The President would not die in a rain of doom.

But the people of the United States would receive a prime-time television briefing on the plot, with irrefutable evidence — rockets, transmitters, agents..."

And tape recordings of this meeting in the Iranian embassy.

Dastgerdi left the microphone in the case.

"This will be another glory to the name of the Islamic Jihad," Dastgerdi told the Iranian.

"A glory for Iran and Syria," Ayat added.

"Oh, yes," Dastgerdi continued. He knew his words would soon emanate from millions of American television sets, in the Arabic he spoke and in simultaneous translation. He spoke for history. "Of course. The assassination of the President of the United States, the head of Satan's regime on earth, the slaughter of the filthy writhing snakes attending his evil ceremonial inauguration. Our nations shall share the harvest of this triumph of our faith."

"Insallah," Ayat added.

A harvest of war and destruction and Soviet dominion.

19

As the sky lightened with dawn, Anne Desmarais stamped her numb feet in the gateway of the embassy of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea. The North Korean sentries stared at her from their guard positions, gloved-hands on Kalashnikov rifles. The Soviets had notified their Korean comrades of the surveillance of the Iranian embassy. The North Koreans cooperated by not shooting the Canadian woman loitering outside their gates.

Desmarais watched the Iranian gate, and intermittently scanned the long tree-shadowed avenue, noting the surveillance vehicles — a panel truck at one end, Zhgenti's Zil limousine at the other — and the cars passing infrequently on the distant boulevard. She went through the motions of her charade as a photojournalist, holding the camera, watching for subjects, maintaining her position in the shadows and her demeanor as the calm professional.

But the taste of Zhgenti's semen was still in her mouth and her mind raged with shame and hatred. The hours of degradation in the limousine as she fulfilled his crude demands now twisted her reason and filled her vision with scenes of bullets punching his squat body, of high explosives spilling out his guts, of fire charring his face...

With the help of the Americans, Zhgenti would die. She knew they would come. And when they did, she would point out the Soviet hit man waiting to kill them. They would reward her with forgiveness for her past work with the Soviets. Perhaps she would become an agent for the Americans.

Would the Americans capture Zhgenti? He knew many details of KGB operations throughout Europe and the Middle East. Would they torture him? Would they allow her to watch? Would they allow her to guide their tortures, to allow their tortures to become her revenge?

Zhgenti would pay for degrading her: first with high voltage through clamped-on electrodes, then with cuts from razor blades, then with chemicals rubbed into the slashes, then shocks, slashes, and again chemical burns...

Until only a bleeding, pus-flowing ruin would remain. The roar of an explosion shattered her thoughts. Then the dawn exploded in unending blasts of high explosive as flashes tore the street, threw walls into the air, shattered the mansions of the quarter. Fragments of steel sang past her, ricochetting off stone and the wrought-iron gates. Then debris — stone, wood, flesh, glass — showered the street. Screams came from the grounds of the Iranian embassy as the maimed and dying felt their wounds.

Artillery! Panic seized Desmarais. She ran from the shelter of the North Korean gate.

Then the next salvo of rockets rained down.

Terror descended on the Iranians. Roaring flames and shock waves tore apart the embassy and the grounds, the explosions coming too quickly to count or differentiate; the upper floor of the old French neo-roccoco mansion disintegrated; limousines in the curving drive disappeared in storms of light and spinning scrap metal; a group of running Guards melted in the blast; all this in the first strike of twenty-four rockets.

Twisted metal fell from the sky as sections of trucks and limousines crashed onto the pavement. Wood and plaster hammered the embassy and the grounds. Thousands of bits of unidentifiable debris rained down in the long second after the chain of explosions.

The mullahs in their blood-crimson robes stared at the anatomical displays sprayed on still-standing walls and trees, only detached arms and legs and intestines and raw pink meat remaining of those who had been closest to the explosions. Revolutionary Guards, in shock, attempted to rise from the floor to fulfill their responsibilities, only to discover their legs gone, or their skulls opened, or sections of lumber protruding from their chests.

A chemical odor overwhelmed the stink of blood and excrement and explosives. The yellow gas swirled through the ceiling and walls, drifted across the wreckage and corpses and wounded on the stately lawns.

The remains of limousines flamed. Chemical fire blazed. Points of white phosphorous glowed on corpses. Stunned wounded thrashed at the white fire burning their bodies. White phosphorous sparkled in the boughs of the trees like stars, burning through leaves and twigs to drop to other branches.

The shattered mansion creaked and sagged, floors and ceilings falling, walls tottering, crystal smashing and silver ringing as cabinets fell. Ammunition popped in the flaming hulks of the limousines and trucks.

As the debris settled, an instant of silence followed. Those who still lived heard ragged breathing. Having suffered the traumatic amputation of a hand, a Guard reached for his Kalashnikov, the twin jagged bones of his forearm scratching across the stamped-steel receiver of the autorifle. Then footsteps and prayers broke the silence as survivors scrambled through the wreckage and gore, attempting to escape the horror.

Sprawled on the asphalt of the drive, the flames from the burning vehicles scorching his face, Colonel Dastgerdi stared at the destruction around him.

The Syrians had gone insane! Dastgerdi raged. Shelling an embassy! Even if Iran had conspired against the regime, even if they provided sanctuary for the defeated fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood...

He saw his suitcase of electronics a few steps away. The hand and arm of Jean Pierre Giraud, still in the sleeve of his tailored jacket, held the handle. Dastgerdi saw only the hand and arm. Giraud had disappeared.

Dastgerdi tried to rise. Pain stopped him. Clawing at the asphalt, he reached the suitcase and threw away the dead hand. He tried to crawl away with the suitcase, but he could not. Only one leg responded; the other was numb. He looked down and saw a piece of steel protruding from it.

The barrel-and-piston assembly of a Kalashnikov had impaled his leg: not a fatal wound. He could continue. Determined to survive, determined to forward the transmitters to the United States where the units would become props in the elaborate national media trial and condemnation of Iran, Dastgerdi crawled away from the flames.

Yellow mist enveloped him: he smelled dichlorethyl sulphide and clamped his jaw. A breath would draw the blistering poison mist, otherwise known as mustard gas, into his lungs. Struggling not to panic, not to breathe, Dastgerdi flailed at the asphalt, trying to somehow drag himself and the precious transmitter units away.

Then he looked up and saw his rain of doom.

In an instant of stopped-time vision, he saw the converging rockets descending. The 240mm rockets, traveling at five hundred meters a second, appeared to float for the instant of recognition.

Dastgerdi realized the truth: his own rockets fell from the gray sky, the transmitters in the suitcase he held guiding them and their deadly warheads to the place where he lay wounded and immobile and exposed on the driveway pavement.