page of the op-order got even more interesting. Clark handed it over to Lya-
lin without comment.
“Bloody about time,” the former Russian chuckled. “You will want
names, addresses, and phone numbers, yes?”
“That would help, Oleg Yurievich.”
“You mean we’re going to be in the real spy business?” Chavez asked. It
would be his first time ever. Most of the time he and Clark had been
paramilitary operators, doing jobs either too dangerous or too unusual for
regular field officers.
“It’s been a while for me too, Ding. Oleg, I never asked what language
you used working your people.”
“Always English,” Lyalin answered. “1 never let on my abilities in Japa-
nese. I often picked up information that way. They thought they could chat
right past me.”
Cute, Clark thought, you just stood there with the open-inoi look on
vourface and people never seemed to catch on. Except that in his case, and
Ding’s, it would be quite real. Well, the real mission wasn’t to play spymas-
ter, was it, and they were prepared enough for what they were supposed to
do, John told himself. They would leave on Tuesday for Korea.
In yet another case of interagency cooperation, a UH-iH helicopter of the
Tennessee National Guard lifted Rebecca Upton, three other men, and the
gasoline tanks to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The tanks were wrapped
in clear plastic and were strapped into place as though they were passengers
themselves.
Oak Ridge’s history went back to the early 19408, when it had been part of
the original Manhattan Engineering Project, the cover name for the first
atomic-bomb effort. Huge buildings housed the still-operating uranium-sep-
aration machinery, though much else had changed including the addition of
a helipad.
The Huey circled once to get a read on the wind, then settled in. An armed
guard shepherded the party inside, where they found a senior scientist and
two lab techs waiting-the Secretary of Energy himself had called them in
this Saturday evening.
The scientific side of the case was decided in less than an hour. More time
would be required for additional testing. The entire NTSB report would ad-
dress such issues as the seat belts, the efficacy of the child-safety seats in the
Denton car, how the air bags had performed, and so forth, but everyone
knew that the important part, the cause of five American deaths, was that the
Cresta gas tanks had been made of improperly treated steel that had corroded
down to a third of its expected structural strength. The rough draft of that
finding was typed up-badly-on a nearby word processor, printed, and
faxed to DOT headquarters, adjacent to the Smithsonian Air and Space Mu-
seum in Washington. Though PRELIMINARY FINDING was the header on the
two-page memo, the information would be treated as Holy Writ. Most re-
markably of all, Rebecca Upton thought, it had all been accomplished in less
than sixteen hours. She’d never seen the government move so fast on any-
thing. What a shame that it didn’t always do that, she thought as she dozed
off in the back of the helicopter during the return flight to Nashville.
Later that night, the University of Massachusetts lost to the University of
Connecticut 108-103 m overtime. Though a fanatic follower of basketball,
and a graduate of U-Mass, Trent smiled serenely as he walked out into the
shopping concourse outside the Hartford Civic Arena. He’d scored in a far
bigger game today, he thought-though the game was not what he thought it
was.
Arnie van Damm didn’t like being awakened early on a Sunday morning,
especially on one that he had designated as a day of rest-a day for sleeping
till eight or so, reading his papers at the kitchen table like a normal citizen,
napping in front of the TV in the afternoon, and generally pretending that he
was back in Columbus, Ohio, where the pace of life was a lot easier. His first
thought was that there had to be a major national emergency. President Dur-
ling wasn’t one to abuse his chief of staff, and few had his private number.
The voice on the other end caused his eyes to open wide and glare at the far
wall of his bedroom.
“Al, this better be good,” he growled at quarter of seven. Then he lis-
tened for a few minutes. “Okay, wait a minute, okay?” A minute later he
was lighting up his computer-even he had to use one in these advanced
times-which was linked to the White House. A phone was next to it.
“Okay, Al, I can squeeze you in tomorrow morning at eight-fifteen. Are
you sure about all this?” He listened for another couple of minutes, annoyed
that Trent had suborned three agencies of the Executive Branch, but he was a
Member of Congress, and a powerful one at that, and the exercise of power
came as easily to him as swimming did to a duck.
“My question is, will the President back me up?”
“If your information is solid, yes, I expect that he will, Al.”
‘ ‘This is the one, Arnie. I’ve talked and talked and talked, but this time the
bastards have killed people.”
“Can you fax me the report?”
“I’m running to catch a plane. I’ll have it to you as soon as I get to my
office.”
So why did you have to call me now? van Damm didn’t snarl. “I’ll be
waiting for it,” was what he said. His next considered move was to retrieve
the Sunday papers from his front porch. Remarkable, he thought, scanning
the front pages. The biggest story of the day, maybe of the year, and nobody
had picked up on it yet.
Typical.
Remarkably, except for the normal activity on the fax machine, the re-
mainder of the day went largely according to plan, which allowed the Presi-
dential chief of staff to act like a normal citizen, and not even wonder what
the following day might bring. It would keep, he told himself, dozing off on
his living-room sofa and missing the Lakers and the Celts from Boston Gar-
den.
9
Power Plays
There were more chits to be called in that Monday, but Trent had quite a few
of them out there. The United States House of Representatives would open
for business per usual at noon. The chaplain intoned his prayer, surprised to
see that the Speaker of the House himself was in his seat instead of someone
else, that there were over a hundred members to listen to him instead of the
usual six or eight queued to make brief statements for the benefit of the
C-SPAN cameras, and that the press gallery was almost half full instead of
entirely empty. About the only normal factor was the public gallery, with the
customary number of tourists and school kids. The chaplain, unexpectedly
intimidated, stumbled through his prayer of the day and departed-or started
to. He decided to linger at the door to see what was going on.
“Mr. Speaker!” a voice announced, to the surprise of no one on the floor
of the chamber.
The Speaker of the House was already looking that way, having been
prepped by a call from the White House. “The Chair recognizes the gentle-
man from Massachusetts.”
Al Trent walked briskly down to the lectern. Once there, he took his time,
setting his notes on the tilted wooden platform while three aides set up an
easel, making his audience wait, and establishing the dramatic tone of his
speech with eloquent silence. Looking down, he began with the required lit-
any:
“Mr. Speaker, I request permission to revise and extend.”
“Without objection,” the Speaker of the House replied, but not as auto-
matically as usual. The atmosphere was just different, a fact clear to every-
one but the tourists, and their tour guides found themselves sitting down,
which they never did. Fully eighty members of Trent’s party were in their
seats, along with twenty or so on the other side of the aisle, including every
member of the minority leadership who happened to be in Washington that
day. And though some of the latter were studies in disinterested posture, the
fact that they were here at all was worthy of comment among the reporters,
who had also been tipped that something big was happening.
“Mr. Speaker, on Saturday morning, on Interstate Highway 40 between
Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee, five American citizens were con-
demned to a fiery death by the Japanese auto industry.” Trent read off the
names and ages of the accident victims, and his aide on the floor uncovered
the first graphic, a black-and-white photo of the scene. He took his time,
allowing people to absorb the image, to imagine what it must have been like
for the occupants of the two cars. In the press gallery, copies of his prepared
remarks and the photos were now being passed out, and he didn’t want to go
too fast.
“Mr. Speaker, we must now ask, first, why did these people die, and sec-