded quite reasonable.

“Mr. Rice? Andrew Rice? You mean the President's chief aide?” Kirkwood asked weakly. He looked as if he were about to mutter and drool in idiot confusion.

Ignoring Kirkwood, certain that he was on the verge of learning something that he would have preferred not to know, McAlister stared hard at Jackson and said, “You're making some pretty ugly accusations. Yet I'm sure that you don't know Rice personally. You probably don't know him even as well as I do — and that's not very well at all. So what makes you think you know what's in his heart?”

Back in the early 1960s, Jackson explained, he had reached a point in his life when he finally felt secure, finally knew that he had gotten out of the ghetto for once and all. He had plenty of tenure on the White House domestic staff. He was making a damned good salary. His investments had begun to pay off handsomely, and he had been able to move into a good house in the suburbs. He had been successful long enough to have accepted his new position, and he had gotten over the lingering fear that everything he had worked for might be taken away from him overnight.

“All my life,” he told McAlister, “I've enjoyed books. I've believed in continuous self-education. In 1963, when I moved to the suburbs, I felt financially secure enough to devote most of my spare time to my reading. I decided to establish a study program and concentrate on one subject at a tune. Back then, I was most interested in racial prejudice, having been a victim of it all of my life. I wanted to understand the reasons behind it. The psychology behind it. So I worked up a reading list, both fiction and nonfiction, and did considerable research. Eventually I was led to these two magazines owned by a man named J. Prescott Hennings.”

“I know of him,” McAlister said.

Jackson said, “He's published some of the most hateful racist propaganda ever committed to ink and paper in this country. It's not all directed against blacks. Hennings despises Jews, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos…”

“I've seen copies of the magazines, but I've never bothered to read one of them,” McAlister said.

Jackson picked up the first magazine in his lap and opened it to an article titled “Negro Mental Inferiority.” He handed it to McAlister and said, “Here's a little something written by Andrew Rice in 1964.”

Reading the first several paragraphs, McAlister winced. He passed the magazine to Kirkwood.

Jackson gave another one to McAlister. “Here's an especially nasty little number titled 'Has Hitler Been Maligned?'”

“Christ!” McAlister said, feeling sick to his stomach. Glancing only perfunctorily at the article, he quickly passed it on to Kirkwood. Weakly, he said, “Well… People do change.”

“Not as radically as this,” Jackson said. “Not from a fanatical fascist to a paragon of liberal virtue.” He spoke with conviction, as if he'd had considerable time to think about it. “And people certainly don't change so quickly as Rice appears to have done. That paean to Hitler was published exactly one year before Harvard University Press issued his Balancing the Budget in a Welfare State, which was the best seller and which was overflowing with liberal sentiment.”

Skimming through the Hitler article, Kirkwood said, “This is the work of an Andrew Rice who belongs in a nice little padded cell somewhere.”

“Believe me,” Jackson said gloomily, “that Andrew Rice is the same one who is today advising the President.” He opened another magazine to an article titled 'The Chinese Threat,' and he gave this to McAlister. “In this one Rice advocates an immediate nuclear attack on Red China in order to keep it from becoming a major nuclear power itself.”

Shocked for reasons Jackson couldn't grasp, McAlister read this piece from beginning to end. By the time he had finished it, he was damp with perspiration. “How could he ever have become accepted as a major liberal thinker when he had a background like this?”

“He published eleven of those articles, the last in October of 1964,” Jackson said. “They all appeared in magazines with terribly small circulations.”

“And even then, not everyone who received a copy read it,” said Kirkwopd.

“Right,” Jackson said. “My guess is that no one who read those magazine pieces also read his liberal work beginning with the Harvard book. Or if a few people did read both — well, they never remembered the byline on the articles and didn't connect that work with the book. As the years passed, the chance of anyone making the connection grew progressively smaller. And when Rice did move into a position of real power, it was as a Presidential aide. Unlike Cabinet members, aides do not have to be confirmed by the Senate. Because Rice doesn't have an engaging or even particularly interesting personality, he hasn't been much of a target for newspapermen. No one has combed through his past; they all go back to the Harvard book and never any further.”

As he wiped the perspiration from his face with his handkerchief, McAlister said, “Why haven't you blown the whistle on him?”

Jackson said, “How?”

“Call up a reporter and put him on the right track. Even give him your copies of the magazines.”

“Too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

Sighing, Jackson said, “Do you think for a minute Rice could have gotten away with this change of face if Prescott Hennings didn't want him to get away with it?”

“You're suggesting a conspiracy?'

“Of some sort.”

“To accomplish what?”

“I dont know,” Jackson said.

McAlister nodded.

“But I'm beginning to think you know.”

Staring straight into the black man's eyes, McAlister said nothing.

Jackson said, “I'd wager that if I hustled some reporter with this stuff, Hennings would have conclusive proof that the very famous liberal Andrew Rice was not the same Andrew Rice who wrote those articles way back when. And then yours truly would be marked as a slander monger. I've got a nice job and a big earned pension that's coming to me in a few years. When it comes to my financial solvency, I'm as morally bankrupt as the next man.”

McAlister folded his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. “Rice isn't a very common name. Even if Hennings did have some sort of trumped-up proof, it wouldn't be believed.”

“Mr. McAlister, forgive me, but even if the proof was conclusive, Rice would remain as a Presidential aide — and I'd get bounced out of the cloakroom on my ass. Do you think all those liberals, Democrats and Republicans, who have praised Rice to the skies are suddenly just going to admit they were deceived? Do you think the President will admit Rice made a fool of him? If you think so, then you're more naïve than I would have thought. There will be a lot of somber speeches and statements about giving a man a second chance and about the marvelous capacity for change that Rice has shown. Hearts will bleed. Pity will flow like water. The conservatives won't care if Rice goes or stays. And the liberals would rather argue that a child killer can achieve sainthood even in the act of murder then admit they were wrong.

“I believe that Rice probably has taken a long-term position in order to achieve power with which he can score points for right-wing programs — while he professes liberal aims. It's an ingenious tactic. It requires consummate acting skill and monumental patience, and it's more dangerous to our system of government than any screaming, shouting frontal attack of the sort that right-wingers usually make. But it's much too complicated for most Americans to understand or worry about. They like their politics nice and simple. Actually, I'm not even sure that it's anything to worry about. I'm not so sure he can do all that much damage. If he's got to maintain his liberal image, he can hardly begin pressing for the Hitlerian laws and schemes he wrote about in those articles for Hennings' magazines.”

Getting to his feet, McAlister said, “That's quite true.”

“But now I'm not so sure,” Jackson said, standing, stretching, watching McAlister closely. “Since you came here like this, you must think Rice is involved in something very big and very dangerous.”

McAlister said, “I'd appreciate it if you kept this visit to yourself.”

“Naturally.”

“Could I have a few of those magazines?”

“Take them all,” Jackson said.

Kirkwood scooped up all eleven issues.

At the front door, as they were shaking hands, McAlister said, “Mr. Jackson, I can only repeat what I said on Wednesday: you're sure full of surprises.”

Jackson nodded and smiled and shuffled his feet, putting on a bit of that refined Stepin Fetchit routine which he used to such great effect at the White House.

“Would you and your wife consider joining Mrs. McAlister and me for dinner some evening soon?”

“I believe that would be most interesting,” Jackson said.

“I believe you're right.”

On the way down the flagstone walk to the car, neither McAlister nor Kirkwood said a word.

On all sides of them, the grass looked bluish-white, pearly in the October moonlight.

A teenage boy and a pretty blonde were leaving the house next door, just starting out on a big date.

A child's laughter came from the front porch of the house across the street.

McAlister felt as if the sky were going to collapse on him any second now. He walked with his shoulders hunched.

When they were both in the car again and the Pinkerton man had started the engine, McAlister turned to Kirkwood and said, “It was your group that got the Cofield lead.”

“That's right.”

“And the Hunter lead too.”

“Yes.”

“How are you using your investigators?”

“Some of the other teams are working a sixteen-hour day. But I've got my men divided into three different eight-hour shifts so we can pursue our leads around the clock.”

“Who are the federal marshals guarding your team?”

“Right now, on the four-to-midnight grind, it's a man named Bradley Hopper. Midnight to eight in the morning, it's John Morrow. During the day shift, when I'm on duty with two assistants, we've got a marshal named Carl Altmüller.”

After six months with this man as his chief investigator, McAlister was no longer in awe of Kirkwood's ability to remember every detail of his work, even the full names of the guards who were assigned to him. “Which one of them was on duty when the Potter Cofield lead began to get hot?”

Kirkwood said, “Altmüller.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Not much. I chatted him up when he first came on duty. Let me see…” He was quiet for a few seconds. Then: “I think he said he wasn't married. Lived in — Capitol Heights somewhere.”

“Capitol Heights, Maryland?” McAlister asked.

“Yeah.”

He turned to Burt Nolan, the Pinkerton man. “That's not very far from here, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Better get to a phone, look in the book, see if there's a full address listed for him,” McAlister said.

Nolan pulled the Mercedes away from the curb.

Leaning up from the back seat, pushing one thin hand through his bushy hair, Kirkwood said, “You think that Carl Altmüller is working for Rice?”

“Rice assigned the marshals,” McAlister said. “He chose them. And once he had a list of possibilities sent over to him from Justice, he needed six hours to call the first one of them. Now, what do you think he was doing all that time?”

Kirkwood's glasses had slid so far down his nose that they were in danger of falling off. He looked startled as McAlister pushed them in place for him. “Well… I guess he was trying to find a man — or men — he could buy. It took six hours.”

Nolan found a telephone booth at the corner of a shopping-center parking lot, and Kirkwood went in to look through the book. While he was out of the car, McAlister said, “Burt, I hope you remember that you've taken the agency's secrecy oath.”

“I haven't heard a thing,” Nolan said.

When Kirkwood came back a minute later, he said, “Altmüller is listed.” He gave Nolan the address. To McAlister he said, “Isn't it dangerous for us to walk in on him all by ourselves?”

“He won't be expecting anything,” McAlister said. “And Burt here has a gun of his own.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Nolan said, keeping his eyes on the busy highway, “but I think that you might be getting me in over my head. I'm not a public law officer. That secrecy oath didn't give me any police powers. I've been hired to protect you, but I can't go looking for trouble.”

“Then,” McAlister said, “I'll borrow your gun. Bernie and I can go it alone.”

Burt took a long moment to consider all the angles of that. He accelerated around a panel truck and pulled back into the right-hand lane. His broad face was expressionless in the lights of the oncoming cars. Finally: “I'd have to take the gun out of my holster and lay it on the seat. Why would I do that?”

“Maybe while we were parked at the telephone booth, you saw someone approaching the car, someone who looked suspicious,” McAlister suggested.

“That's a possibility. I wanted to be ready for him. But maybe after this person proved to be no threat, I left the gun on the seat where it would be handy. And then you picked it up without my seeing.”

Smiling, McAlister said, “I suppose you could make a mistake like that.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Burt agreed.

Kirkwood didn't like the sound of it. He shifted nervously and said, “I think we should get some help.”

Turning around to look at the younger man once more, McAlister said, “I'd like nothing better, Bernie. But who in the hell could we trust?”

Kirkwood licked his lips and said nothing.

The air terminal in Peking was a hulking neo-Stalinist building with cold marble walls and floors and altogether too much gilt trim around the ceilings. Ranks of fluorescent lights cast stark shadows; but there was not a speck of dust or a smear of grease to be seen in any corner. Even on Saturday afternoon there were no more than sixty or seventy travelers using the facilities. Of these, the most eye-catching were three beautiful North Vietnamese women who were dressed in white silk trousers and brightly colored, flowered silk odais. North Vietnamese and Cambodian women, Canning thought, were among the most beautiful in the world: petite, extremely delicate and yet shapely, with very fine-boned faces, enormous dark eyes, and thick black hair. These three — as they stood waiting for cups of tea at one of the carts that dispensed free refreshments — contrasted pleasantly with the inhuman architecture and with the generally drab clothing of the Chinese around them.

A smiling, pretty Chinese woman of about thirty-five met Lee Ann and Canning when they got off the Frenchman's jet. Her long hair hung in a single braid behind her. She wore baggy blue pants, a baggy white shirt, and shapeless khaki jacket. She was all crisp efficiency as she escorted Canning and Lee Ann through customs, gave their luggage to a baggage handler, and led them out into the terminal's great hall, where Alexander Webster, the United States' first fully accredited ambassador to the People's Republic of China, was waiting for them.

Webster-was an imposing figure. At six foot three, he was two iniches taller than Canning. He was conscious of his posture; he stood stiff and straight to emphasize his height. His neck was thick, not with fat but with muscle. His shoulders and chest were unusually broad; and although he was a bit heavy in the stomach, he managed to hold it in well. His face was like the marble bust of some famous Roman centurion: square chin, bulging jaws, firm mouth, straight nose, eyes set back like ornaments on a deep shelf, and a formidable brow. Only two things kept him from looking like a roughneck: his expensive and stylish New York suit, which he wore as if he were a model; and his wavy silver hair, which softened the sharp angles of his rather brutal face. All in all, he appeared to be a former football star who, when he had lost his physical edge, had left the game and set out upon a brand-new career as a banker.

“Welcome to Peking,” Webster said, bowing slightly to Lee Ann and shaking hands with Canning. His voice was not hard and gravelly, as Canning had expected, but soft and easy and deep and spiced with a trace of what had once been a lush Louisiana accent. “Miss Tanaka, if all CIA operatives were as lovely as you, we'd have won the espionage war decades ago. Who on earth would want to fight with you?”

“And if all our ambassadors were as gracious as you,” Lee Ann said, “we'd have no enemies.”

Outside, there was no limousine waiting for them. Webster explained that the use of “decadent forms of transportation” within the People's Republic had recently been denounced and forbidden by Party edict — although Chinese diplomats in Washington and at the UN in New York relied increasingly upon custom-ordered black Cadillacs. “Western governments don't have an exclusive right to hypocrisy,” Webster observed.

Instead of a Cadillac, there was a Chinese-made vehicle that resembled a Volkswagen microbus. Inside, behind the driver's seat, there were two benches, one along each wall. Lee Ann and Canning sat on the right and faced Webster across the narrow aisle. The seats were uncomfortable: thinly padded and upholstered in canvas. But there were windows on both sides, and they would at least be able to see the city as they passed through it.

The driver, a State Department career man whom Webster introduced as James Obin of St. Louis, finished loading their luggage aboard. Then he got behind the wheel and started the tinny engine.

As the microbus began to move, Webster said, “Security was so tight on your flight that I didn't even learn what plane you were on until it was airborne.”

“Sorry if you were inconvenienced,” Canning said. “But it was necessary.”

“There were several attempts on his life before he even got to Tokyo,” Lee Ann said.

“Well then, I can understand the tight security,” Webster said. “But what I can't understand is why you had to come all the way out from the States in the first place. McAlister could have wired me the names of these three deep-cover agents of ours. I could have worked with General Lin to locate and interrogate them.”

“I'm sure you could have handled it,” Canning said. “But if we had wired the names, General Lin's Internal Security Force would have intercepted them. No matter how complicated the code, they would have broken it — and fast.”

“But they're going to learn the names anyway, sooner or later,” Webster said.

“Perhaps they won't have to be told all of them. If we find the trigger man the first time out, we can withhold the other two names from Lin.” He quickly outlined the procedure he would insist upon for the pickup and the interrogation of the three agents.

Webster grimaced and shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “The general won't like that.”

“If he doesn't accept it, then he doesn't get any of the names. He has absolutely no choice in the matter — and I'll make that plain to him. I'm not a diplomat, so I don't have to waste time being diplomatic. It'll be your job to smooth his feathers.”

“He's not an easy man to deal with.”

Canning said, “Yes, but since he's in the counter-intelligence business himself, he ought to be able to understand my position even if he doesn't much like it. Although my primary concern is to find the trigger man and learn from him who Dragonfly is, I've a second duty nearly as important as the first. I have to keep the ISF from cracking open the agency's entire network in the People's Republic.”

“I'll do what I can to help.”

“Did the polygraph arrive safely?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Good.”

“It's quite large.”

“It's not a traditional lie detector. It's actually a portable computer that monitors and analyzes all of the subject's major reactions to the questions he's asked. The newest thing.”

“It's locked in a tamper-proof steel case,” Webster said. “I suppose you have the key?”

“Yes.” It had been in the packet of Theodore Otley identification and expense money that McAlister had given him in Washington. “When do we meet General Lin?”

“An ISF car is following us right now,” Webster said, pointing through the rear windows of the micro-bus. A jeeplike station wagon trailed them by a hundred yards. “By this time they'll have radioed the news of your arrival to the general's office. Knowing how polite and thoughtful the Chinese are, I'd say Lin will give you fifteen or twenty minutes at the embassy to freshen up before he comes knocking.”

They were now cruising along an avenue at least three times as wide as Fifth Avenue in New York. There were no automobiles and only a few trucks, vans, and buses. But there were thousands of bicycles whizzing silently in both directions. Many of the cyclists smiled and waved at Canning, Lee Ann, and the ambassador.

“Are all the streets this wide?” Lee Ann asked.

“Many but not most,” Webster said. “These ultra-wide thoroughfares are the newest streets in Peking. They were built after the revolution. Once they were completed and opened, the Party was able to classify the old main streets — which were often very broad— as lanes and alleyways. Today, most domestic and all foreign traffic moves on these new arteries.”

“But why did they build new and bigger streets when they didn't have cars enough for the old ones?” Lee Ann asked. “Two-thirds of this avenue is empty.”

“The old streets were dotted with religious shrines and literally hundreds of magnificently ornate temples,” Webster said, enjoying his role as guide. “Some of these were destroyed in the revolution and some later, by Party edict. But the Communists realized that the temples — although they were shameful reminders of a decadent past full of excess and injustice — were priceless works of art and history. Cooler heads prevailed, thank God, and the destruction ceased. They opted for an alternate program. They built these thoroughfares, restructuring the city away from the temples. As a result, many of the old landmarks are tucked away behind fences in quiet pockets of the city where they can't have a corruptive influence on the masses.” Webster was amused by all of this, and he winked at Lee Ann as if they were adults tolerating the eccentricities of slow-witted but pleasant children.

“Incredible,” Lee Ann said.

Canning said, “Not really. We do the same thing.”

Webster frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We build and redesign our cities to hide the ghettos from ourselves, rather than the churches.”

“You know, you're right!” Lee Ann said.

“Well,” Webster said stiffly, “I don't see even the most remote similarity. And if I were you, I wouldn't express that sort of an opinion in front of someone like General Lin. He would be delighted to spread your thoughts far and wide, to the detriment of the United States' image in Asia.” He turned away from them and stared out at the hordes of cyclists.

Lee Ann glanced at Canning and raised her eyebrows.

He just shrugged.

Peking was a city of eight or nine million, capital of the largest nation on earth — yet it was more like a small town than like a metropolis that was four thousand years old. There were no neon signs. There were no skyscrapers. There was nothing that looked like a department store or theater or restaurant — although there were surely all of these things in the city, tucked away in squat and official-looking brick buildings. Beyond the broad avenues and occasionally glimpsed spires of the forbidden temples, there were tens of thousands of gray houses with gray and yellow rooftops; they stretched like a carpet of densely grown weeds over all the city's hills, encircling countless small gardens of trees and shrubbery.

The United States Embassy was in one of the city's three diplomatic compounds that were reserved for foreign missions in order that they might be kept apart from the Chinese people. The compound contained a large seven-story office building which was shared by the seven foreign delegations quartered there. The compound also contained seven spacious, boxy four-story pink-brick houses were the diplomats and their staffs lived. The United States Embassy was no larger, no smaller, no different at all from the other six, except that the Stars and Stripes flew from a low flagpole beside the front door.

“Here we are,” Webster said jovially, apparently no longer miffed at Canning. “Home sweet home.”

The higher you went in the house, the more important you were in the diplomatic scheme of things. The first floor contained the drawing room, dining rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms for the servants who had been imported from Washington. Four secretaries also had quarters on this first level. The second floor contained the bedrooms for the ambassador's staff. The third floor was where Webster's chief aide and private secretary had rooms — and it was here as well that important visitors from the States were put up. The top level, of course, was Webster's private domain — except when the President, Vice-President, or Secretary of State came to China, in which case Webster opened a separate three-room suite for his guests. Lee Ann and Canning did not rate the suite — or a room behind the kitchen. They were given separate bedchambers on the third floor.

Canning's room might have been in a house in Washington, New York, or Boston. No concession had been made to the Orient. The furniture, all shipped in from the States, was heavy, dark pine, Colonial. The walls were white and hung with oil paintings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. There was a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging just to the right of the door.

The bathroom, however, was decidedly Chinese-modern. The tub, sink, and toilet were all made from a dark-brown, glossless ceramic material that resembled mud. The fixtures were not stainless-steel or even chrome-plated; instead, they were cast-iron, dull and pitted and spotted with incipient rust — except for the water faucets, which were all rough-cut copper pipe. There was no place for him to plug in his electric razor near the mirror; however, the embassy staff had thoughtfully provided an extension cord which was plugged into and dangled from the socket that for some inscrutable reason had been let into the wall three feet above the tank of the commode.

He shaved lightly, washed his face and hands, put on a clean shut, strapped his shoulder holster back in place, and put on his suit jacket. He took the pistol from the holster and switched off both safeties; then he dropped it back into the leather pocket.

The telephone rang. It was Webster. “General Lin arrived a few minutes ago. He's extremely anxious to get moving.”

“We'll be right down,” Canning said.

The end of the assignment was in sight.

He was suddenly depressed.

What would he do when this was finished? Go back to Washington? Back to the White House assignment? Back to the lonely apartment on G Street? Back to his son's scorn and his daughter's indifference?

Maybe he would ask Lee Ann to stay with him in Washington. She was what he needed. In a short time she had not only patched up his lover's ego, but she had also made him feel decent and clean again. She had given him back the self-respect that he had allowed Mike to bleed from him. Would she stay with him? Would she say yes? She had insecurities of her own, problems to work out; and she needed help with them. Maybe he was precisely what she needed too. Maybe…

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to clear his head, and he told himself that he was not to worry about any of these things. He must stick to the moment, stick to the problem at hand, approach it single-mindedly. If he didn't find the trigger man, if Dragonfly was detonated while he was in Peking, then he would not be going back to anywhere or anything. And neither would Lee Ann. They would either be victims of the plague — whatever it turned out to be— or they would be inmates of a Chinese political prison.

Just outside the city of Taiyüan, in the Province of Shansi, two hundred and ten rail-miles from Peking, the train clattered onto a lay-by. The brakes squealed; the passenger car trembled. The steel wheels shot sparks into the clouds of steam that rushed back from the locomotive's vents and pressed, briefly, against the coach window next to Chai Po-han's face.

Chong Shao-chi, the man in the seat beside Chai, was the manager of a large grain-storage facility near Anshun. He was en route to the capital, where he was to speak before a gathering of agricultural specialists who were interested in his novel and successful ideas about rodent control. He was quite excited — not because of the speech so much as because his aged parents lived in Peking. This was his first homecoming in seven years. Tonight his family was holding a great feast in his honor: cold gizzard and liver, hundred-year eggs, green-bean noodles, fried noodles, buns with silver threads, wheat-packet soup, sesame cakes, fried bread, fried hot peppers, mushrooms, sweet and sour fish, fried eel, three-glass chicken, beef in oyster sauce, and much more — a feast indeed! Therefore, the moment the train came to a full stop, Chong said anxiously, “What is the trouble? Can you see? Have we broken down?”

“I can't see anything,” Chai said.

“We can't have broken down. I must get to Peking no later than nine. My family has planned a feast! They—”

“You've told me,” Chai said, not unkindly.

“Maybe we have just stopped to refuel.”

“I don't see any fuel tanks,” Chai said.

“Please, no breakdown. I have lived well. I am a loyal Maoist. I don't deserve this!”

A minute later the toothless man in charge of this coach and the two sleeping cars behind it entered at the front and clapped his hands for attention. “We will be delayed here for half an hour. There is a long train outbound from Peking on these tracks. Once it has passed, we can continue.”

Chong stood up and caught the toothless man's attention. “Will we arrive late in Peking?”

“No. This is a scheduled lay-by.”

Chong collapsed into his seat and sighed with relief.

When the outbound train came along ten minutes later, it roared by within a few feet of Chai's window. It was nearly overflowing with young people on their way to the communes. Colorful posters affixed to the flanks of the cars proclaimed the joy and dedication of the young Maoists within. But Chai could not see all that much joy or dedication to the Fifty-Year Farm Plan in those faces that peered back at him from the passing cars. Oh, yes, occasionally there was someone grinning rapturously at the thought of serving the People; but the vast majority of them showed nothing but resignation and, occasionally, despair.

Chai sympathized with them. He ached with pity for them. And he thought, miserably: I have become a reactionary, an anti-Maoist, and an enemy of the People.

Deep down within, he knew that his pity was for himself as well as for these strangers flashing past. It was not merely self-pity for what he had been through — the sixteen-hour days of brutalizing labor, the weeks he had been assigned to collect human waste for use as fertilizer on the rice paddies, the weevils in his food, the fevers which had swept the communes when there was no medicine to combat them — but he was also full of self-pity for those things he felt he might yet suffer. If his father died, or was removed from power, what would become of him? If his father could not protect him, would he be sent back to the Ssunan Commune? Yes. Definitely. There was no doubt about it. He was only temporarily safe, safe only so long as his father's heart continued to beat, safe only so long as his father's enemies in the Party remained weak. Within the next few years he would be back in the country again, a slave laborer again. He was afraid for himself, and he despaired of his future.

There had to be a way out.

And of course, there was a way out.

He saw the door to escape. But to open it and pass through was no simple matter. It was a monumental step, a denial of his past, his family, everything. It was a decision that he would have found impossible, a change in outlook he would have thought despicable, before Ssunan.

Leave China.

Forever.

No. It was still unthinkable.

Yet…

Was a return to Ssunan any more reasonable? Did he wish to end up like Chong Shao-chi, this miserable man beside him? Did he want to be forty years old, a champion killer of rats, whose greatest pleasure in seven years was a one-night reunion with his family?

Remembering his trip to America, Chai suddenly saw that there was one great flaw in the social system of the United States — and one great flaw in China's system as well. In the United States, there was an unreasonable selfishness, a destructive desire to possess more and more things and to obtain more and more power through the acquisition of more and more money. In China, there was an equally unreasonable selflessness; the Party was so concerned about the welfare of the masses that it overlooked the welfare of the individuals who composed the masses. In the United States, there had seemed to be no peace and contentment, for life there was a frantic process of accumulation and consumption and reaccumulation to fuel a new round of consumption… Yet in the United States you could live outside the system; selfishness was not dictated by the government or demanded by the people. And even if the greedy capitalistic rabble roared around you — was that not better than to live in the People's Republic, where you had little or no choice, where the self was denied and virtue was not a choice but a requirement?

If only, he thought as he watched the commune-bound train pass, there were some country in the world where the two systems had been merged, where the flaw in each canceled out the flaw in the other.

But there was no such place. That was a child's dream and always would be.

How terrible to be raised to have a fierce belief in your government and society, only to be given the wit, knowledge, or experience to suddenly see that the system was unjust, imperfect. Chai saw that he had been forced by his society to make certain decisions which that same society had taught him were decadent and shameful.

But there was only one escape from an intolerable future, and it was far from the perfect answer: leave China.

Now.

But how?

As the outbound train finished passing and their own train began to move once more toward Peking, Chai Po-han wrestled with his conscience and tried to make himself accept the only future that made any sense at all.

FIVE

McAlister took Burt Nolan's pistol from the seat. He held the gun above the dashboard and studied it in the purplish-white light that filtered into the Mercedes from a nearby mercury-vapor street-lamp. He found, the red safety and flicked it off.

Nolan watched none of this. He stared intently out of his side window at the houses across the street.

Shoving the gun into his coat pocket, keeping his right hand on the butt, McAlister opened his door and got out of the car.

Unarmed but game, Bernie Kirkwood climbed out of the back seat and followed his boss across the sidewalk.

Carl Altmüller's house was a small two-story Colonial saltbox, pale-gray, with black shutters and trim. A neat, matching gray-and-black saltbox garage stood at the top of the sloping driveway. The garage doors were closed. The house was dark; apparently Altmüller was not at home.

McAlister felt somewhat foolish stepping into this peaceful scene with his shoulders tensed and a loaded gun in his pocket. Nevertheless, he kept his hand on the gun butt.

The doorbell was set beneath a clear three-watt night light. The chimes produced a four-note melody that sounded like distant Christmas bells striking up “Joy to the World.”

No one came to the door.

“Maybe it's his night for macramé lessons,” Kirk-wood said.

McAlister rang the bell again.

Nothing. No one. Silence.

“He could be at a prayer meeting,” Kirkwood said. “Or counseling a troop of boy scouts.”

Ringing the bell a third tune, McAlister said, “Have you ever considered a career as a comedian?”

“No. You think I should?”

“Well, it would be something to do after I've fired you.”

“Yeah. We could form a team. You'd be the straight man.”

“I don't intend to fire myself.”

“Yeah,” Kirkwood said, “but you won't last long without me.”

Turning away from the front door, McAlister said, “Come on. Let's have a look around.”

“Around what?”

“The house.”

“Why?”

“I want to find a way in.”

“You're going to break and enter?” Kirkwood asked, shocked.

“I won't break anything unless it's necessary. But I damned well am entering.”

Kirkwood caught him by the arm. “Let's get a warrant first.”

“No time for that.”

“You don't sound like the Bob McAlister I know.”

“I've changed,” McAlister said, feeling hollow inside, chilled. “Probably for the worse. But I've had no choice.” He pulled free of Kirkwood's hand. “Bernie, do you realize the trouble we're in if Rice is one of these Committeemen?”

“It's a major scandal,” Kirkwood said, pushing his damp woolly hair back from his forehead.

“It's more than that. We're sitting on a time bomb. Bernie, look, suppose you were a Committeeman with a cover as a famous liberal thinker. Suppose you were a fascist who was the right-hand man to a liberal President who trusted you. You could see, in the years ahead, thousands of opportunities to subtly misuse your power to fascistic ends. You were just beginning… How would you conduct yourself? What would your first priority be?”

Kirkwood thought about it for a moment, then said, “Protecting the power I've finally gotten. Which would mean protecting my cover. I'd lay low. Play it cool. Go easy.”

“And is that what Rice is doing — supposing he is a Committeeman?”

“No. He's taking big risks. Like trying to use federal marshals to monitor our investigations. If one of the marshals rejected his offer and told us about it, Rice would have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Exactly,” McAlister said. “And when he told me that Bill Fredericks hadn't been very cooperative in arranging for the marshals, Rice had to know there was a good chance I'd catch him in his lie.”

“You think he no longer cares whether he's caught or gets away with it?”

“It looks that way to me. Which means Dragonfly will be used soon. So soon, in fact, that Rice figures if we nail him, we won't have time to make him tell us Dragonfly's identity. We won't have time to stop the project before detonation.”

“But he'll end up in jail just the same,” Kirkwood said. “Is he fanatical enough to spend the rest of his life in prison for a cause?”

“Maybe he doesn't think he'll go to trial, let alone to prison.”

“I don't follow you.”

“My imagination may be running wild. I'm beginning to see some very ugly possibilities. Like… Maybe the Dragonfly project, as big as it is, just isn't the whole bundle. Maybe it's only one element in a much larger scheme.”

“Such as?”

“Maybe Rice is taking these risks because he expects his people to seize control of the United States government during or immediately after the crisis in China. If that was what he was anticipating, he would have no fear of jail.”

Kirkwood was dumbfounded. He looked up at the stars, then at the quiet houses across the street. “But that's… Well… I mean… For God's sake, that's screaming paranoia!”

“Paranoia?” McAlister said wearily. “That's just a way of life, like any other. These days, it's just another way to get along.”

“But how could they do it? How could they seize the government?”

“I don't know.”

Kirkwood stared at him.

“Go back to the car.”

Kirkwood didn't move.

“Keep Burt company.”

“We aren't compatible.”

“I can handle this myself.”

“I'll go with you anyway.”

“It's breaking and entering, remember?”

Kirkwood smiled grimly. “If we get sent to the same prison, we can share a cell.”

They circled the house, looking for a barrier that was flimsier than the solid-oak front door. They tried the first-floor windows, but those were all locked. The rear door was as formidable as the front door. Finally, on the north side of the house, they came upon a set of four French doors, and these looked flimsy enough.

Because there were no lights in the house next door, they didn't try to conceal what they were doing. McAlister wrapped Kirkwood's woolen scarf around his right fist and smashed one of the foot-square panes of glass in the first door. He reached through, fumbled around for several seconds, but was unable to find the lock. He broke another pane — and found no lock. He moved to the second door and broke two more panes before his trembling fingers located the cool metal latch.

They went into the house, glass crunching under their shoes.

After he found a wall switch and turned on the dining-room light, Kirkwood said, “By the way, what in the hell are we looking for?”

“I've been waiting for you to ask. We're looking for a corpse.

Kirkwood blinked. “One corpse in particular? Or will we take anything we can find?”

“Carl Altmüller.”

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

“But why would they kill him?”

“Maybe they didn't need him any more.”

“But if Altmüller is already theirs, if they've bought him and put him in their pocket—”

“The Committeemen are fanatics,” McAlister reminded him. “So far as we know, however, Altmüller's just an ordinary guy who happened to be in a position where they needed someone but where they could not place anyone. So maybe they bought him. But because he really wasn't one of them, they wouldn't trust him. You can never be sure that money will keep a man's mouth shut. But a bullet in the head does the job every time.”

“Jesus, you sound like a cold son of a bitch!” Kirkwood said, shivering slightly.

“Sorry.” He felt cold too.

“Why didn't you tell me this outside?”

“If you'd thought there was a corpse in here, you'd have gone straight to the police. You'd have insisted upon a warrant.”

“Of course.”

“And we don't have time.”

Kirkwood locked eyes with him for a moment, then sighed and said, “Where do we start looking?”

Heading for the door of the dining-room closet, McAlister said, “Check the front room. When we've finished downstairs, we'll go upstairs together.”

Grim-faced, repeatedly clearing his throat, Kirk-wood went into the living room and turned on more lights. He came back within a few seconds and said, “I think I've found a clue.”

“Clue?”

“Buckets of blood,” Kirkwood said shakily.

“Buckets” was an exaggeration, although there was certainly a cup or two of it. Or, rather, there had been a cup or two. Gouts of blood had spattered the sofa; but now it was dried into a maroon-brown crust. There was even more blood, also dry and crusted, on the floor in front of the sofa.

“Looks like you were right,” Kirkwood said.

Kneeling on the floor, rubbing his fingertips over the blood crust on the sofa, McAlister said, “And maybe I wasn't.”

“What do you mean?”

“Altmüller worked with you just this afternoon, didn't he?”

“You know that he did.”

“Did he look healthy to you?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

“He was definitely alive?”

“What are you driving at?”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Kirkwood thought. Then: “Five-thirty.”

“The earliest he could have been killed here in his own home was six o'clock. Not even three and a half hours ago.” He patted the stains on the sofa. “If that were the case, this blood would still be damp. Even wet — congealed but wet. At the very least, this stuff has been here for a couple of days.”

The house was crypt-quiet except for the soft ticking of an antique mantel clock.

Reluctantly, Kirkwood touched the stains. “Whose blood is it?”

“Altmüller's.”

Kirkwood swayed on the balls of his feet. “But you just said—”

“I'll explain when we find the corpse.”

“Upstairs?”

McAlister got to his feet. “They wouldn't kill him and lug him up all those steps. He's in the kitchen or basement.”

“I'd still like to think he's just spending the evening at a prayer meeting.”

In the kitchen McAlister found a smear of dried blood on the lid of the freezer. “Here we go.” He opened the lid.

A rolled-up rag rug was stuffed into the freezer, and there was obviously a body inside of it.

“Help me get him out,” McAlister said.

As they lifted the rug out of the freezer, thin plates of frozen blood cracked and fell away from the rags and hit the floor and shattered into thousands of tiny shards.

McAlister peeled the rug back from one end of the corpse until the face was revealed. Dark, sightless eyes, webbed with ice crystals, gazed up at him. “Carl Altmüller.”

Surprised, Kirkwood said, “But Altmüller has blue eyes, and he isn't as old as this man!”

“This is Carl Altmüller,” McAlister repeated adamantly. “The man you're describing is the one who killed Altmüller and has been impersonating him since Thursday morning. I'd bet on it.” He was shaking inside with both fear and rage.

“Then Altmüller wasn't bought.”

“That's right.”

“Are all our federal marshals impostors?”

“The Committee would need only one or two men planted in our offices.”

“But there might be another one?”

“Yes.”

“Now what?”

“We go to the agency headquarters and pull a photograph from the files. Then I go to the White House while you get your ass to the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“You're going to show the photograph to a young woman of the streets who has fallen on bad times recently.”

Kirkwood said, “Oh, yeah.”

General Lin Shen-yang was in the embassy drawing room, pacing back and forth, when Canning and Lee Ann came down from the third floor. He was not at all what Canning had been expecting. By all Western standards, of course, he was somewhat on the short side, as were most of the Chinese. But he was not also slender and wiry like many Chinese men; instead, he was broad and muscular, and he had the face of a barbarian warrior. He did not move with the serenity or perfect grace of an oriental; rather, his manner was aggressive, quick, extremely energetic. The moment that they entered the room he strode toward them.

Stubbing his cigar in an ashtray, Webster got out of an easy chair and made the introductions.

The general and Lee Ann conversed in Chinese for more than a minute. From the way she was smiling, Canning could tell that Lin was flattering her.

Then the general turned to Canning and shook hands. In nearly unaccented English he said, “There are two vans waiting outside. I've got six soldiers in the one. We'll ride in the other. We have no time to waste, and I would appreciate it if you were to give me the names of your deep-cover agents in the Peking area.”

“Not quite so fast,” Canning said. “I've got a few things to explain.”

“Then explain,” the general said impatiently.

“There is a certain procedure we will follow,” Canning said. “I'll give you only one name at a time. Together we'll go and arrest that man and bring him here to the embassy.” He pointed to the polygraph that stood in its steel security case in the center of the room. “We will interrogate him here, using that machine. If he is not the trigger man for Dragonfly, he will remain here in the embassy until he can be flown back to the United States on one of our own aircraft. Then we will proceed to the second name. And then to the third. I will not turn any of these agents over to you — not even the trigger man for Dragonfly.”

Incredibly, the general nodded and said, “Perfectly understandable. I would insist upon the same terms if our roles were reversed.”

Amazed, Canning said, “That's quite reasonable of you.” His opinion of the general rose considerably.

“I do not wish to waste time in pointless arguments,” Lin said. “I will only warn you that if this Dragonfly should be used, the People's Republic would have no recourse but to declare war against your country.”

Canning nodded.

“We are not frightened of your nuclear weapons,” the general continued. “You have surely heard of the network of tunnels that honeycomb all of Peking. Because of much practice and regular drills, the entire populace can be underground in seven minutes.”

Canning had, indeed, read of this fabulous creation. It was an entire underground city: fuel depots, power plants, kitchens, stores of food and clothing, medical stations, living quarters… Every thirty or forty feet, along every major street and most of the minor ones as well, there were steps leading down into this vast undercity. Every apartment house, store, theater, restaurant, and office building had one, two, or even three entrances to the system of nuclear-proof tunnels. The concrete warrens reached out more than twenty miles beyond the city limits, into the green countryside, a perfect escape route constructed by the People's Liberation Army back in the 1960s. Although they both knew that the tunnels would not be much good when the city was attacked by chemical-biological weapons, Canning said, “I believe we understand each other, General Lin.”

Her name was Heather Nichols, and she was in bad shape. Her long hair was pinned back from her face, damp with perspiration. Her left ear was swollen and bruised. She had a long cut on her left jaw. Her lips were split, swollen into thick purple ridges. Tubes disappeared into her nostrils, which were thoroughly braced with wooden splints and bloody gauze. Her right eye was swollen completely shut. Her left eye was open, although barely; and she watched him with suspicion and perhaps hatred.

The intern said, “She can't talk at all. She lost several teeth. Her gums are badly lacerated, and her tongue's cut. Her mouth is swollen inside as well as out. I really don't think—”

“Can she write?” Kirkwood asked.

“What?”

“Can she write?”

“Well, of course she can write,” the intern said.

“Good.”

“Though not at the moment, of course.” His voice gained a note of sarcasm. “As you can see, the fingers of the poor girl's left hand have been well broken. Her right arm is taped to that board, and she's got an I.V. needle stuck in there.”

“But the fingers of her right hand are free,” Kirk-wood said.

“Yes, but we don't want to pull the needle loose,” the intern said obstinately.

“Give me your clipboard.”

Heather's one good eye darted quickly from one to the other, hating both of them.

“I think you're exciting her too much,” the intern said. “This is all highly irregular to begin with and—”

Kirkwood snatched the clipboard out of his hand, ignoring his protests. There was a pen attached to the clipboard. He put the board at Heather's side and closed her fingers around the pen.

She dropped it.

“She's been feeding intravenously for two hours now,” the intern said. “She hasn't been able to move that arm, and of course her fingers are numb.”

Kirkwood leaned close to the girl and said, “Miss Nichols, you must listen to me. I've got a photograph in this envelope. It might be of the man who did this to you. I need to find out for sure. If it is him, we'll be able to get other evidence, and we'll put him behind bars.”

She continued to glare at him.

“Do you understand me?”

She said nothing.

He put the pen in her hand.

This time she held on to it.

He fumbled with the manila envelope for a moment, extracted the eight-by-ten glossy of Andrew Rice. He held it up in front of her; his hand was shaking.

She stared at it.

“Is this the man?”

She just kept staring.

“Miss Nichols?”

The intern said, “I must object. This is all too much for her. She's isn't up to—”

“Heather,” Kirkwood said forcefully, “is this the man who beat up on you?”

Her hand moved. The pen skipped uselessly across the sheet of paper. Then she got control of it, scribbled for a moment, and at last wrote one word:

yes

McAlister and the President were sitting at opposite ends of a crushed-velvet couch in a small office off the chief executive's bedroom. The only light came from the desk lamp and one small table lamp; the room was heavy with shadows.

The President was wearing pajamas and a dressing gown. He was cracking his knuckles, one at a time, being very methodical about it. He smiled every time one of them popped with especially good volume. “Bob, if what you tell me is even half true—”

The telephone which stood in the middle of the glass-and-chrome coffee table rang twice.

“It'll be your man,” the President said.

McAlister picked up the receiver.

The White House operator said, “Mr. President?”

“Bob McAlister.”

“I have a call for you, Mr. McAlister. It's a Mr. Bernard Kirkwood.”

“Put him through, please.”

Bernie said, “Are you there?”

“Did you see her?” McAlister asked.

“Yes. She says it was Rice.”

“She's positive?”

“Absolutely. Now what?”

“You want to go home to bed — or do you want to be in on the end of it?” McAlister asked.

“Who could sleep tonight?”

“Then get over here to the White House. I'll leave word at the gate that you're to be let through.”

“I'll be there in ten minutes.”

McAlister hung up and turned to the President, who had thrust his left hand under his pajama shirt and was scratching his right armpit. “That was Kirk-wood, sir. The girl has positively identified Rice as the man who assaulted her.”

The President took his left hand out of his pajamas. Then he thrust his right hand into them and furiously scratched his left armpit. His handsome face was bloodless. “Well. Well, well!” He stopped scratching his armpit and stood up. “Then I guess we have no choice but to proceed according to the plan you outlined a few minutes ago.”

“I see no alternative, sir.”

“What a sewer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They've brought us down to their level.”

McAlister said nothing.

The President scratched his nose, then the back of his neck. “Where do you want Rice? Here?”

“The Pentagon would be better,” McAlister said. “It's nice and quiet at this hour. There's a security-cleared doctor already on duty there, so we won't have to rout some other poor bastard out of bed.”

“The Pentagon it is,” the President said, one hand poised before him as if he were trying to think of one more place to scratch.

McAlister glanced at the wall clock: 11:15. “As soon as I leave, would you call Pentagon Security and tell them that I'm to have their full cooperation?”

“Certainly, Bob.”

“Then wait half an hour before you call Rice. That'll give me time to reach the Pentagon and get ready for him. Tell him to come to the Mall Entrance and that he'll be met there.”

“No problem.”

Bending over, McAlister began to gather up the copies of Prescott Hennings' magazines, which were strewn over the coffee table.

“Could you let those here?” the President asked. “I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight. I might as well find out what Andy Rice is really like.”

“I'd like to have one issue to throw at him for psychological effect,” McAlister said. “I'll leave the rest.”

They went out of the office and across the President's private bedroom.

At the door, the chief executive stopped and turned to McAlister. “Bob, it appears you're right about Rice beating up that girl. And it looks like he's behind this Dragonfly business. I hate to admit I've been made a fool of, but I've got to face facts. But one thing…”

“Yes, sir?”

“It seems to me that the rest of your theory is a bit too far-fetched. How could these Committeemen seize the government?”

“Assassination,” McAlister said without hesitation.

“But the Vice-President isn't a Committeeman, surely.”

“Then they'll assassinate him, too,” McAlister said.

The President raised his eyebrows.

“They'll assassinate however many they have to— until they get to that man in the line of succession who is one of theirs.”

The President shook his head no, vigorously. “It's too much killing, Bob. They could never get away with all of it. It's too bizarre.”

“I don't know whether it's population pressures, future shock, the end product of a permissive society, or what,” McAlister said morosely. “But there are pressures working within this country, pressures that are producing madmen of a sort we've never known before. I think they're capable of anything, no matter how bizarre it seems.”

“No,” the President said. “I can't go along with that.”

McAlister sighed and shrugged. “You're probably right, sir,” he said, although he didn't think the President was right at all.

“You're right about Rice and Dragonfly, but you're altogether wrong about the rest of it.” He opened the bedroom door, escorted McAlister into the hall, and turned him over to the Secret Service agent who was on duty there. “Get back to me the minute he cracks, Bob.”

McAlister nodded, turned, and followed the Secret Service man down the long hall toward the elevator.

The first CIA deep-cover agent was a sixty-eight-year-old man named Yuan Yat-sen. He had been thirty-nine years old when Mao Tse-tung's soldiers had driven Chiang Kai-shek and his corrupt army from China's mainland, back in 1949. An advocate of Chiang's policies, a successful landlord and prosperous banker, Yuan had lost everything in the revolution. Perhaps he could have rebuilt his fortune on Taiwan. But money was not all that he lost. A band of Maoist guerillas had slain Yuan's wife and three children. His business was half his life — and his family was the other half. Although he fled to Taiwan, he could not manage to pick up the broken pieces of his life and start anew. He loathed Maoists, dreamed of slaughtering them by the tens of thousands; and a thirst for revenge was all that kept him going. He had been perfect for the CIA. In 1950, while he was growing ever more bitter in Taipei, he was approached by agency operatives and signed up for deep-cover work. Near the end of that year he was dropped back onto the mainland, where he assumed a new name and a past that was not linked to Chiang Kai-shek. In the confusion that followed the war, he was able to pass without much trouble. Indeed, he had gradually gained recognition as an educator and a revolutionary theorist. Today he was the third man in the prestigious Bureau of Education Planning.

They had found him in a park near his office, taking an afternoon break with an associate. He had surrendered without resistance.

They were all back in the embassy drawing room. Ambassador Webster sat in an easy chair, smoking one of his long Cuban cigars and watching the proceedings with interest. General Lin paced impatiently and kept looking at his watch. Lee Ann was sitting on a cushioned cane chair in the center of the room, and Yuan Yat-sen was facing her from another chair only three feet away. Electrodes were pasted to Yuan's temples; a sphygmomanometer was wrapped tightly around his right arm, controlled by an automatic device that was part of the computer; brightly colored wires trailed back to the sophisticated polygraph which Canning had taken from its steel security case.

The three-foot-square portable computer monitored Yuan's pulse, blood pressure, skin temperature, rate of perspiration, and brain waves. Furthermore, it listened to his voice and analyzed the stress patterns which were beyond his conscious control. Instantly assimilating these indices, the computer translated them into a purple line that glowed across the center of a small read-out screen. If the line was comparatively still, the subject's answers were close to the truth. If the line began to dance and jiggle, the subject was most likely lying. It was a very complicated yet simple machine; Canning had seen it used, had taken a course in its use, and he trusted it.

Because Yuan Yat-sen spoke no English, Lee Ann would ask all the questions.

Canning turned to her now. “We'll start off with questions we know the answers to. The first one is —'What is your name?' ”

She relayed the question to Yuan.

“Yuan Yat-sen,” he said.

The purple line vibrated for a moment.

Smiling, Canning said, “Very good. Now ask him to tell you his real name, the name he was born with and not the one he adopted when he became a deep-cover agent.”

Lee Ann asked the question.

Yuan said, “Liu Chao-chi.”

The purple line did not move.

The questioning led to the Dragonfly project, but for the next ten minutes the purple line rarely moved.

At last Canning switched off the polygraph and said, “Yuan is not the man we want. He doesn't know anything at all about Dragonfly or trigger men.”

General Lin said, “You are certain? The machine could be wrong.”

“That's not likely.”

“He seems like a crafty old man,” the general said doubtfully.

“Not crafty enough to deceive a computer,” Canning said. “Printed circuitry and microtransistors aren't susceptible to guile.”

The general nodded. “Very well. What is the name of your second agent? We are wasting time here.”

“I agree that we ought not to waste time,” Canning said. “This is a very grave matter. On the other hand, Dragonfly has been ready for activation for months and hasn't yet been used. I don't understand your great impatience, General.”

General Lin frowned. “I do not understand it either. But I feel—something very wrong. I have nightmares, and recently they have grown worse. I know time is running out. I sense it. So… The second name, please?”

Andrew Rice was surprised to hear the President's voice on the other end of the line. “Is something wrong, sir?”

“Yes, Andy, I'm afraid that something is very wrong. The Soviet ambassador paid me a visit a few minutes ago. He outlined their reaction to the Dragonfly project if it should be carried out.”

His heart suddenly racing, Rice said, “I see.”

“I'm sending a limousine around for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It'll bring you to the Pentagon.”

“Yes, sir.”

Why not the White House? Rice wondered. But he did, not ask, for he knew they had said all that could be said on an open phone line.

“See you within the hour, Andy.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Rice hung up, cursing the goddamned Russians. He expected that they would invade China from the west once the plague had struck in Peking. That was acceptable. That could be dealt with in due time. But this sounded like something much more ominous. Had the Russians given Washington some ultimatum? Were those crazy goddamned Bolsheviks siding with the Chinese? They hated the Chinese! Why would they line up with them? It was craziness!

He dressed hurriedly and was standing in front of his town house, crunching LifeSavers two at a time, when the limousine arrived.

The second CIA deep-cover agent was a sixty-four-year-old man named Ku K'ai Chih. Like Yuan, he had been a follower of Chiang, and he had lost his entire family and his business in the revolution. Another natural for the CIA. He had returned to the mainland in the spring of 1951, and he had rapidly established himself as an ardent Maoist, organizing a Party unit among the dock workers and seamen in the great eastern ports like Foochow, Shanghai, and Tsingtao. Today he was one of the twelve members of the board of managers of China's merchant marine.

The interrogation went as it had with Yuan: Canning asked the questions in English; Lee Ann rephrased them in Chinese, the subject replied, and the computer analyzed the responses. The purple line seldom wavered.

At the end of fifteen minutes of intense questioning, Canning said, “This one's clean too.”

Lee Ann explained to Ku that he would remain at the embassy, would later be flown to the United States for debriefing in full, and then would be returned to Taiwan.

“We are left with the conclusion that the trigger man for Dragonfly must be your third agent,” General Lin said.

“It certainly looks that way,” Canning said.

“His name?”

Canning hesitated for an instant, then said, “He is Sung Chu'ung-chen. As you may know, Sung is in charge of a branch of your Internal Security Force.”

General Lin's yellow-brown face darkened perceptibly. He was extremely mortified by the news that one of his own subordinates was a CIA deep-cover agent. “I know Mr. Sung all too well.”

“Shall we go find him?” Canning asked.

“I shall go find him,” the general said. “I will not require your assistance this time, Mr. Canning. Since Sung is obviously the trigger agent for Dragonfly, the crisis is past. We can arrest him and get to the truth in our own fashion, without your marvelous computerized polygraph.” He smiled coldly. “And later, of course, he might also wish to tell us what misguided citizens of the People's Republic cooperated with him in the passing of secret information.”

Getting swiftly to his feet, Webster said, “General Lin, may I say that this is a most uncooperative—”

“You may say what you wish,” Lin assured him. “But I have no time to stand here and listen.” He turned and strode out of the drawing room.

Webster was nonplused. He sputtered helplessly for a moment and finally said, “Well, I told you he was a cunning little man. In spite of all your precautions, your network is blown.”

Lee Ann began to laugh.

Canning smiled.

Amazed, Webster said, “I fail to grasp the comic element.”

Stifling her laughter, Lee Ann said, “David foresaw just this situation as he was drifting off to sleep last night in Tokyo — that neither of the first two agents we interrogated would be the trigger for Dragonfly. He got up and put through a call to Bob McAlister and asked him to dig up a good fourth name.”

“A fail-safe name to keep General Lin honest,” Canning said.

Webster nodded slowly. “So… Mr. Sung is not one of ours. He's an innocent.”

“Exactly,” Canning said. “General Lin will arrest him. And I'm afraid that Sung will be tortured for several hours. But eventually the general will realize that Sung is no more a CIA operative than he is himself. Then he will be back here, demanding the name of the real third agent.”

“And you'll give it to him?” Webster asked.

“Oh, sure.”

“But when he has the right name, why should he play by the rules any more than he's doing now?”

“Because,” Lee Ann said, enjoying herself immensely, “he won't be absolutely certain that the next name David gives him is the real article. He'll have to suspect it's another ringer, a double fail-safe. He'll have wasted so much time on Sung that he won't dare waste more on what might be another hoax— expecially not when he's having these nightmares and feelings of imminent disaster. So he'll bring our man here for confirmation, and we won't let him take our man back again.”

“Mr. Canning, you have a splendid oriental mind.”

“I know. I cultivate it.”

“And now what do we do?” asked Webster.

“How about dinner?” Canning asked.

“Certainly. But what a letdown after the tension of this afternoon!”

“I can assure you,” Canning said, “this is going to be the tensest dinner of my life.”

SIX

The office in E Ring belonged to one Lionel Bryson, a full admiral in the United States Navy, one-time lightweight boxing champion of the Naval Academy, father of seven children and one of the twenty most knowledgeable amateur numismatists in the country. None of these achievements, all-American as they were, had earned him a forty-foot-square office in E Ring. He could also captain any nuclear submarine currently in service. But that ability had not won him his very own secretary with her own connecting office. Bryson was a very special kind of engineer-architect, a doctor of marine design. It was his talent for designing magnificent machines of death, rather than his ability to pilot them, that had earned him the wall-to-wall plush carpeting, the leather couch and armchairs, the executive desk, the private telephone line, the mahogany bookcases, the trophy case, the soundproofed walls and ceiling, and the heavy blue-velvet drapes at the window-with-a-view.

Bryson was not here tonight. Which was just as well. He would not have liked the idea of his office being turned into an interrogation chamber.

There were four people in the room. An armed marine guard, cleared for top-security matters, was standing to the right of the door; the holster at his hip was unsnapped and the revolver in it looked like a howitzer to McAlister. Major Arnold Teffler, night-duty physician at the Pentagon, was sitting on the couch with his black bag; he was also security-cleared all the way up to eyes-only material. Bernie Kirkwood was slumped in an armchair, his feet propped up on a coffee table, his eyes closed, and his hands folded in his lap. McAlister sat behind Admiral Bryson's desk and played with a scale model of a Trident submarine. No one spoke. They had nothing in common and no reason for being here until the fifth man arrived.

Rice.

McAlister still had a bit of trouble believing it.

The telephone rang.

McAlister grabbed it. “Yes?”

“This is the door sergeant at the Mall Entrance,” the man on the other end said. “Mr. Rice just came through here.”

“Thank you.”

McAlister hung up, got to his feet, and came around from behind the desk. “Gentlemen, we're about to begin.”

The marine and the doctor remained where they were.

Bernie Kirkwood stood up and stretched.

A minute passed. Then another.

Someone knocked sharply on the door.

The marine opened it.

Two other marines stood in the corridor, and Andrew Rice stood between them. Rice came into the office and the two marines stayed in the hall and the marine already in the room closed the door behind the President's chief advisor.

Rice looked at the doctor and then at McAlister and then around the room. He seemed perplexed. “Where's the President?”

“He couldn't make it,” McAlister said.

“But he called me less than an hour ago!”

“He had some important reading to do.”

“What about the Russian—”

“There is no Russian problem,” McAlister said.

Frowning, Rice waited and said nothing more.

“Don't you want to know what the President is reading?”

“What sort of game is this?” Rice blustered.

McAlister picked up one of Hennings' magazines from the desk and held it out toward Rice.

The fat man just stared at it.

Kirkwood said, “There's also a most interesting article in Friday's Washington Post.”

Rice looked at him.

“Some poor hooker got nearly beat to death,” Kirk-wood said.

At last McAlister had the pleasure of seeing a quick flicker of fear pass through Rice's eyes.

“I haven't any idea what you're talking about,” the fat man said.

McAlister said, “we'll see.”

Chai Po-han got off the train. Slinging his single sack of belongings over his left shoulder, he walked along the concrete platform, past huge pillars bedecked with political posters, up the skeletal steel stairs, and into the public area of the main terminal.

His mother, father, brother, and one of his three sisters were waiting for him. They all wore different expressions. His father was smiling broadly. His brother was quite solemn, as if to say, “What happened to you might as easily have happened to me.” His beloved mother and lovely sister were crying with joy at the sight of him.

It was a very Confucian scene, the kind discouraged by the Party. Love of country must take precedence over love of family.

Chai Po-han began to weep too, although his tears were shed because he knew that once he left China as he planned to do, he would never see any of them again.

At nine o'clock Canning and Lee Ann went up to their rooms, ostensibly to get a few hours' sleep before General Lin Shen-yang came back to them in a rage. But at her door his goodnight kiss metamorphosed into a long, soft, moist battle of lips and teeth and tongues.

“You aren't really sleepy?” she asked.

“Not in the least.”

“Me either.”

She got her suitcase, and they went quietly down the hall to his room.

Inside, she said, “I feel like a high-school girl sneaking off on a forbidden date.”

He held her and kissed her, but that was not enough. His fingers tugged at the buttons of her blouse and slid behind her to unhook her bra. He held her warm breasts in his hands.

She pulled away from him then and said, “I feel all grimy. Let's have a bath together first.”

“In that ugly tub?”

“I'll make it beautiful,” she said unabashedly.

And she did: she made it beautiful.

Later they made love on the four-poster bed while George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln watched.

At the end of it, while he was going limp but was still snug within her, he said, “When we get back to the States — will you come stay with me?”

She smiled. “I think that might be good for me.”

“And wonderful for me.”

“I could have a talk with that son of yours.”

“I don't know,” he said. “I've been thinking about him. Maybe most people in the world should believe in black and white morality. Maybe they shouldn't ever be fully aware of all the animals ready to prey on them. A handful of people like you and me can do the dirty work to keep the balance. If everyone was aware of the nature of the jungle, not many people would be happy.”

“No more talk,” she said.

They stretched out side by side and pulled the covers over themselves.

He thought of Dragonfly…

But then he thought of Lee Ann and knew that he would always have her, knew it in his bones and and blood and muscle, reached out and touched her, and dozed for a while.

McAlister felt malarial — worse, cancerous — as if he belonged in the terminal ward of a hospital. Every one of his joints ached. His head ached. His eyes were grainy and bloodshot. He was sweaty and rumpled; his face itched from his beard stubble. His tongue felt swollen, and his mouth was sour. He wanted someone to give him a pill and a swallow of gingerale; he wanted someone to tuck him in and fluff his pillow and sing him to sleep.

Andrew Rice seemed to be in even worse shape than the director. His puffy face was as white as coconut meat. His lips were bluish. His quick little eyes were still little but no longer as quick as they had been; they were eyes that had seen more than they wanted to see; tears of weariness streamed from them constantly. Rice breathed as if he were inhaling all the air in the room, as if he were causing the walls to expand and contract like a bellows. His stubby-fingered hands were at his sides, palms up, motionless.

Yet the son of a bitch would not break down!

For the first time in his life Bob McAlister really knew the meaning of the word “fanatic.” Not that he had wanted to really know it. But there it was.

Kirkwood said, “You can't put it off any longer.”

Furious, too weak to deal with fury, McAlister got up from the couch and walked over to the armchair from which Rice was actually overflowing. “Damn you, we know! We know so much that you can't win! Why not tell us the rest of it?”

Rice stared at him and said nothing.

Wiping a hand across his face, McAlister said, “Rice, if you won't talk, I'm going to have to use a drug on you. A very nasty drug.”

Rice stared. Said nothing.

“It's that drug I found the agency using when I became director. It's barbaric. I outlawed it. It's the drug your men used on Carl Altmüller when they were trying to establish a list of other federal marshals who wouldn't recognize him. I saw the needle mark on the man's arm, Rice. It was swollen up like a grape. This drug is so hostile to the human system that the point of injection swells up like a fucking goddamned grape!”

Rice was unmoved.

“And now you're forcing me to use it on you.”

Licking his cracked lips, Rice said, “I suppose that offends your delicate liberal conscience.”

McAlister stared at him.

Rice smiled. He looked demonic.

Turning away from the fat man, McAlister said, “Dr. Teffler, please fill the syringe.”

Teffler got up and opened his bag and arranged his instruments on Admiral Bryson's desk. He examined the vial that McAlister gave to him. “What's the proper dosage?”

McAlister told him.

“What is it, Pentothal?”

McAlister snapped at him: “Haven't you been listening? It's a new drug. A damned dangerous drug. Handle it like I tell you!”

Unmoving, his hands still at his sides, Rice watched Teffler apply a rubber tourniquet to his thick arm. He watched his own vein rise through the fat, and he sighed when Teffler swabbed his arm with alcohol-soaked gauze.

McAlister forced himself to watch as the needle stabbed deep and the yellow truth serum squeezed out into Rice's system.

The fat man's eyes rolled back into his head, and almost at once he went into convulsions. He pitched out of the chair and to the floor, where he thrashed helplessly.

Going down on his hands and knees, Kirkwood tried to pin Rice's shoulders. It was all he could do, however, to keep from being thrown like a rodeo rider from a wild mount.

McAlister grabbed at the fat man's twisting legs to keep them from being bruised or broken against the furniture. But he took a solid kick in the stomach and was propelled away.

The marine guard ran over from the door, tried to hold Rice's legs, finally sat on them.

“He'll swallow his tongue!” McAlister gasped.

But Teffler was already there, wedging a smooth metal splint between Rice's jaws. With the splint protecting him from a bite, Teffler used his fingers to catch Rice's tongue and hold it flat against the floor of his mouth.

Gradually, the fat man grew quiet.

Shuddering uncontrollably, McAlister went out into Bryson's secretary's office and vomited in the wastebasket there.

Oh God Jesus Christ no Jesus oh shit oh shit no!

Bernie Kirkwood came in and said, “Are you all right?”

Braced against the desk, his head hanging over the basket, McAlister said, “Is he dead?”

“Just unconscious.”

“Coma?”

“The doctor said it's not.”

“I'll be there in a minute.”

Bernie went away.

After about five minutes McAlister got up, pulled a handful of paper tissues from the box on the secretary's desk, and wiped his greasy face. He threw the tissues in the reeking wastebasket. There was a water carafe on the desk and it was half full. The water was flat, but it tasted marvelous. He rinsed out his mouth and spat into the can. After all of this he felt no worse than terminal.

He went back into the room to have a look at Rice.

“At first,” Teffler said, “I thought it was anaphylactic shock, a deadly reaction to the drug. But now I think the dosage was just too large for his system.”

“It was the normal dosage,” McAlister said.

“But as overweight as he is,” Teffler said, “he might not react in any normal fashion.”

McAlister watched the fat man's belly rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall.

“What now?” Kirkwood asked.

“How long will he be unconscious?” McAlister asked the doctor.

Sitting on the floor beside Rice, Teffler took the patient's pulse. He peeled back an eyelid. “No less than an hour. No more than two or three.”

“We wait for him to wake up,” McAlister said.

“Then?” Kirkwood said.

“We give him another dose of the serum. Half what we shot into him the first time.”

“I don't know as I like that,” Teffler said sternly.

“Neither do I,” McAlister said. “But that's what we're going to do, all right.”

Rice stirred at eight o'clock, opened his eyes, looked around, closed his eyes.

He was able to sit up at eight-fifteen.

By a quarter of nine he was nearly his old self. Indeed, he was feeling good enough to smile smugly at McAlister.

At nine o'clock Teffler gave him the second, smaller dose of the truth serum — and by two minutes past nine Andrew Rice was spilling all the secrets of The Committee.

But was it too late? McAlister wondered.

The telephone burred.

Canning woke, rolled over, and lifted the receiver.

“Guess who is waiting for you down in the drawing room,” Ambassador Webster said.

“He's here already?”

“Hasn't poor Mr. Sung suffered enough?”

“I imagine he has,” Canning said. “Tell the general we'll be down in ten minutes.”

The President was shocked at McAlister's bedraggled appearance. He kept saying how shocked he was all the while that McAlister got the tape recorder ready. He stood behind his desk in the Oval Office and clicked his tongue and shook his head and said he felt entirely responsible for the awful way McAlister looked.

For his part, McAlister could not tell if the clicks of the President's tongue were expressions of sympathy — or whether the chief was off on another of his shtik. And not knowing which it was bothered the hell out of him. He said, “It's nothing, sir. I'm fine. It's just about all over now. I've sent an urgent message to Canning. I took the liberty of using your name on it For his eyes only.”

“But from what you've told me — do you think he'll get anything we send to him?”

“Not everyone is involved,” McAlister said. “The communications man at the Peking embassy is trustworthy. He'll see that Canning gets it.” He ran the tape forward at high speed, watching the white numbers roll around and around on the inch-counter. When he found the numbers he wanted, he stopped the tape, checked them against a list of numbers in his note pad. “You'll want to listen to the entire interrogation later,” he told the President. “But right now, I have a few special passages you'll be interested in.”

“By all means.”

McAlister pushed the Start button:

mcalister: But even if the Nationalists manage to seize the mainland eventually, it won't be an easy thing. I mean, the Chinese may not have much, but it is a hell of a lot more than they had under Chiang. He was a real despot. They'll remember that. Even without guidance from Peking, they're going to fight — with guns, clubs, even fists. Do you realize how many people are going to die?

rice: Oh, yes. We've done computer analysis, worked it out in detail.

mcalister: And it doesn't bother you?

rice: No. I look at it like Mr. West does.

mcalister: How does Mr. West look at it?

rice: They aren't people. They're Chinks. Both sides.

mcalister: Have you calculated the Russian reaction?

rice: They'll come in from the west. But they'll never keep the territory they take.

mcalister: Why not?

rice: Because we have something for them too.

mcalister: Something like Dragonfly?

rice: That's right.

mcalister: You have a Dragonfly in Moscow now?

rice: We have a dozen of them, all over Russia. It was much easier to plant those than to plant one man in China. Russia is a more open society than the People's Republic.

The President was stunned at Rice's obvious insanity, stunned that he had been deceived for so long by such a lunatic. His face alternately — and sometimes all at once — registered dismay, surprise, and horror as he fully perceived Rice's lunacy and ruthlessness. But worst of all, in the President's view, was Rice's naïveté, and it was at this that the chief executive winced the hardest. He didn't crack his knuckles once.

McAlister closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He had heard all of this before, of course. And now he could see Rice under interrogation: sweat beading on his white face, sweat glistening in his eyebrows and along his hairline, his eyes bulging and bloodshot, saliva drooling from one corner of his mouth, his massive body twitching continuously and sometimes spasming uncontrollably as the drug savaged his central nervous system… McAlister felt a long snake of self-loathing uncoil slowly within him. He opened his eyes and stared at the whirling reels of tape; and he began to listen to the contents as well as to the tone of Rice's words. And when he listened closely and heard the evil in the man — the delusions of grandeur, the ruthlessness, the bigotry and jealousy and mindless hatred — he became so enraged that the snake of self-loathing coiled up in him and went back to sleep.

Rice babbled on and thought that he was dispensing gems of military strategy, wisdom for the ages. He talked about the possibility of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Neither he nor West nor anyone else in The Committee considered that a major worry. The Committee had Dragonfly's equivalent — with code names like Boris and Ilya — in many Russian missile installations. These Dragonflies carried liquefied nerve gas instead of deadly bacteria. When such a spansule was punctured, the gas would literally explode out of the carrier, expanding at an incredible speed. The personnel of an entire missile installation could be eliminated in seconds by a single Boris planted among them. Even so, some missiles would be launched. Warheads would be exchanged; there was no avoiding it. But Americans should not be frightened of nuclear war, Rice said. They should view it as a potentially necessary and helpful tool. Even a peacemaker like Henry Kissinger had said as much when he had written on the subject years before he became Secretary of State: we can survive a nuclear war. Millions would die, but most likely not tens of millions; and civilization would not pass. There were big risks involved here, Rice admitted. But the only way to destroy Communism before it destroyed us, the only way to insure the dominance of the White Race was to take big risks. Wasn't that true? Wasn't that true? Wasn't it?

McAlister stopped the tape recorder.

The President said, “Jesus H. Christ! Did you get the names of those twelve agents in Moscow?”

“Yes.”

“The Russians will have to be told about them. Can a Dragonfly be — disarmed?”

“Yes,” McAlister said. “If the Russian surgeons know what to look for.”

“We can show them.” He shook his head. “Rice is so damned naïve.”

“And he must be echoing his mentor — A.W. West.”

“How could a man like West, a man who has amassed a billion-dollar fortune, be so simple-minded as to think that private citizens can overthrow foreign governments with impunity? How can he believe that he has any moral right to start a war just because he, personally, thinks it's necessary?”

“Lyndon Johnson greatly increased our involvement in Vietnam largely because he, personally, thought it was necessary. Nixon did the same thing in Cambodia, though on a smaller scale.”

“At least they were Presidents, elected officials!”

McAlister shrugged.

“How can West be so naïve as to think that he has all the answers to the problems of the world?” The President's face was no longer bloodless; it was mottled by rage.

McAlister had worked it out in his mind, all of it, over and over again and he was tired of the subject. He just wanted to go somewhere and lie down and sleep for sixteen hours. From the moment he had entered the Oval Office, however, he had been carefully leading the President in one direction, toward one particular decision; and now that they were halfway to that decision, McAlister couldn't allow his weariness to distract him. “We allowed ITT and a couple of private companies to get away with overthrowing, or helping to overthrow, the Chilean government a few years back. That was a dangerous precedent.”

“But didn't they learn anything from that fiasco? Look what happened to Chile after the coup d'état The military dictatorship was inefficient, inept, incompetent! Chile's inflation rate the first year after the coup was seven hundred percent! Because they interfered with the free market, unemployment eventually rose to fifty percent. There were riots in the streets!”

“I know all of that,” McAlister said. “And I'm sure that Rice and West know it too. But these people are what David Canning likes to call 'masturbating adolescents.' They live partly in a fantasy world. To them, there are never any crossroads in life, just forks in the road, never more than two choices, never more than two ways to see a thing: yes or no, good or bad, stop or go, buy or sell, do or don't, us or them.”

Frowning, the President said, “A lot of very nice people look at life that way.”

“Of course,” McAlister said. “But the difference between the nice people and the men like West and Rice is that the nice people, the decent people, aren't consumed by a lust for power.”

“Masturbating adolescents.”

“That's how Canning sees them. But that doesn't mean that they're harmless. Far from it. You read in the newspapers about wholesome teenage boys who murder their parents in the dead of night. A fool can be amusing — and be a killer at the same time.” He ran the tape ahead for a few seconds, stopped it, checked the numbers in the counter, and punched the Start button:

mcalister: Unless I'm mistaken, the Russian and Chinese operations are only two parts of a three-part plan.

rice: That's correct.

mcalister: The third part is for The Committee to take control of the U.S. government.

rice: That's right. That's the core of it.

mcalister: How would you accomplish that?

rice: Assassinate the President, Vice-President and the Speaker of the House, all within an hour of each other.

mcalister: But how would that give you control of the government?

rice: The President pro tem of the Senate is next in the line of succession. He would move straight into the White House.

mcalister: Let me be sure I understand you. You're saying that the President pro tem of the Senate is a Committeeman?

rice: Yes:

mcalister: That would be Senator Konlick of New York?

rice: Yes. Raymond W. Konlick. (Excited background conversation)

mcalister: But isn't it going to be rather obvious— everyone above Konlick getting killed, and him moving smoothly into power? rice: An attempt will be made on his life too. He'll be wounded. Shot in the shoulder or arm. But the assassination will fail, and he'll take on the duties of the Presidency.

mcalister: When is this to happen?

rice: Between two and four days after we trigger Dragonfly in Peking.

McAlister stopped the tape recorder again.

Unable to speak, the President got up and went to the Georgian window behind his desk. He stared out at Pennsylvania Avenue for a long moment. Then he suddenly jerked involuntarily, as if he had realized what a good target he was making of himself, and he came back to his desk. He sat down, looked at the tape recorder, looked at McAlister. “With what Rice has told you, will you have any real trouble getting hard evidence against A.W. West?”

“If you appointed me special prosecutor and gave me a topnotch team of young lawyers and investigators, no one could stop the truth from coming out. We know where to look now. We could nail West and every other man, big and small, who Rice knows is connected with The Committee.”

The President sighed and slumped down in his chair. “This country is just beginning to calm down after a decade and a half of turmoil… And now we're about to hit it with more sensational news stories, investigations, trials. The rest of my first term's going to be totally wasted. I'll have to spend most of my time defending your investigations against charges of political harassment. I'll be on network television every other week trying to reassure the public. Left-wing extremists are going to get very moralistic and start bombing buildings and killing people in protest of the cruelty of capitalism. And you can be damned sure there won't be a second term for me. Bearers of bad tidings aren't rewarded.”

Letting a moment pass in silence, McAlister then said, “And when the dust finally settles, the problem will still be unsolved.”

The President looked at him quizzically. “Explain that.”

This was the penultimate moment, the point toward which McAlister had been heading ever since he entered the Oval Office. “Well, sir, Rice won't know everyone behind The Committee movement.”

“West will know.”

“Perhaps. But we'd never get away with using the drug on him that we used on Rice. There will be some men who have extremely tenuous connections with The Committee, men who have protected themselves so damned well that we'll never nail them and might not even suspect them. Once the furor has passed, they'll quietly set about rebuilding The Committee — and this time they'll be much more careful about it.”

Sighing resignedly, the President nodded: Yes, you're right, that's the way it will be.

McAlister leaned forward in his chair. “There have always been madmen like these, I suppose. But our modern technology has given them the means to destroy more things and more people more rapidly than ever before in history. West can wage bacteriological warfare against a foreign power. And once that's known, the SLA will get in the act to wage a little of it here at home. The knowledge is available; they just have to think about using it. When the West case is in all the papers, they'll think about growing some germs.” He paused for effect. Then: “But there's a way to deal with these kind of people.”

“I'd like to hear about it,” the President said.

“There's a way we can defuse The Committee and yet avoid all of the investigations, trials, and public agony. There's a way we can keep the lid on the assassinations and all the rest of it — and still punish the guilty.”

The chief executive's eyes narrowed. “What you're going to suggest is… unorthodox, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The President looked at the tape recorder for several minutes. He said nothing; he did not move. Then: “Maybe I'm ready for the unorthodox. Let's hear it.”

“I want to play some more of the tape first,” McAlister said. “I want you to be even readier than you are now.” He switched on the machine:

mcalister: Then Chai Po-han is Dragonfly?

rice: Yes.

mcalister: If he was back in China way last March, why haven't you triggered him by now?

rice: In order to cover his absence from his room that night in Washington, we made it look like he'd been out carousing. We put him back to bed, soaked him in cheap whiskey, and put a pair of — a pair of lacy women's — panties in his hands…

mcalister: Oh, for God's sake!

rice: Because his roommate, Chou P'eng-fei, was more lightly sedated than Chai, we knew he would wake up first in the morning, smell the whiskey, see the lace panties. We didn't foresee, couldn't foresee, how these crazy damned Chinks would react. When they got back to China, Chai was sent straight to a farm commune instead of to Peking. He was punished for what they call “counterrevolutionary” behavior.

mcalister: The People's Republic is an extraordinarily puritanical society.

rice: It's crazy.

mcalister: Most developing countries are puritanical. We were like that for a couple of hundred years, although not quite so fiercely as China today.

rice: We wouldn't send an American boy to a slave-labor camp just because he got drunk and took up with a hooker. It's crazy, I tell you.

mcalister: They didn't see it as just “taking up with a hooker.” To them it was a political statement.

rice: Craziness. Crazy Chinks.

mcalister: Chai wasn't an American. Didn't you see, didn't you even suspect, that American standards might not apply? Christ, you fouled up the project at the very beginning! You screwed up on such a simple bit of business — yet you think you know how to run the world!

rice: It was an oversight. Anybody could have made the same mistake.

mcalister: You're dangerous as hell, but you're a real buffoon.

rice: (Silence)

mcalister: Chai is still on this commune?

rice: No. He was released. He arrived in Peking at five o'clock this morning, our time.

mcalister: When will he be triggered?

rice: As soon as possible, within the next twelve hours.

mcalister: Who is the trigger man in Peking?

rice: General Lin Shen-yang.

mcalister: What? General Lin?

(A flurry of indistinct conversation)

mcalister: Is General Lin a part of The Committee?

rice: No.

mcalister: Does he know he's the trigger?

rice: No.

mcalister: He's been used, just like Chai?

rice: That's right.

mcalister: How was it done?

rice: General Lin keeps a mistress in Seoul. We went to her, threatened her, and got her cooperation. When he visited her last March, we drugged his wine, planted a series of subliminal commands deep in his subconscious mind. When he woke, he had no knowledge of what had been done to him. When he is told to do so, he will seek out Chai Po-han and trigger him.

mcalister: When he's told to do so?

rice: Yes.

mcalister: Then you've established a sort of double trigger. Is that right?

rice: Yes.

mcalister: Why so complex a mechanism?

rice: The sophisticated surgical facilities we needed to implant the spansule of bacteria existed only here in the States. We couldn't haul it off to Korea and turn General Lin into Dragonfly. We had to operate on someone who was visiting the Washington area. Then we had a problem setting up a trigger man. We couldn't use any of the three deep-cover agents the CIA has in China, because they're not Committeemen. So we had to rely on a Westerner who was one of us. Now, Chai Po-han doesn't have much contact with Westerners in Peking. Our man would have a difficult time getting to him without causing a spectacle. General Lin, on the other hand, has a great deal of contact with Westerners and with his countrymen alike. Our man, we realized, could trigger General Lin; the general could then trigger Dragonfly.

mcalister: I understand. But who is your first trigger man, the one who gives the word to Lin?

rice: Alexander Webster.

mcalister: Our ambassador to China?

rice: Yes.

(A babble of voices)

mcalister: Are you saying our embassy in Peking is a nest of Committeemen?

rice: No. Just Webster.

mcalister: You're positive of that?

rice: Yes.

(Ten seconds of silence)

mcalister: What disease is Chai Po-han carrying?

rice: A mutated strain of the bubonic plague.

mcalister: In what way is it mutated?

rice: First of all, it's transmitted differently from every other kind of plague. Most strains are carried by fleas, ticks, or lice. Wilson's plague is totally airborne.

mcalister: It's transmitted through the air? Through the lungs?

rice: Yes. You're contaminated simply by breathing.

mcalister: What are the other mutations?

rice: It's extremely short-lived and has a very low level of fertility. In three days it will be dead and gone.

mcalister: So the Nationalist Chinese can move in then?

rice: Yes.

mcalister: What other mutations?

rice: The bug needs just nine to twelve hours after it hits your lungs to kill you.

mcalister: Is there a vaccine?

rice: Yes. But Wilson didn't produce much of it. You don't need much if the plague's one hundred percent abated by the time you send in troops.

mcalister: How much vaccine is there?

rice: One vial. Webster has it.

mcalister: What about the other Americans at the embassy?

rice: They will be sacrificed.

mcalister: How noble of you.

rice: It was necessary. They aren't in sympathy with The Committee. They couldn't have been trusted.

mcalister: How many people will die if Dragonfly is triggered?

rice: We have computer projections on that. Somewhere between two million and two and a quarter million deaths in the Peking area.

mcalister: God help us.

When McAlister switched off the tape recorder, the President said, “You sounded badly shaken on the tape, but now you're so damned calm. And it isn't over!”

“I've sent my message to Canning,” McAlister said. “I have faith in him.”

“Let's hope it's well founded, or we're all finished.”

“In any event,” McAlister said, “there's nothing more that you or I can do. Let's talk about that unorthodox plan of mine.”

SEVEN

The CIA's third deep-cover agent in Peking was very much like the first two deep-cover agents in Peking. He was in his sixties, just as Yuan and Ku had been. His name was Ch'en Tu-hsiu. Like Yuan and Ku, he had lost his family and money when the Maoists assumed power. Like Yuan and Ku, he had fled to Taiwan, but had returned soon enough as a dedicated CIA operative who would live under the Maoists for the rest of his life and pass out what information he could obtain. He had worked hard to prove what a loyal Maoist he was. As a result, and because he was an intelligent man to begin with (as were Yuan and Ku), he was promoted and promoted until he became Vice-Secretary of the Party in the Province of Hopeh, which included the capital city of Peking. And finally, just like Yuan and Ku, he was judged a truthful man by the computerized polygraph.

Canning could not understand it. He examined the machine, found it to be functioning properly, and asked Lee Ann to go through the list of questions once more. Ch'en answered precisely as he had the first time; the machine said he was not a liar; and Canning was baffled.

Lee Ann said, “If neither Yuan nor Ku is the trigger, then it has to be Ch'en, doesn't it? I'll ask the questions a third time.”

She did that.

The purple line didn't move through any of Ch'en's answers.

After having been misled with Sung Ch'ung-chen, General Lin was very suspicious. He stood stiff and straight, not bothering to work off the excess energy that always filled him, letting it build up toward an explosion. “You mean to say that none of your deep-cover agents knows about Dragonfly?”

“I don't understand it,” Canning said.

Lin's face was twisted, blush-red beneath his olive complexion. “What sort of trick is this?”

“It's no trick,” Canning said.

“This entire affair has been some sort of hoax.”

“I don't think so.”

“You don't think so?” the general raged.

“If it was a hoax,” Canning said, “then I was a victim of it too. I don't know why the CIA would want to hoax you or me.”

The general moved closer to him, glared up at him. “I want to know why you've come all the way around the world to waste my time here in Peking. What have you really been doing in China?”

“Exactly what I've told you I've been doing,” Canning said, exasperated. But he could understand the general's anger.

“Sooner or later you will tell me what the trick is.”

“There is no trick.”

“I'm afraid you will not be permitted to leave China until I am given a full explanation,” General Lin said. “Perhaps the rules of diplomacy forbid me to drag you out of your embassy and beat the truth from you. But I can see that you remain here, grow old, and die here if you will not explain your real purpose in Peking.” He turned away from them and started toward the drawing-room door.

Webster came out of his armchair as if propelled by a bad spring in the cushion. He hurried after Lin and caught up with him in the downstairs hall. “General, please wait a moment. Give me a moment to explain. I can explain this entire affair. Just come up to my office for five minutes, and I'll put your mind at rest, sir.”

“Then there has been some trick?” General Lin asked.

“Let's not discuss it here,” Webster said. “Upstairs. In my office. That's the proper atmosphere.”

When they had gone up the steps, Lee Ann said, “What could Webster know that we don't?”

“Nothing,” Canning said. “He's in the dark too. But he can't let Lin go away that angry. He has to play the diplomat for a while.”

Pushing a lock of her black hair from her face, Lee Ann said, “My opinion is that if the general goes all the way upstairs just to hear a bunch of diplomatic goo, he's going to be twice as angry as he is now. Just my opinion, of course.”

“Then he's Webster's problem, not ours.”

“What about Dragonfly?”

“Maybe there is no such thing.”

“How could that be?” Her eyes were huge.

“Maybe McAlister was using us.”

“For what?”

He said, “God knows. But it happens in this business.”

“I think Bob was sincere,” she said.

“Then he might be misinformed.”

“He's not the kind to make a move unless he's positive of what he's doing.”

Canning agreed with her. He felt uneasy. He felt as though he had missed something vital.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“That's what I'm trying to figure.” He looked down at Ch'en, who smiled at him and nodded. To Lee Ann he said, “We'll see that our friend here is put in a room on the third floor with Yuan and Ku. Then we'll go down to the communications room and get off a wire to McAlister, asking for his instructions.”

In his office, Ambassador Webster went directly to the bar in the corner and put ice cubes in two squat glasses. “Is bourbon all right, General?”

Lin Shen-yang stood by the desk, barely able to control his temper. “I do not want a drink. I want an explanation.”

“This is fine bourbon,” Webster said. “And I've got good branch water to mix with it. They fly my branch water all the way in from Louisiana. Only way to drink bourbon.”

“No, thank you,” the general said stiffly.

Smiling, the ambassador said, “Very well.” He poured bourbon and branch water into his own glass. “You won't mind if I indulge?”

The general glared at him.

Webster took his drink to one of the two overstuffed armchairs that stood in front of his desk. He sat down and indicated that the general should sit opposite him.

“Mr. Webster—” Lin began.

“Please, let's be amiable,” the ambassador said. “Sit down and relax. I will explain everything.”

Reluctantly, General Lin sat in the other armchair. He perched on the edge of it; he refused to be comfortable.

Taking a long, cool swallow of his drink, the ambassador said, “Do you know what branch water is? It conies from certain streams, river branches, in Louisiana. It's pure, perfectly tasteless. It is the only way to mix a whiskey. In Louisiana we know how—”

“I am not interested in Louisiana or in your branch water,” the general said curtly. “I want that explanation.”

Webster sighed. “I was just savoring the moment. But if you insist…” He put down his drink on a small round side table. He smiled at the general and said the key phrase: “Yin-hsi is as lovely as a swan in the lilies.”

General Lin's eyes glazed. His mouth sagged open, and he leaned back in the armchair.

“Can you hear me?” Webster asked.

“Yes,” Lin said faintly. He stared through the ambassador.

“Do you know how to find the home of Chai Chen-tse?”

“Yes.”

“Chai Po-han is there now. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“You will go to him and say that phrase which you have been taught. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“When you have spoken those words to him, and to no one else but him, and in privacy with him, you will return to your house and go to bed. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

Webster picked up his drink and sipped it. He enjoyed seeing the general sitting there, mouth open and his eyes blank as the eyes of a moron. “When you wake in the morning, you will not remember your visit to Chai Po-han. You will not remember having said anything to Chai Po-han. In the morning you will go about your business as you ordinarily would. Do you understand me?”

The general hesitated.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Once more. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Go to Chai now.”

The general closed his mouth. His eyes refocused, but they still did not look quite normal. He got up and left the ambassador's office, closing the door behind him.

Webster picked up his drink and took it back to his desk. He sat down in his, high-backed posturmatic chair. From the bookshelves behind him, he withdrew a copy of The Wind in the Willows. He opened the book and removed a flimsy sheet of paper that had been pressed in the front.

The paper was a copy of the order for Chai Po-han's transfer from the Ssunan Commune to Peking. A clerk in the Office of Revolutionary Education had taken it from the files the very day that the transfer had been approved and had passed it to an old gentleman who pedaled one of the few remaining bicycle rickshaws that still operated in Peking. The clerk had received a handsome sum, all in good Chinese yuan, without knowing why anyone would so desperately need to know when Chai was coming home. Like all of his kind, the rickshaw operator was extremely independent; after all, he conducted business in defiance of a Party order outlawing rickshaws, and he had done so for many years now. The Party had decided to let the rickshaw operators die off gradually, while issuing no new licenses. Therefore, the officials ignored the rickshaw men — and the rickshaw men, independent as they were, made good conduits for certain kinds of information. This particular old gentleman had passed the transfer notice to Webster when Webster had taken a rickshaw ride around Wan Shou Shan's lake — as he managed to do once or twice a month. In his turn, the old gentleman had received another substantial sum in yuan. Back at the embassy, after spending hours translating the ideograms into English, Webster saw that Chai was coming home, and he wired the news to Rice.

Now, if the train had been on time — and Chinese trains were always on time — Chai Po-han was at home, and the Dragonfly project could be launched at last. In twenty minutes, or half an hour at most, General Lin would trigger him. Chai would puncture the spansule within a few minutes of the general's visit, as soon as he was alone and could find a sharp instrument. The plague virus would spread rapidly through Chai's system, reproducing in his bloodstream. Within two hours millions of deadly microorganisms would be passing out through the alveolae in his lungs. Then he would begin contaminating the very air that Peking breathed, and the flight of the Dragonfly would have begun.

Webster smiled and drank some bourbon and branch water.

Chai Po-han had written a long letter to his parents, explaining his decision to leave them like a coward in the middle of the night and seek political asylum at the United States Embassy. It had been a most difficult letter to compose, and he had wept freely as his pen had drawn the characters which spelled out his future. But now it was done, folded and sealed in a red-lined envelope. He put the envelope on the center of the bed and turned away from it before he lost his courage and tore it to shreds.

Taking only one bag of mementos and remembrances, he slipped out of his room and went along the dark hall to the rear door of the house. Outside, he strapped the leather bag to the handlebars of his brother's bicycle.

The United States Embassy was less than two miles away. Even if he took the long way around, used only the back streets and lanes, he would be there in ten or fifteen minutes. He would need another fifteen minutes to slip into the compound without being seen or stopped by a Chinese patrol. In half an hour he would be talking with the United States ambassador, and he would have taken the last irrevocable step into a new lif e.

The embassy's communications room was in the basement. It was a rather uninviting, thirty-foot-square, concrete-wall chamber with no carpet and no windows. It contained a telecommunications computer as large as four refrigerators arranged side by side. There was also a radio-controlled Telex printer, a Telex sender, a traditional wireless machine, a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet, and a pornographic Chinese calendar made in Hong Kong: semi-abstract but altogether recognizable human figures engaged in coitus, a different position for each month.

The night-duty communications officer was a man named Pover. He smiled and apologized to Lee Ann for the calendar and asked if he could be of assistance.

“I want to send a message to Robert McAlister care of the White House communications center. Can do?” Canning asked.

“Oh, sure,” Pover said. “What's the message?”

Canning handed him a sheet of paper on which he had written:

Three deep-cover agents negative.

Repeat negative. No trigger man.

Send instructions soonest.

“I'll have it out in a minute,” Pover said.

“How long do we have to wait for a reply?” Lee Ann asked.

“Not long these days,” Pover said. “The wireless is really a laser. It sends the message out on light pulses that are bounced through a telecommunications satellite. The message will be at the White House in maybe two minutes. How long will it take them to get it to this McAlister?”

“No more than half an hour,” Canning said.

“Then your reply should be here no more than an hour from now, depending on how fast they are at the other end. You want this put into code?”

“No,” Canning said. “As is. It'll save time.”

Lee Ann said, “Can we wait here for our answer?”

“Oh, sure,” Pover said. He went across the room and took down the pornographic calendar before he sent the message.

Chai Chen-tse watched as General Lin picked up the sealed envelope from Chai Po-han's bed. In answer to the question that the general had just asked, he said. “Yes, open it. By all means.”

Lin Shen-yang used his thumbnail to break open the flap. He withdrew several sheets of paper from the envelope and began to read them. Halfway across the second page, he dropped everything, turned, and left the room.

Following him into the hall, Chai Chen-tse said, “What is wrong?”

General Lin was already at the front door.

“What is it? Where is my son? What has he done?” the elder Chai asked plaintively.

But the general didn't stop to answer him.

The night air was cool.

The streets were for the most part dark and silent.

Chai Po-han abandoned his brother's bicycle in the park across the street from the back of the diplomatic compound. The gate to the embassies was out on the north side, always opened but always watched. He hid for a few minutes behind a sculptured hedge, cloaked in darkness, until the motorized patrol had passed. Then he got up and dashed across the wide street to the seven-foot-high wall. He threw his satchel over to the other side. Then he jumped, managed to catch the top of the wall with his fingers, pulled himself up, found toeholds between the bricks, and climbed.

At three o'clock in the morning, bells rang in the embassy's communications room. The Telex began to chatter and the wireless set clicked and the computer's print-out screens lit up in a soft shade of green. White letters began to roll up on the computer screens' green background: two identical sets of letters on two screens:

“Hey,” Pover said, “there hasn't been time for them to reply already. We just sent your message out.” He ran over to the Telex and glanced at the lines of print that were clattering out of that machine. “It double-checks,” he said. “This must be something they sent almost simultaneously with our transmission.”

Canning and Lee Ann went over to stand in front of the computer screens.

The screens cleared and more white words rolled up on the electric green background:

“Can this be true?” Lee Ann asked.

Canning stood there for three more minutes, reading the rest of the message, then he turned and ran from the communications room.

Lee Ann ran after him.

When he reached the steps he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eyes. “You stay here.”

“Like hell!”

Canning took the steps two at a time all the way up to the fourth floor.

Chai Po-han tore his trousers and skinned his knee coming off the wall. He spat on his hand and rubbed the spit into the wound.

This is not the most auspicious way to begin a new lif e, he thought.

He picked up his satchel and limped past the first four pink-brick houses until he came to that one which displayed the flag of the United States of America. He went to the front door, hesitated only an instant, and rang the bell.

Alexander Webster had the most infuriating smile that David Canning had ever seen. He shook his head and kept smiling and said, “I'm afraid you're too late.”

“Where's the general?”

“Doing what he's been programmed to do,” Webster said happily.

Canning stood in front of the desk, impotent, his hands fisted at his sides. He wanted to reach out and grab Webster by the lapels of his dressing gown and shake the hell out of him. But that was pointless.

Holding up his glass, Webster said, “Would either of you like a drink?”

Lee Ann came over from the doorway and stood beside Canning. “You'll die in the plague just like the rest of us.”

“Oh, no, Miss Tanaka. I've been vaccinated.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “You'll end up in prison.”

“By the time I go home,” Webster said, “my people will be in charge of the country — and the prisons.” He gave them another infuriating smile.

Canning said, “What do you—”

The telephone rang, startling them.

Webster looked at it for a moment, waited until it rang again, and picked it up. “Yes?” He listened for a moment, and tension came into his broad face. His brows beetled. He glanced up at Canning, licked his lips, looked quickly down at the blotter. “No. Don't send him up. Well, I don't care what—”

Sensing the sudden panic in the ambassador's voice, Canning leaned forward and jerked the receiver out of his hand. He said, “Who is this?”

“James Obin,” the voice at the other end of the line said. “Who are you?”

“Canning. You brought me in from the airport this afternoon. What's the matter? Why did you call Webster?”

“Well,” Obin said, “a young Chinese man just came to the door asking for political asylum. It's never happened before. I haven't the slightest idea what to do about it. And he seems to be somewhat important, not just your ordinary citizen.”

“Important?” Canning asked. He kept one eye on Webster and saw that the man looked confused and nervous.

On the phone Obin said: “He speaks passable English. Tells me his father is in charge of the Central Office of Publications here in Peking. Father's name is something like…wait… I have it all written down here… have trouble pronouncing these names, so this might not be exactly right… Chai Chen-tse.”

Astounded, Canning said, “You mean you've got Chai Po-han down there with you?”

It was Obin's turn to be astounded. “You know him?”

Canning said, “Put him on the line.”

A moment later a somewhat shy male voice said, “Yes?”

“Chai Po-han?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your father is Chai Chen-tse?”

“That is correct.”

“Mr. Chai, do you know a man named Lin Shenyang? General Lin Shen-yang?”

“He is well known. A hero of the Republic.”

“Have you seen him this evening?”

“General Lin?” Chai asked, perplexed.

“Yes.”

“No. I have not seen him.”

Canning shivered with relief. “You wait right there, Mr. Chai. A young lady will be down to meet you and bring you upstairs.”

“Yes, sir.”

Canning hung up and turned to Lee Ann. “Dragonfly is downstairs right this minute. He's here to ask for political asylum. He doesn't seem to know what he is, and I don't think he's been triggered.”

Without a word she left the room and ran down the fourth-floor hall toward the stairs.

Behind the desk, Alexander Webster seemed to have aged twenty years in two minutes. His muscular body had shrunk in on itself. He said, “I guess you'll call this a miracle when you look back on it years from now.”

“No,” Canning said. “I don't believe in miracles. I don't even believe in coincidence. Somehow, his coming here tonight is tied directly to what you people did to him. I can't guess how, but I'd bet on it.”

Shortly, Lee Ann returned with Chai. He was a slender, wiry, rather good-looking young man. He smiled at everyone.

The night bell rang only in James Chin's bedroom. It shrilled again just as he was sliding between the sheets

“What in the hell is going on here?” he grumbled. He pushed back the covers, got up, stepped into his slippers, and picked up his robe.

The night bell rang again.

“Coming, coming, for God's sake.”

When he was at the head of the stairs, he heard the bell ring again, behind him in his room.

“Must be a night for mass defections,” Obin mumbled to himself. The heels of his slippers slapped noisily on the steps. “Twenty million Chinese have suddenly decided to move to Chicago.” When he reached the first-floor hall he heard pounding at the front door. “You're really not going to like Chicago,” he told the defectors on the other side of the door. “Wait until you learn about smog and traffic jams.” He twisted the lock and opened the door and said, “Oh. General Lin.”

Without being invited, the general stepped inside, squeezing past Obin. He said, “A young man named Chai Po-han has come here seeking political asylum.”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Obin said. “But—”

“I must see him.”

Obin realized that there was something odd about the general. The man was too stiff, too tense — and yet, had that look about the eyes of someone who had been smoking grass or popping pills.

“I must see Chai,” General Lin repeated.

“I'm afraid that might not be possible. He has asked for political asylum. In any event, you'll have to go through Ambassador Webster.”

“Where is Chai?” the general demanded.

“He's upstairs in Mr. Webster's office. And—”

The general turned away from him and went toward the stairs.

Running after him and grabbing him by the arm, Obin said, “You can't just barge—”

During his programming in Seoul, the general had been told to get to Chai Po-han at any cost once Webster had triggered him. He could perform, now, in none but a brutal fashion. He struck Obin across the face and knocked him backward into the first-floor hall. Then he turned and ran up the steps.

They were all listening to Chai Po-han as he explained about the Ssunan Commune. Webster was still behind his desk. Chai was in one of the armchairs, and Lee Ann was in the other. Fortunately, Canning was on his feet, standing beside Lee Ann, facing Chai, the open office door on his left.

Suddenly, heavy running footsteps echoed in the corridor, interrupting Chai's story. An instant later General Lin Shen-yang burst into the room. His face was a reflection of his tortured mind: wild-eyed, loose-lipped, nostrils flared. He saw Chai and lunged toward him. As he moved he said, “Dragonfly must spread his wings.”

Canning brought out his silenced pistol — and was knocked off his feet as a bullet tore through his right shoulder.

Lee Ann screamed.

Rolling, Canning came up onto his kness and saw that Webster had taken a gun from the center desk drawer. The ambassador seemed surprised that Canning was still alive. Before he could get over his surprise, Canning shot him in the face.

An unsilenced gunshot boomed behind him.

He twisted around in time to see Lee Ann fall in a heap, and he felt something snap inside of him. He raised his eyes and saw the general staring stupidly at the smoking revolver in his own hand. The man did not appear to remember that he had drawn and fired it. Indeed, he had probably been following his program and nothing more — an automaton, victim of drugs and subliminal suggestions and modern technology. Nevertheless, Canning put one bullet in his stomach and one in his chest and one in his throat.

The general fell backward, knocking over a floor lamp as he went, landing with a crash.

Chai Po-han, Canning thought.

Dragonfly.

Lin had triggered him.

Where was he now?

Biting his lip hard enough to take his mind off the paint in his shoulder, Canning struggled to his feet and looked around the room.

Chai was standing in a corner by the bookshelves. He had torn open the front of his shirt and was gently pricking his left shoulder with the point of a letter opener that Canning had earlier noticed on Webster's desk. A thin trickle of blood was running down his chest. He stabbed himself again, lightly, gently, then dropped the instrument.

The spansule was broken.

Chai was infected.

For a moment Canning almost buckled under the knowledge of his defeat. Then an energizing thought hit him like a hammer striking a sheet of white-hot steel: the plague virus required a human host, a culture in which it could survive and multiply, living flesh on which it could feed; no virus grew in a dead man; Chai could not infect anyone if he could no longer breathe…

As if he had just awakened from a trance, Chai said, “What is happening here?”

“Too much,” Canning said. He staggered close enough to put his last two bullets dead-center in Chai Po-han's head.

The boy fell into the bookcases and slid to the floor, dead beyond question.

Dropping his pistol, Canning went back to Lee Ann and knelt at her side. She was lying face-down on the floor. She had been shot in the back, low down, just left of the spine, and she had bled quite a lot. He touched her and began to cry and was still crying when James Obin and the others came up from downstairs