“Damn, that man’s like an eel,” Brown swore.

“Exactly,” said Kelly. “But if you’re right, there could be one person he’ll contact. Somerville; the only one. I don’t like doing this to one of our own people, but I want her apartment bugged, her phone tapped, and mail intercepted. As of tonight.”

“Right away,” said Brown.

When they were alone, the Vice President and the inner five members of the Cabinet again raised the issue of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

It was the Attorney General who brought it up. Quietly and regretfully. Odell was on the defensive. He saw more of their reclusive President than the others. He had to admit John Cormack appeared as lackluster as ever.

“Not yet,” he said. “Give him time.”

“How much?” asked Morton Stannard. “It’s been three weeks since the funeral.”

“Next year is election year,” Bill Walters pointed out. “If it’s to be you, Michael, you will need a clear run from January.”

“Jesus,” exploded Odell. “That man in the White House is stricken and you talk of elections.”

“Just being practical, Michael,” said Donaldson.

“We all know that after Irangate, Ronald Reagan was so badly confused for a while that the Twenty-fifth was almost invoked then,” Walters pointed out. “The Cannon Report at the time makes plain it was touch-and-go. But this crisis is worse.”

“President Reagan recovered,” pointed out Hubert Reed. “He resumed his functions.”

“Yes, just in time,” said Stannard.

“That’s the issue,” suggested Donaldson. “How much time do we have?”

“Not a lot,” admitted Odell. “The media have been patient so far. He’s a damn popular man. But it’s cracking, fast.”

“Deadline?” asked Walters quietly.

They held a vote. Odell abstained. Walters raised his silver pencil. Stannard nodded. Brad Johnson shook his head. Walters agreed. Jim Donaldson reflected and joined Johnson in refusing. It was locked, two and two. Hubert Reed looked around at the other five men with a worried frown. Then he shrugged.

“I’m sorry, but if it must be, it must.”

He joined the ayes. Odell exhaled noisily.

“All right,” he said. “We agree by a majority. By Christmas Eve, without a major turnaround, I’ll have to go and tell him we’re invoking the Twenty-fifth on New Year’s Day.”

He had only risen halfway when the others reached their feet in deference. He found he enjoyed it.

“I don’t believe you,” said Quinn.

“Please,” said the man in the Savile Row suit. He gestured toward the curtained windows. Quinn glanced around the room. Above the mantel shelf, Lenin addressed the masses. Quinn walked to the window and peered out.

Across the gardens of bare trees and over the wall, the top section of a red London double-decker bus ran along Bayswater Road. Quinn resumed his seat.

“Well, if you’re lying, it’s a hell of a film set,” he said.

“No film set,” replied the KGB general. “I prefer to leave that to your people in Hollywood.”

“So what brings me here?”

“You interest us, Mr. Quinn. Please don’t be so defensive. Strange though it may sound, I believe we are for the moment on the same side.”

“It does sound strange,” said Quinn. “Too damn strange.”

“All right, so let me talk it through. For some time we have known that you were the man chosen to negotiate the release of Simon Cormack from his abductors. We also know that after his death you have spent a month in Europe trying to track them down-with some success, it would appear.”

“That puts us on the same side?”

“Maybe, Mr. Quinn, maybe. My job isn’t to protect young Americans who insist on going for country runs with inadequate protection. But it is to try to protect my country from hostile conspiracies that do her huge damage. And this… this Cormack business… is a conspiracy by persons unknown to damage and discredit my country in the eyes of the entire world. We don’t like it, Mr. Quinn. We don’t like it at all. So let me, as you Americans say, level with you.

“The abduction and murder of Simon Cormack was not a Soviet conspiracy. But we are getting the blame for it. Ever since that belt was analyzed, we have been in the dock of world opinion. Relations with your country, which our leader was genuinely trying to improve, have been poisoned; a treaty to reduce weapons levels, on which we placed great store, is in ruins.”

“It looks as though you don’t appreciate disinformation when it works against the U.S.S.R., even though you’re pretty good at it yourselves,” said Quinn.

The general had the grace to shrug in acceptance of the barb.

“All right, we indulge in disinformatsya from time to time. So does the CIA. It goes with the territory. And I admit it’s bad enough to get the blame for something we have done. But it is intolerable for us to be blamed for this affair, which we did not instigate.”

“If I were a more generous man I might feel sorry for you,” said Quinn. “But the fact is, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Not anymore.”

“Possibly.” The general nodded. “Let us see. I happen to believe you are smart enough to have worked out already that this conspiracy is not ours. If I had put this together, why the hell would I have Cormack killed by a device so provably Soviet?”

Quinn nodded. “All right. I happen to think you were not behind it.”

“Thank you. Now, have you any ideas as to who might have been?”

“I think it came out of America. Maybe the ultra-right. If the aim was to kill off the Nantucket Treaty’s chance of Senate ratification, it certainly succeeded.”

“Precisely.”

General Kirpichenko went behind the desk and returned with five enlarged photographs. He put them in front of Quinn.

“Have you ever seen these men before, Mr. Quinn?”

Quinn studied the passport photographs of Cyrus Miller, Melville Scanlon, Lionel Moir, Peter Cobb, and Ben Salkind. He shook his head.

“No, never seen them.”

“Pity. Their names are on the reverse side. They visited my country several months ago. The man they conferred with-the man I believe they conferred with-would have been in a position to supply that belt. He happens to be a marshal.”

“Have you arrested him? Interrogated him?”

General Kirpichenko smiled for the first time.

“Mr. Quinn, your Western novelists and journalists are happy to suggest that the organization I work for has limitless powers. Not quite. Even for us, to arrest a Soviet marshal without a shred of proof is way off base. Now, I’ve been frank with you. Would you return the compliment? Would you tell me what you managed to discover these past thirty days?”

Quinn considered the request. He could see no reason not to; the affair was over so far as any trail he would ever be able to follow was concerned. He told the general the story from the moment he ran out of the Kensington apartment to make his private rendezvous with Zack. Kirpichenko listened attentively, nodding several times, as if what he heard coincided with something he already knew. Quinn ended his tale with the death of Orsini.

“By the way,” he added, “may I ask how you tracked me to Ajaccio airport?”

“Oh, I see. Well, my department has obviously been keenly interested in this whole affair from the start. After the boy’s death and the deliberate leak of the details of the belt, we went into overdrive. You weren’t exactly low-profile as you went through the Low Countries. The shoot-out in Paris made all the evening papers. The description of the man the barman described as fleeing the scene matched yours.

“A check on airline departure and passenger lists-yes, we do have assets working for us in Paris-showed your FBI lady friend heading for Spain, but nothing on you. I assumed you might be armed, would wish to avoid airport security procedures, and checked ferry bookings. My man in Marseilles got lucky, tagged you on the ferry to Corsica. The man you saw at the airport flew in the same morning you arrived, but missed you. Now I knew you had gone up into the mountains. He took up station at the point where the airport road and the road to the docks meet each other, saw your car take the airport road just after sunup. By the way, did you know four men with guns came into the terminal while you were in the men’s room?”