“Yes.”

The colonel folded his hands in a tight cluster in front of him, pressing them down on the tabletop as if he might try and bend it toward the floor. Finally, he took a small tape recorder from his pocket and put it on the table.

“We will start from the beginning of your flight,” he said. “Recount everything from your takeoff. Leave nothing unmentioned, however trivial. Remember what the end result is.”

4

White House situation room

“THEIR RESPONSE INDICATES THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT happened, not yet, anyway.” National Security Advisor Blitz frowned as he assessed the situation for President Todd. The operation had gone extremely well—a good thing, since the Iranian bomb program appeared to have been much further ahead than anyone had believed. “It’s been three hours now and they’re only just starting to seal off the site. Or what’s left of it.”

“Was it totally destroyed?” Todd asked. She and Blitz were sitting alone in the room. The President had decided she would have no witnesses to the discussion; even her Secret Service bodyguards were in the hall, none too happy at having been summarily ordered to stay outside the door, a rare Todd decree.

“Our satellite won’t be passing overhead for another two hours, and we don’t want to risk a plane,” Blitz told her. “But the images of the explosion and its aftermath from the NASA aircraft show the tunnels and entire underground complex were completely wiped out. It’s history.”

Several hundred workers had died along with it. Regrettable, but necessary.

Blitz’s phone vibrated in his hand. He glanced quickly at the face.

“Ms. Stockard and Mr. Reid are ready for the video conference,” he said.

The President turned to the console as Blitz flipped it on. Breanna and Reid appeared on a split screen, their faces projected from the Whiplash command center at the CIA complex.

“I understand congratulations are in order,” she said. “Job well done.”

“Thank you, Madam President,” said Reid.

“Have we recovered our team yet?”

“We’re working on it,” said Breanna. “But there has been—there is a complication.” She turned to her right, evidently looking toward Reid in the center.

“There’s new information,” added Reid. “We’re still compiling it. But there appears to be another facility that we haven’t known about until now. And it’s possible—very possible, I’m afraid—that there is another nuclear device there, waiting to be tested.”

“How is this possible?” Todd felt her chest catch.

Her lungs acting up? She ignored the pain and continued.

“The facilities were examined in great detail before I approved the mission,” she said. “Well before.”

“I know, Madam President,” said Reid. “I can’t make any excuses. There does seem to be another facility. We have a code name, a radio address, really. We’re trying to match it up to a physical plant. At the moment, we have two different possibilities. Both were closed two years ago. At that time we believed one was completely shut down because of an accidental explosion there; the other housed centrifuges that were no longer needed. Our best theory is that one or both may actually have been kept open and developed—it’s the same pattern they used for the lab we targeted.”

“Which we found.”

“Thanks, actually, to the Israelis.” Reid was very big on giving credit where credit was due, even if it went to a competitor; he’d even been known to laud the Defense Intelligence Agency, something most CIA officers and nearly every Agency bureaucrat would never do. “In any event, we’re working to determine what is going on at those facilities. Whatever it is, the Iranians have gone to great lengths to keep their status secret. Given that, we believe it’s very possible—likely—that one may be another bomb assembly area. Because the amount of fuel in the explosion is about half of what we projected, worst case. And now, well, worst case seems to have been too conservative, given the state of the bomb we destroyed.”

Christine Todd was famous for keeping her temper. She prided herself on being able to control her emotions: all of them, but her temper especially. As a little girl, her mother had said she had the famous “Irish temper” of her ancestors.

You are easygoing in your needs, Mother often declared, but let someone fall short of their job or responsibility, and there’s hell to pay. ’Tis a flaw, Christine Mary, a flaw that will make people dislike you, friends especially.

By the time she was out of her teens, Todd had learned to control herself—and more important, learned that everyone was human, most especially herself. The Golden Rule—Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—had become something more than just a biannual theme for a fifteen minute sermon at Sunday mass.

But every so often the forces that she’d chained deep in her psyche reasserted themselves.

“Why in the name of all that is holy,” she demanded, “was this site not found earlier?”

Reid didn’t answer.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Jonathon,” she continued, her Irish-American heritage asserting itself with the mild profanity. “How many times did I go over this with your agency?”

“I don’t have control over the analysts,” he said mildly.

“We believe we can deal with the problem,” said Breanna, stepping in. “We’ve drawn up a tentative plan for a second strike tomorrow night.”

Breanna. Good job. God bless Magnus for recommending you.

“Why tomorrow night?” Todd asked.

“It’s the soonest the assets will be in place,” said Breanna. “We want to strike quickly, obviously.”

“Before I say anything else, let me note that I expect better information, more timely, from the intelligence community,” said Todd.

“Understood,” replied Reid.

How could he argue?

This was one more reason to fire the head of the Agency—not that she needed any more.

And replace him with Jonathon?

Hmmph.

“You can determine which site it is?” asked Todd sharply.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Reid. “Or we’ll hit both.”

“Prepare for a second mission,” Todd said. “I want updates on the hour, and I want you, Jonathon, personally to vouch for the final briefing, and personally available for questions if the need arises.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Very good.” Todd hit the switch and dismissed them.

“It was an intelligence failure—unacceptable,” said Blitz. His face was red.

“That, Dr. Blitz, is an understatement.” Todd glanced at her watch. It was later than she thought—she was due to speak with the Secretary of State upstairs in five minutes; there was a full National Security Committee session slated immediately afterward. “Your staff will have to explain itself as well. We’ll deal with the immediate problem, then worry about Monday morning quarterbacking.”

“In this sort of situation,” said Blitz, “failure—this is why we need a change of leadership from the top at the Agency. You’ve given everyone concerned more than enough time to fail. And now, this will be—”

“Failure is not acceptable,” snapped the President, standing. “Get the Joint Chiefs ready—I want a plan to take out the remaining site. They are to report to me in an hour. Less, if possible.”

5

Suburban Virginia

THE TV DRONED ON IN THE OTHER ROOM. ZEN, HOME early and hungry, barely paid attention as he made a sandwich with leftovers from the fridge. He wheeled himself back and forth between the refrigerator and the counter island at the center of the kitchen, which was set at wheelchair height to make it easier for him to work. He was just trying to decide whether to add prosciutto to the leftover roast pork and marinated sweet peppers when the word “Iran” caught his attention. He left his sandwich and wheeled over to the family room. The late afternoon talk show had been replaced by an announcer, who according to the flashing red legend at the top of the screen was presenting “Breaking News.”