Rory found her voice. "What happens now?"

Marya shook her head. "Pray the vice-president survives. The speaker of the House makes Carlie LaSalle look like a Phi Beta Kappa."

"Who would've thought it," Sara said in a stunned whisper. "Here in America."

"Yeah, America. I wouldn't've predicted LaSalle, either." Rory shook her head. "Washington's a zoo." Carl Lamb was back on the cube, saying that the vice-president was being rushed to Walter Reed, but was not expected to live.

"It makes a kind of sense," Marya said, rubbing her chin hard. "I mean story sense. Grayson Pauling always was a wild card. You know he was DDT in Desert Wind?"

"No," Rory said, staring at the cube. "What's DDT?"

"It's a unit of the Special Forces they call 'Department of Dirty Tricks.' Unconventional warfare; I forget its actual name. He never talked about it; claimed he wasn't allowed to. But that may be how he knew how to build a bomb he could carry into the White House."

As if to back her up, the cube showed a gray positron scan of the briefcase. "Even cabinet members are checked when they enter the White House," Carl Lamb said. "Grayson Pauling appeared to have nothing but books and papers."

A security guard came into the cube, the side of his head bandaged, blood drops on his tunic. "Maybe we shoulda wondered about those books. Why would someone carry big books into a cabinet meeting?"

Lamb made reassuring noises. "His mind was made up this morning," Rory said. "He might have done it without the new message, eventually."

"This morning." Marya stared at her. "That meeting."

They looked at Sara and she got up. "Yeah, I got to go."

Everybody was hypnotized by the cube, but Rory lowered her voice to a whisper anyhow. "He was openly rebellious and she was really pissed off. It looked as if she'd allowed him to be in on the conference call if he promised to behave. But then he wouldn't go along with the party line."

"This is the scoop you called about?"

"Yes. The president was going to authorize three orbital weapons: masers powered by H-bombs. Pauling seemed to think they would wind up pointed the wrong way. Toward France."

"Ah. That's the DOD connection."

"What?"

"He said on the cube he was after the secretary of defense as well as the president."

"He did, right. Another interesting thing ... the president cut him off, but I think there's only one of these masers. I guess the other two are decoys."

"I don't know how much of this I can use. Though I appreciate knowing it."

"What could they do to you?"

"Cut me off from Washington sources, at the least. Haul me up in front of a security committee—hell, they've got the undersecretary of defense under house arrest."

"Isn't he the secretarynow?"

She shook her head. "Doesn't work that way. The president, whoever that may be, appoints a new one. If he can find anybody at home—I suspect half of Washington will be out beyond the Beltways before quitting time."

"France might do something?"

"More likely the Jihad. But we have lots of enemies who can see that it would be a good time for a couple of strategically placed bombs. Convenient to be out of New York, too."

"Sleepy college towns have their advantages."

"This one, I don't know. The way the Jihad rails about the Coming, they might be able to spare a bomb for here or the Cape. As long as they're bombing."

"You're not kidding?"

"Just professionally paranoid. Look at that. They kept turning rocks over until they found him."

Carl Lamb was standing on the Capitol steps next to Cool Moon Davis, who looked like a ninety-year-old Native American who had just been dragged out of a deep sleep. He was only seventy-two, actually, but had had an eventful life.

"Speaker Davis, do you have any words for America at this tragic time?"

He looked up into the camera, eyes dull, and straightened up slightly when his earphone started feeding him lines. "I've always admired Carly Simon—Carly LaSalle, that is, for her spirit and her dedication to American ideals of America. Like all Americans I feel a deep lens of sauce, I mean sense of sauce, and a truly deep outrage at this crime against the Republic. The crime of assassination."

"He came up with that himself," Marya muttered.

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We ... uh ... we have a link to Walter Reed, and the vice-president, I mean President Mossberg, wants to address the nation."

He looked bad, his chest a tight wrapping of bloodstained bandage, arms inert at his sides, breathing tube taped to his nose.

His normally clear voice was gravelly and nasal. "The doctors say I have a good chance of surviving, but I have spent most of my life in the company of professional liars, and I can see through them." He coughed violently, and a nurse cut off the view for a moment.

"I am ordering that an election be held as soon as possible after my death, and I'm sure Mr. Cool agrees." He spoke slowly, teeth clenched. "The nation faces—the world and this nation face an unprecendented historical challenge one month from now. We need a leader in place who is ... is not Cool Moon Davis." He grimaced and his head lolled to one side. "Am I still alive?"

"Your brain is alive," a male voice said. "Not much else is."

"Thank you. In fact, I believe that you could pull a random citizen off the street and find him or her better able to deal with this crisis than Representative Davis. Or the late president, for that matter. Forgive me for speaking plainly, but—" The cube went dark, and faded back in with Carl Lamb and Davis, both looking a little pale.

"We seem to have lost—"

"The vice-president," Davis cut in, "has not been sworn into office ... " He paused, listening. "And cannot yet speak as president. The laws of succession are plain, and there is no need for a special election."

"Chief Justice West is hurrying to Walter Reed as we speak," Lamb said. "He was en route to New York when this disaster struck."

Miguel Parando

The bartender realized he'd been cleaning the same glass for several minutes, ever since the emergency signal came from the cube. Someone broke a rack with a loud crash.

"Hey!" He spun around. "You show some respect?"

It was Leroy, a tall white guy, dealer. "I'm payin' for this table by the hour. You show me some respect." He lined up an easy shot and hit hard with a lot of draw, whack-thump,and the cue ball glided back to its starting place. "She was the worst president we ever had. So somebody finally punched her fuckin' ticket. What took so long, is what I wonder."

"You a hard fuckin' case, Leroy. She was a nice lady."

"Nice lookin'," said a short fat man at the bar. "I wouldn't go no farther than that. People in Washington didn't think much of her."

"You think much of them?"

A woman in a sparkly silver shift, blue eyes and black skin like the bartender's, smoothed a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. "I'd like a whiskey, Miguel." She put another bill on top. "And anybody else who wants one."

"When did you start drinkin', Connie?"

"Just now. A little ice?"

Leroy came up, emptied his glass, and put it on the bar. "I'll have one for her vaporized ass."