(Ironically, much of America’s international clout both monetary and military came from a combination of money and the materiel furnished by one of the world’s largest armaments industries. There were moments when the President, not a particularly imaginative man, could envisage himself walking a tightrope a thousand feet above the ground, balancing a bucket of dollars in one hand with a fistful of guns, bombs, planes, and tanks in the other. It was not a very pleasant image, but what could one do if one wanted to maintain a stable economy and use it to help achieve a stable world?)

  “Stable world!” He groaned and turned over. That would be the day. It had never been stable in his entire lifetime and he suspected it never would be. But one had to keep trying. Certainly one had to pay the idea lip service, anyway, if only because elections were not won by leaders who told their peoples the harsh and glaring truth. Not in America, anyway; and America, in general, was the most honest of the lot.

  For half a dollar, he thought in exasperation now, he would chuck the whole thing and go fishing. He was too impatient to enjoy fishing, and he knew he couldn’t chuck it willingly until he had won the next election and finished a successful second term; but there were times when he was sorely tempted. If he weren’t so convinced that what Helen sometimes referred to dryly as “your fatal charm” could pull off this current little tussle of wills with Sidi, this might be one of them. It was tiresome and boring to have to go through one more game of bluff with an opponent whose only real aim was to be an international gadfly. He had many more important things to do, including a bill to reform the reform of the health-care system, and a bill to reform the reform of the welfare system. He had observed in his years in politics that presidential highs had to be cleaned up after by somebody, and usually it was the next guy in line who tidied up and tried to put things back in order—if the next guy was lucky. As he had told Helen, he always seemed to be. But he was still mopping up after his frenetic predecessor and, he was sure, would be for quite some time.

  In this situation Sidi was a secondary annoyance, if potentially a somewhat more difficult one than the President liked to see. If Sidi indeed had the support of a powerful neighbor, that would be one thing; if secretly supported and encouraged by Russia or China or Iran or North Korea, or, quite possibly all four, that would be another. In either event, the President was confident he could handle it, since he could not bring himself to believe that it was actually all that important.

  Sidi had acted up before, and the coalition led by the President had slapped him down. Surely any sensible man, confronted by that record and the certainty that it would be repeated if he didn’t behave, would give up his stupid little ideas and retreat to his pink monstrosity atop Pointe Sinistre. Of course Sidi was not necessarily a sensible man—far from it. But surely there must be some bounds of rationality within which he felt constrained to act. And surely the necessity of not antagonizing America and her President must be one of the most important of all.

  So why didn’t the President stop thinking about it and go to sleep? Tomorrow he would talk to the allies, start lining up the UN, chat with Willie Wilson and Johnny Jones on the Hill and start greasing the wheels there. He might also hold a press conference, just to underscore things and get the jump on Sidi.

  Right now, he needed his sleep. To quote Helen again (for a man who had become relatively independent of his wife, he reflected wryly, she certainly remained a major presence in his life), he had a mind that he could “turn off like a spigot.” And on, too, when needed.

  Now it was off.

  Thought stopped.

  Sleep took over.

  Around him the beautiful mansion stirred, and spoke softly from time to time, through the night.

  * * *

  So sleep finally claimed some of the more famous residents of the hub-city of the Western world from which all blessings flowed—to friends, and sometimes even enemies, in times of crisis when they needed help … received by friends and enemies with jealousy and snide resentment when crises passed and they felt themselves relatively secure again.

  4

  The balance, as always, fluctuated sharply. Right now, aside from the President of Greater Lolómé and his sinister friends, it was generally favorable to America. What it would be tomorrow when America’s President began telephoning around the world to round up support for another crackdown on Sidi, who could say? It changed in minutes, in today’s instantly communicating global society.

  For the moment the major players in Washington were all accounted for, resting safely, securely (and perhaps a little smugly, the Secretary of State reflected as he drifted comfortably into sleep).

  They were all pretty much agreed, in this latest crisis. They might disagree on details and approach, but as to Sidi himself and the problem he now posed for them, they were at heart unanimous. It would be a comparatively minor episode—it would be handled—Sidi would back down—it would all end comfortably—the world would go on. Everybody from the President on down was quite confident of that.

  Eight thousand miles away in Greater Lolómé City, other players in the game were well into their morning occupations.

  They were not quite so smug, safe, and secure.

  It would not be, for some of them, a good day.

  For Creed Moncrief, however, possessor of the funny name the President loved to make fun of but otherwise known as “that fine young man from California” to his principal sponsor, Senator Richard Emmett Wilson, the day began brightly and with supreme good cheer.

  He had just received a fax from Pasadena.

  In it Anna-Maria Gonzalez, thirty-four, highly successful trusts lawyer, member of the city council, potential candidate for Congress and V.B.G. (Very Bright Girl, as he often addressed her in his letters and faxes), said what he had been waiting six months to hear.

  Her message, brief and to the point, said simply “I can stand it if you can. Love, A.”

  Now as he prepared to leave the embassy, tucked away in the dusty side street where it was barely permitted to exist by the President of All the Peoples of Greater Lolómé, the world seemed a sunny and sparkling place. Actually the sun, as usual, was dimmed by the heavy haze of dust kicked up by the city’s constantly moving population of nomad buyers, sellers, and seekers after food and water, with their many camels and donkeys and their few rusting old secondhand American cars. The embassy, surrounded by massive, barbed wire-topped mud walls, electronically controlled gates, and armed guards stationed on the rooftops and at every aperture, could hardly be considered a home-away-from-home conducive to relaxation and peace of mind.

  There were constant threats to its personnel, constant “little nibblings,” as Big Bill Bullock described them in his reports to the department, harassments all the time that kept them all on edge and made of Greater Lolómé a true hardship post for the thirty or so staff members who lived within the walls of their highly fortified and closely guarded compound.

  “Not exactly the fun center of the universe,” the ambassador had commented dryly during his most recent appearance, three months ago, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “But we survive.”

  And so they did, not as comfortably as many of the older Foreign Service and civil service hands on the roster would have liked, but, for younger spirits like Creed Moncrief, a high-tension challenge that satisfied their hunger for excitement. “Living on the edge,” as he described it to Anna-Maria, was, simply, fun.

  He knew this morning that his enjoyment of it would not last much longer, for she had made it emphatically clear during his last leave home that marriage, when it occurred, would be in Pasadena and that he should arrange reassignment back to Washington because she would not go to Greater Lolómé nor would she permit him to return there.

  So now he was faced with the reality that his days here were numbered and his enjoyment of desert distances and silences, and all the teeming life of the mud-brick cities and busy oases, would not last much longer.

  “Don’t worry,” she had remarked. “We can always go to Palm Springs. And I’ll be glad to accompany you to the Riverside County Fair.”

  This had made him laugh, of course, but he still observed wistfully that life in the real desert in the midst of tribes and caravans was also fun.

  “And fun, I suppose,” she remarked, “to live under the dictatorship of that penny-ante monster in the Pink House.”

  “We stay out of his way,” Creed had replied, “and he stays out of ours, pretty much. It isn’t an amicable arrangement, but it works. Most of the time.”

  It worked for him because, at thirty-six, he was already a thoroughly experienced veteran of the CIA, and whatever he needed to do in Greater Lolómé he had the expertise and knowledge to accomplish—and, he prided himself, the courage, which sometimes, as on this particular bright day, took him into areas where he might not go, to undertake risks he should not invite. The ambassador was always telling him this, always telling him to go easy and not invite danger if he didn’t have to. The Agency in Washington was equally cautionary. But Creed was not yet of an age—and had never, really, been of a temperament—to live within the strict letter of safety. He had the extra edge the Agency liked to see in those it sent into the field—but always with the tacit, sometimes plainspoken, understanding that if he went too far, he was on his own and they couldn’t help him much. Which was another reason Anna-Maria wanted him safely back at a desk in Langley.

  He had to concede that she had a point. Aside from his liking for living dangerously, which in this particular environment really was dangerous, Creed was basically quite a conventional soul. He came of a solid old-line California family which went back on his mother’s side to Spanish land-grant days; had gone to Thatcher School for Boys in Ojai; graduated from the University of Southern California, and completed Yale Law School in the top five percentile of his class. From there he had gone directly to Washington, an early obsession, and had immediately joined Willie Wilson’s staff as assistant to the Senator’s legislative assistant; and from there, after two fascinating years, to the CIA, where he had volunteered for overseas duty and rapidly been given it. Now he was a nine-year veteran of the field, most of it spent in the Middle East, the last two years in Greater Lolómé. But always at the back of his mind was the desire to marry, have a family, settle down. Anna-Maria had come into his life three years ago and now had made all that possible. Suddenly a desk at Langley did not seem so unattractive, after all. It was time; perhaps, at thirty-six, a little past time. Not, he thought happily now, too late to retire most happily to full domesticity and a quieter life.

  After this last job that he wanted to do, of course. He had faxed back immediately, “Wonderful. Yes, yes, yes. Will call tomorrow. Love, C.” He had not intimated in any way, nor would he, that he just wanted to nail down, as he thought of it, a few more details about Sidi’s attempted end run around the US, world opinion, and the nonproliferation treaty.

  To this end he had put on the native disguise he sometimes wore on special occasions, walked through the secret underground tunnel between the embassy compound and the ubiquitous (and obliging) McDonald’s that stood on the opposite corner, and from there had emerged through its kitchen back door into the swirling streets, apparently a garbage man carrying an overflowing can which he emptied into a waiting truck. This attracted, as always, a rush of some of Sidi’s happy, gaunt-eyed people to scrounge what they could from the refuse. In the ensuing uproar he slipped into the crowd and disappeared. Or thought he did.

  Casually he proceeded along unpaved roads and alleyways toward his objective: rendezvous with a young houseman at the Pink House, an accidental contact he had met on a similar venture a few days ago who had turned out to be one of Greater Lolómé’s few hidden but dedicated “freedom fighters” and an invaluable source of information. He was supposed to bring with him today a detailed sketch of the location and launching trajectories of the missiles now in place beneath Sidi’s palace.

  Singing happily inside with the thought of Anna-Maria’s acceptance and the wonderful prospects it opened up, Creed Moncrief spent his last few sentient moments thinking of her with part of his mind while another part, coldly trained, took him slowly, circuitously, unobtrusively but inexorably toward his destination.

  Ten blocks from the run-down center of Greater Lolómé City, where the Great Mosque, the two-chambered House of Advisers, and the three main government departments of War, Peace, and Religious Dissemination flanked a nondescript and shabby park, he saw at the far end of an intersection the figure of his contact leaning casually against a wall while a group of children played around his feet. They exchanged no sign of recognition, but as Creed came within a hundred feet the children suddenly rushed toward him, tossing a ball between them, apparently wanting to play.

  He stepped aside to avoid their rush, found himself caught, batted the ball back and, laughing, tried to push on through. Suddenly one of the boys, perhaps ten, banged headlong into him, bounced off and landed on his back in the street, where he gave a fearful cry and, apparently doubled with pain, appeared to roll in agony.

  The rest of the children circled Creed, yelling and screaming, faces now contorted with fear and hate.

  “But I—” he began; became aware that his contact had disappeared from the corner ahead; tried to break free of the children, who surrounded him on every side; and realized too late that one of the government’s green-painted weapons carriers, manned by half a dozen soldiers in the government’s green uniforms, was roaring down upon him from the intersection.

  He made one last desperate lunge to free himself from the dirty little clawing hands that clung to every portion of his loosely flowing robe; failed to do so; found himself suddenly tripped and toppled to the ground; stared up into the barrels of three or four Uzis; and realized that he had been trapped by one of the oldest gambits in the books.

  Mentally, he began in that moment to give up the world.

  It would, however, be a while.

  He was blindfolded, thrown into the weapons carrier, sat upon by several of the soldiers. The children scattered, the vehicle roared away, the street fell still; a lone scruffy dog wandered by and idly sniffed the earth where tumult only seconds ago had taken place. He concentrated on every twist and turn as best he could, trying, as he had been trained, to memorize them, knowing even as he consigned them to memory that he would never have reason or opportunity to use them.

  After five minutes of jolting speed, the vehicle swung off what was apparently a main thoroughfare, started up a long ramp of smoothly polished stones, arrived at what was apparently an entryway, stopped and was recognized. He was roughly removed, flung forward, hustled stumbling along a long, smoothly paved corridor. He was almost certain he was in the Pink House. He was shoved into an elevator; it descended. He was shoved out into another corridor, far below the peak of Pointe Sinistre.

  He knew now where he was going and began to pray, to God, to Anna-Maria, to his country, knowing as he did so that none of them could help him now.

  He was flung headlong into a room and blindfolded. His clothes were stripped from him by hot, hurrying hands. He was flung down upon a cold stone table. Very soon the torture began, mild and almost gentle at first, escalating presently. Time blurred, began to lose form and dimension; swiftly he lost sense of it. Constant pain began to dominate his being. Above him at one point, for several long, lingering moments, the grinning face of Young Sidi stared down upon him. In one last despairing moment he tried to restore some balance of sanity to the world by forcing himself to think, When I get out of this and Annie and I get married—but just then rough hands seized his naked legs, forced them far apart. Unmitigated pain, savage, searing, merciless, seemed to swallow his whole body. His last conscious act was to think stupidly, But I can’t get married now. I don’t have any—

  At that moment a blinding whiteness consumed the world and the screaming began. He didn’t know who was doing it but he couldn’t seem to stop it from driving him mad.

  Five levels above in his private study, into which such things were regularly piped from below for his personal enjoyment, Sidi bin Sidi bin Sidi listened with a pleased smile as the wailing went on, rising and falling, rising and falling—almost four hours of it, he realized later with satisfaction, during which he had a leisurely lunch with his air force chief of staff, whose loyalty had seemed a bit shaky lately. Sidi, as he put it to himself Western-style, wanted to scare the shit out of him.

  The noise from below helped him do this with supreme efficiency and completeness. The general was unable to finish his lunch, but Sidi finished his, quite calmly and happily, before he dismissed his trembling subordinate, deathly pale and reduced almost to gibberish. He need not, he thought complacently, fear trouble from that one ever again.

  After the luncheon dishes were cleared away by manservants silent and equally shaken, Sidi was left alone to take his usual nap. But he did not go to sleep for a while. The awful noises emanating from below presently induced in him that physical reaction he most enjoyed, particularly when he could arrange for it to occur to this particular type of accompaniment. It happened to him twice, in fact, before the dreadful sounds ended in one last, choked, animal gurgle.

  Sidi smiled, turned on his side, and went peacefully to sleep.

  About half an hour after that a large, lumpy burlap bag was flung on the doorstep of the American embassy from a truck whose driver and crew sped grinning away into the city’s labyrinth of back alleys, firing rifles exuberantly into the air as they went.