“Ticket or no ticket, you’re not coming in, no way,” the smallest one is saying. “Now just step out of line, sir.” He reaches out and takes hold of Maxie’s wrist. “Make it gentle. Move away.”

“Don’t even touch me, asshole.” Maxie throws a punch, but it falls short. The third man speaks into his lapel radio—“Backup, backup”—while his colleague repeats, “You’re not going in. Just walk aw—” He catches Maxie’s second punch full on the cheekbone and the push-and-shove begins again, dangerously close to the stair top. The older man who shared Maxie’s joke a minute or so ago is backing away from the scrum, pulled clear by his wife. He’s holding his ribs and looking both shocked and bruised. The backup beef arrives in the shape of three DPS officers in their light brown uniforms. They hardly make a noise but just reach out and take hold of a limb apiece, as quickly and as undramatically as three shepherds taking up a ram. It lasts a minute at the most. This is democracy at work. Order is restored with firm civility. Maxim Lermontov is hoisted off the ground. Neatly, though not noiselessly, he is carried, cursing like a teenager, in his deceiving suit along the hallway, out of sight, and very nearly out of Leonard’s life for good.

Leonard, still in shock but oddly satisfied as well — he’s smiling, can’t stop himself — has taken his seat in the chamber before he catches sight of Nadia. When he left the loft this morning with her apple, she was wrapped in towels and standing, barefoot and pink-faced, at the mirror drying her hair. Now she is dressed, of course, and prettier than he has ever seen her. During their brief flirtation over politics in Britain, she always wore walking boots and trousers and kept her hair fiercely brushed back from her brow. She’d not worn makeup, or certainly no makeup that was anything but functional. Sunblock. Lip salve. Moisturizer. Dermatitis cream. Nothing colorful. Here, though, when he sees her walking down the left aisle of the chamber looking for her place, her lips are painted red and her hair is teased into a wavy bob so that she looks less like a Sniper and more like a neat schoolteacher or librarian. She’s wearing a granola-patterned linen pantsuit with a butterfly brooch on the lapel. She seems a little taller too. Heeled shoes, perhaps. She looks composed. She cannot know that Maxie has been — what, arrested or just marched out of harm’s way? Leonard’s tempted to hurry after her, whisper the latest developments, and hint that they’d best call off AmBush entirely.

Regrettably for Leonard, this eventuality has already been allowed for in their planning. There was always the possibility that one or more of the Snipers might fail to get inside or within shouting range of Dubya. Whoever’s left, whoever does get into the chamber, must see the whole thing through, and alone if need be: as soon as Laura Bush says child, “Stand up, point toward the president, and shout what you have come to shout, and then resist removal by clinging to furniture or to your neighbor. Grab your neighbor’s belt or necklace. Don’t let go.” So, as instructed, edgily obedient, Leonard stays where he is, near the right aisle, two rows back from Nadia on one of the chamber’s heavy leather chairs, at a representative’s desk with its own telephone and voting keypad. He watches her and hopes she will turn and see him watching. Then he can make the cancel sign. But once she has found her seat, she is immobile, like a worshipper at church, frozen in thought, focusing on the pulpit.

Even Leonard is more composed now. Maxie’s removal or arrest has unburdened him to some extent. He does not have to prove himself in front of the American. He does not have to fear excess — a hidden gun, perhaps; more violence. He only has to be a plucky comrade for Nadia, and he is practiced at that. Many’s the time that he and she have stood shoulder to shoulder in demonstrations or on pickets in Britain, chanting slogans harmlessly. He can do the same today. With any luck, Maxie will be locked up. He deserves it, Leonard thinks. Punching a Secret Service agent must be worth a night in jail. Then he and Nadia can spend the evening together at the apartment without Maxie’s brutish presence. Finally. Today’s three contrasting views of her, in pajamas first, and then the wet-haired woman in her towels, the pretty woman in her suit, have made Leonard think once more that possibly he could make his move on Nadia. Or that he ought to at least try. With Maxie absent for the night, with AmBush successfully or unsuccessfully behind them, and with Nadia’s pregnancy acting on her mood, it could just happen that she tumbles into Leonard’s arms. He’ll ask if she will fix his face again. She stands between his open knees … It’s just a feeble fantasy — he stops himself — but still he returns within seconds to contemplate them making love: this time she lets her wet towels drop, she reaches up on her high heels and lets him kiss her lipsticked mouth while Maxie watches through his prison bars. This will be his sweet revenge for last night’s incident at Gruber’s, for the Texan’s painful, spiteful, fifty-fifty grip on his shoulder, for his turning his back on the saxophone, for — here Leonard’s anger shakes him hard — the clatter of that thrown dime. All Leonard has to do is hold his nerve. The worst he’ll have to do is shout three words.

By now the oakwood chamber is almost full. All the seats are taken and ticket holders have occupied the galleries, but there is still no sign of any officials or dignitaries on the dais at the governing end of the room, under the canopied square arch with its IN GOD WE TRUST inscription, the national and state flags, and the Lone Star chandeliers. Leonard studies the festival program again, trying to steady his hands and keep his eyes off Nadia, until with hardly a prompt the audience goes quiet, all of its own accord, and attendants come from the back of the room and take up positions in the aisles and in front of the dais. Laura Bush enters through side doors, from the Speaker’s office. There’s no mistaking her, her ordinary smile. She is escorted by some tough old Texan reptile that Leonard recognizes from the local television news, by an awkwardly neat festival chairwoman, and by a younger woman in a black shift dress whom someone in the row behind identifies as Jenna Bush, the daughter. The audience applauds, and Leonard mutters to himself, “Child, child.” He wants the word to be set as a spring that snaps him into noise and action the very instant it is aired, right on the first beat of the bar, or at least before he has the chance to think. He needs to feel as triggered as an athlete waiting for the starting gun.

Of course, there’s someone missing, isn’t there? Leonard straightens at the thought. Where is the president? He did not accompany his wife when she entered with her daughter, that’s for sure. He isn’t on the dais. Leonard raises himself a little in his chair and inspects the front row of the chamber, where the dignitaries are seated in reserved places. None of them resembles George W. Bush. None of them has the president’s distinctive wiry crop of hair or his stiff shoulders, always halfway through a shrug. And none of them resembles George Senior or the president’s mother, come to that. He swivels round and swiftly checks the rest of the room, the galleries even, but not a sign. Laura and Jenna are the only ones. If the president and his parents have come to Austin, as Maxie has said they would, then clearly they will not be attending the first lady’s keynote speech, unless they’re doing it in disguise or are crouching behind the woodwork of the upper balcony. So, thank heavens, Maxie’s “private enterprise,” his plague on all their houses, has proved to be a thorough waste of time. A totally inefficient squandering of time. There is no Maxie and there is no president. AmBush has turned into a farce.