He seemed to be waiting for something from Kolhammer, watching him like an old dog eyeing a fox at the henhouse door. When he didn’t get it, he continued.

“You’re not going to be able to trick the American people into doing what you want. You certainly won’t be able to force them, no matter how hard Ms. O’Brien and her friends may try.”

For the first time in the evening, he smiled. A dry, desiccated wasteland of a smile.

“You’re going to have to do things the old way, Admiral Kolhammer. When you disagree, you are going to have to convince them that you are right, and they are wrong. And while setting out to destroy men like J. Edgar Hoover might seem to clear a path to that goal, I can assure you that it is a road to perdition. I would caution you against walking any farther down it.”

Kolhammer’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly. Roosevelt had not come out and accused him of running the Quiet Room. He had certainly danced around the issue, but he’d done nothing directly. He wondered where this was heading. Was Roosevelt trying to sound him out about some sort of political future? Or was he simply warning him against misadventure?

The president produced another letter, this one sealed in an envelope.

“Since you’ll be staying on, you have new orders, Admiral. You’ll be going back to sea when the Clinton is ready. If that’s all right with you, of course,” he added, loading the phrase with a heavy dose of patrician sarcasm.

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Kolhammer said, not entirely sure whether he’d just been tested, disciplined, or comprehensively outmaneuvered.

The food in Wakuda’s was some of the best in the Zone, which meant it was some of the best in the country, and certainly on the West Coast. Maria O’Brien had tried out the new restaurant at the Ambassador with Slim Jim and Ronald Reagan, and it was probably as good as Pacific cuisine got outside the Zone, but it still wasn’t a patch on Mr. Wakuda’s place, an eighty-seater run by a former petty officer from the Siranui and a couple of local partners, some gay guys who’d been among the first wave of ’temp refugees beating down Kolhammer’s doors when he set up shop out here. Styled after an Asian longhouse, Wakuda’s was open on three sides, with covered decks spilling down into a manicured garden through which a lily pond wound a sinuous course. She could spy the blue glass atrium of the newly opened Burroughs Corporation building through the foliage, just around the corner from her own firm’s landmark site.

O’Brien popped a small piece of freshly baked bread liberally slathered with truffle butter into her mouth. The truffle shavings and a dusting of Parmigiano-Reggiano gave the butter a thick, obscenely rich dark taste, vaguely reminding her of an old mustard without the heat.

“You’re not having the beef, dear?” her companion asked. “It’s quite wonderful, you know. And you need your strength. You can’t possibly get by on green beans and radishes, with all the work you do.”

O’Brien smiled and shook her head, reaching for a small white disk of rice topped with a confit of wild mushroom, resting over grated apple and olive.

“I still don’t eat meat, Eleanor. I’d like to, but I just can’t.”

The first lady nodded sadly. “I suppose I understand, dear. You must have seen some awful things.”

O’Brien shrugged. “It’s no biggie. Are you enjoying the ocean trout? It’s his signature dish, you know.”

Eleanor Roosevelt forked a small mouthful away with obvious pleasure. The dining room buzzed with conversation, but most of the noise was coming from a cocktail bar, separated from them by a huge wooden slab carved from Oregon pine and covered in plates of complimentary bar snacks. The foldaway glass doors were all opened to let in a pleasantly balmy evening.

“I wish we had food like this back at the White House. It’s all so very stodgy and old there. Not like out here. You young people are doing a marvelous job, I must say. I always feel so vibrant when I visit the San Fernando. There is so much energy here. And you can feel it over the range in Los Angeles, too.”

O’Brien took a sip of her wine, a nicely chilled chardonnay, and nodded. “That’s partly what I wanted to talk to you about, Eleanor.”

“Oh, how so, dear?”

The old girl seemed completely ingenuous, but O’Brien could tell that her radar had just gone to full power. Almost every table in the restaurant was full. Only a couple with reservation cards perched on the starched linen tablecloths were empty. The crowd was mixed, with quite a few uptimers to break down LA’s white power homogeneity. There were more than one or two WASP holdouts on the far side of the Hollywood Hills-clubs, resorts, hotels, and restaurants that maintained a bar against “undesirable” elements, including the movie industry’s Jewish moguls. But they were dying. The Zone was the new center of the universe in California, and like Roman rule, its power was prescriptive and imperial. Twenty-first-century law stopped dead at the boundaries of the Special Administrative Zone, but twenty-first-century custom was spreading up and down the West Coast like a wildfire. It was money. It was always about money, thought O’Brien. If you wanted to tap into the insane wealth that was being generated in the Valley, then you had to play by the Valley’s rules.

“You see a lot of things that you like out here, don’t you, Eleanor? The way that men and women of all colors and creeds are judged on the basis of their character?”

The first lady nodded, not warily, but with just a hint of reserve. “I’ve often said to Franklin that the first principles of America have found their truest expression out here,” she said. “But why do you ask, dear?”

O’Brien didn’t bother sugarcoating it. “Because we will need your help in preserving all this,” she said, waving a hand around the restaurant but implying much beyond its confines. “This war is going to end soon, and the sunset clause in our enabling legislation will suddenly begin to tick. A year later, everything we’ve built here, all those principles you find so appealing, will be exposed to attack by those who do not agree with them. You know what these people are like, what lengths they will go to. Hoover was one of them. He had you followed. He read your mail. He would have destroyed you, given half a chance. He did the same out here-or he tried, anyway-a thousand times over.”

The first lady acknowledged the point with a dip of her head as a server appeared with a small square plate, in the center of which sat a tangle of roasted pepper shavings and arugula leaves, framing a small roll of daikon, celery, and carrot. O’Brien took the plate and thanked the young woman. Jazz played over the sound system, and the tables were far enough apart that they could speak in low voices without being overheard. O’Brien knew quite a few of the other diners as big-name players from the emerging aerospace and electronics industries. They were doubtlessly hatching their own plots and schemes over the fourteen-course banquet. Some may have even been discussing this very issue. The first lady was not the only person whom she had lobbied on this matter.

“I can understand your anxiety,” said Mrs. Roosevelt. “But what can I do?”

It was O’Brien’s turn to smile shyly, a gesture framed entirely for effect. “Come now, Eleanor. You have the president’s ear, and you speak with many people around him. Plus, you’re a significant figure in your own right. You’ve campaigned very hard to establish many of the things that already exist here in the Valley. All I am asking is that you consider helping us, where you can, when you can, back on the East Coast.”