“Rational consideration would seem to suggest that it is not.

  “Not only would such an adventure probably be extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, to organize on the scale of the First, or even the ‘second’ Gulf War, but its outcome in all probability could only end in another ignominious ‘victory’ for the United States as empty, open-ended, and inconclusive as the first and second such ‘triumphs’ proved to be.

  “Americans can remember all too vividly the long, drawn-out, ultimately failed aftermaths of the first Gulf War—the endless wrigglings of the enemy after his ‘defeat,’ when he successfully evaded, one by one, the strictures placed upon him by the United Nations at United States behest, thereby making the United Nations and the United States look like fools (as indeed they were) in the eyes of a world whose respect is vital to the success of US and UN policies.

  “Americans can also remember the similarly trailed-away, blown-away, thrown-away ‘victory’ in the ‘second Gulf War,’ when a comparable lack of will and tenacity on the part of the ‘victors’ permitted President Sidi to similarly, successfully, evade the punitive after-measures sought by the US and the UN.

  “To mount still another such venture in the face of the ultimate failures of the first two would only be to confirm the skepticism and contempt with which many of the world’s aggressor states and their bandit-leaders regard the United States.

  “Given what the world has now come to see as the almost certain outcome of such American adventures, it would in all probability be impossible for this President to muster the international military force that was such a wildly hyped aspect of the first adventure and such a feeble if not downright pathetic aspect of the second. The will to support another such futile gamble (or gambol) in the desert is nowhere to be found. Not a clarion trumpet but a universal raspberry, one might expect, would await another such American call to arms.

  “Therefore America would be attempting, virtually alone, to impose its will upon the rest of the world in the pursuit of one who is, after all, essentially a tin-pot tyrant in a minor patch of sand. Why, then, should the world heed an American call to bestir itself to thwart his puny ambitions? Why should America care?

  “It is argued, and presumably we will hear the argument much in days immediately ahead, that the possession of atomic bombs by the President of Greater Lolómé seriously threatens the peace of the world. Perhaps, by some determined stretch of the imagination, it does; although the possession of those weapons in the hands of a rapidly growing number of states both large and small, both democratic and tyrannical, has not as yet resulted in any final Armageddon. The likelihood is that it never will.

  “But the President, presumably, believes sincerely in the threat, and will sincerely attempt to use it to persuade the United Nations and the world in general—to say nothing of his own country—to condemn President Sidi. Such condemnation, one supposes—if, indeed, it can be secured, which seems highly doubtful—will be the limit of permissible action in present circumstances.

  “Certainly it seems best that it should be so. Because there is no other action, in all reality, that this country or the United Nations can take.

  “A massive military onslaught upon Greater Lolómé would seem to be both futile and ridiculous. Already there are many indications that such a misadventure would not be supported by a majority of the American people. Its failure would once again emphasize to the world the shaky foundations of American power. Ultimatums without teeth and bombast without bullets add up to futility and ridicule. It seems safe to say that, in the opinion of most Americans, we cannot afford it.

  “Therefore it seems likely that both militarily and psychologically the answer to the question: ‘Here We Go Again?’ is: No, we should not.

  “Americans, it is hoped, will join in persuading the President that he must stand firm—not, as some more irresponsible elements in politics and the media would have it, stand firm in a belligerent, warlike, intractable position toward President Sidi and, by extrapolation, any individual leader who happens to challenge a position of the United States, no matter how minor the challenge may be, or how ill-advised the position.

  “Rather, the President should stand firm in a posture of reasonable discussion, peaceable solution of controversies, the mature and thoughtful consideration and calming of differences between states.

  “That way, one suspects, lies the true genius, and the true validation, of American democracy and its necessary and worthy place in a changing world.”

  Which, Jimmy Van felt as he concluded his piece and faxed it off to the paper’s Sunday magazine, was as good a statement of the sensible view of things as he could muster on short notice; and damned good it was, too, he told himself. As he had indicated to Ray Stanley and Willie Wilson at Dolly Munson’s party, he did not have any great respect for what he regarded as the equivocal individual who sat in the Oval Office. If he could pin him down to the course of action Jimmy considered wisest for the country, by the simple expedient of giving it such fulsome praise that the President would feel that for the sake of his own popularity he could not escape doing it—then Jimmy felt he would have achieved a lot for the United States of America.

  Since “helping the country,” as he thought of it, had been his basic and quite genuinely sincere purpose ever since he had begun to achieve a major voice in the formulation of American opinion, he was pleased with his present effort. In his own rather pompous and self-important way, James Van Rensselaer Burden considered himself a genuine patriot; and in his own rather pompous and self-interested way, he was.

  The fact that others such as Willie Wilson, Ray Stanley, and Tim Bates believed themselves to be equally patriotic did not deter or particularly concern him. They had their vision and their duty as they saw it. He had his. Making the incumbent toe the mark was, as Jimmy Van saw it, the most constructive thing he could do for America at this particular moment.

  Sally Holliwell and Able Montague had similar agendas, and on the weekend proceeded to put them in place.

  * * *

  For Sally, her original plan for a general free-for-all on Capitol Perspective that would include her major colleagues “and a cast of thousands,” as she put it humorously to herself, had quickly narrowed down to a more manageable (and more self-emphasizing) formula. In one brisk twenty-minute period of telephoning which signaled clearly how important—and how powerful—she was inside and outside the Beltway, she had lined up the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, Senator Wilson, and Congressman Jones. That was enough. And one interlocutor, herself, was enough. This was an occasion, she told herself, where Little Sally had earned, and intended to exercise, the right to take center stage by herself. She was convinced that she was in a position, one of the most powerful in Washington, to head off another futile war in the Middle East. As determinedly as Jimmy and Able, she intended to do it.

  “So, Mr. Secretary,” she began after introducing her guests, who faced one another at an inverted-U table, herself in the open end, Ray Stanley and Jimmy Jones (barely shaking hands on arrival) on her right, Arlie McGregor and Willie Wilson facing them from her left, “is the United States entering another major crisis over Sidi bin Sidi?”

  “bin Sidi,” Ray Stanley added with an easy smile. “Don’t forget the third ‘bin Sidi.’ No, I don’t think we are, if the United Nations and our major allies will stand firmly together in our approach to it.”

  She turned to Arlie McGregor.

  “I agree,” the Secretary of Defense said with the rather winsome, deprecating, chipmunky smile he could produce when he wanted to generate support, “providing, as Secretary Stanley says, that our allies and the United Nations—and NATO, which must figure in any decisions that include the possibility of military action—are in agreement.”

  “So far, so good,” Sally said with a brisk smile. “Senator Wilson?”

  “I think the chances of such agreement are slight,” Willie said crisply. “I think it may come down to a matter of American will and American staying power, which essentially means the will and staying power of the administration and particularly of the President. Of them, I am not at the moment so sure.”

  “There speaks our leading Capitol Hill skeptic,” she said, with the smoothly practiced smile that enabled her to make a lot of points she wanted to make without antagonizing her guests too much. “And I assume you’re another, Congressman?”

  “I think,” Johnny Jones said with a scowl, “that the President and the administration will be just as strong as the State Department here allows them to be. And that, in my opinion, like as not will not be very strong. Isn’t that right, Mr. Secretary?”

  And he half-turned in his seat to direct an ostentatiously unimpressed glance at Ray Stanley, who drew back and returned it with a nicely calculated balance of disagreement and distaste.

  “As usual,” he said, with a mildness that didn’t remove the sting, “the Congressman has a rather unique view of the almighty influence of the Department of State and a rather unusual understanding of the structure and functioning of the American government. We in the department would like to think we’re as all-powerful as the Congressman apparently does, but I assure him we’re not. Not only would that go against the grain of what State Department people are trained and permitted to express, but it would violate the constitutional provisions that make the President head of government, superior to State as he is to all other departments and agencies of the executive branch. He is subject to no one’s manipulation. Least of all,” he added with an amiable smile that made his words even more startling, “a bunch of lily-livered, cookie-pushing, panty-hosed perverts, which I believe were among the most recent complimentary things the Congressman said about us.”

  “Whew!” Sally exclaimed with the exaggerated laugh she used when guests became too heated. “There’s a mouthful! I’m sure the Congressman didn’t mean all that as harshly as it sounds, Mr. Secretary.”

  Johnny Jones hunched his shoulders, jutted his jaw, and shook his shaggy graying locks.

  “I did,” he said grimly. “I surely did.”

  “I rather thought so,” the Secretary said, amused and unperturbed, which he knew would annoy. “I was surprised you managed such restraint, Johnny. That wasn’t like you.”

  “Now, now,” Sally said with an amicable firmness. “I will have to remind the Secretary and the Congressman that we’re here to discuss the dangers of fighting Sidi, not each other. And I think all Americans are agreed that we want to avoid those dangers. Don’t you think so, Senator?”

  “Clever girl,” Willie said with amusement, wagging an admonitory finger. “Clever, clever girl. Ah, what a verbal web we weave when first we practice to deceive! Suddenly we’re not discussing the possibility of fighting Sidi, we’re already into it and discussing the dangers of it as though you were calling us to battle against it. You are, aren’t you?”

  “Well, Senator,” Sally said, pointed little face looking a bit strained and not so amiable—she wasn’t used to having her techniques exposed, particularly not in front of the estimated 20 million people who customarily watched her show—“I’m not here to call anyone to battle. I am concerned that America not do battle, certainly. I think that’s a perfectly legitimate stand. And,” she added with some asperity, “I believe that as a citizen of America, I’m allowed. Right?”

  “Oh, yes,” Willie said. “I’m not challenging your right on that at all, Sally. I had thought, though, that we were here to analyze the justification, or lack of it, for responding to Sidi’s challenge—which, we mustn’t forget, he has given us, we didn’t initiate it. How we can respond short of battle, that is.”

  “Very well, Senator,” she said, still looking ruffled. “So tell us. What can we do?”

  “I’m interested in that,” Willie agreed. “But I think that, even more than what we do, I’m interested in the spirit and the will with which we do it. We mustn’t do it halfheartedly, it seems to me, and we mustn’t lose our determination somewhere along the line. No more Bosnias. If we go in, we should go in the first time around with maximum force and with the determination to stay there until it’s over.”

  “You say ‘go in,’” Sally noted, a certain triumphant gleam in her eyes. “That sounds pretty aggressive to me, Senator.”

  Willie smiled.

  “Yes, I thought you’d pick up on that.” He chuckled. “That’s why I said it, just to get you going.”

  “And not only me, Senator,” she said, beginning to sound a little annoyed by his seeming flippancy: he had never been as respectful of her influence as she would have liked. “There must be millions of Americans out there who are already alarmed by the administration’s apparent desire to plunge us into a third Gulf War.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t call it that!” Arlie McGregor exclaimed, sounding alarmed.

  “Nor I,” Ray Stanley said, allowing a certain steel to enter his voice. “I assure you that it is not the administration’s ‘desire’ to ‘plunge us into’ a ‘third Gulf War,’ nor is it the administration’s intention, nor can the administration imagine a situation in which such a course would be even remotely possible.”

  “You certainly contemplated something the other day in that official statement,” Senator Wilson remarked. “What was it you contemplated?”

  “They don’t know,” Johnny Jones said darkly. “They don’t know what they want, over there in the department where all the crazy stuff comes from. They don’t know their—well, anyway, from a hole in the ground. That’s how competent they are.”

  “What would you like them to do in the Sidi situation, Congressman?” Sally inquired quickly—so quickly that the Secretary of State gave her a wry glance.

  “Don’t worry, Sally,” he said. “Comity will be maintained between the Congressman and downtown. The Congressman has his own ideas, as always. Like you, I’d like to hear them.”

  “I’d bomb the hell out of the miserable bastard,” Johnny Jones said flatly, again with his characteristic out-jut of jaw. “I wouldn’t pussyfoot around.”

  “Would we be able to do that on short notice, Mr. Secretary?” Sally inquired of Arlie McGregor, who had raised a quick hand in protest. The Secretary of Defense smiled at the Congressman, with whom his relations in general were a lot better than Ray’s.

  “It would be difficult to mount the kind of attack Representative Jones seems to visualize,” he said. “At least on any short-term basis. Physically and in an armaments sense, yes, we could do it. But to take care of all the possible political contingencies—”

  “And then, too,” Willie Wilson could not resist, “you might invite an atomic bomb on your aircraft carrier.”

  “What aircraft carrier?” Sally demanded sharply. “Have you sent an aircraft carrier to Greater Lolómé?”

  “There is no aircraft carrier in the vicinity of Greater Lolómé,” Secretary McGregor said hastily, giving the Senator, at his side, an annoyed look.

  “Is one on the way?” Sally demanded.

  Arlie hesitated for a moment. The Secretary of State stepped in. Sally filed the hesitation for future reference.

  “Aircraft carriers are frequently on routine duty in the Mediterranean,” he said in a calm, comfortable voice. “That does not mean that one is en route to Greater Lolómé.” (Thinking: A necessary lie, but not really a lie because the ship isn’t “en route,” it’s anchored off Suez.)

  “Will it be?” Sally persisted, in the hammering, demon-newshen tone she had often found useful. “And if so, when?”

  “There are many options open,” Ray Stanley said in the same unhurried, comfortable fashion. “That might be one of them—or it might not. In any event, if and when it were to happen you can be sure it would be announced at the proper time and in the proper place.”

  “Well,” she said, a rather strained smile on her face, “this may or may not be the ‘proper time’ as you see it, Mr. Secretary, but I can tell you that I, and I am sure the American people, would consider this a ‘proper place.’ Any place that brings out vital news involving their own destiny is a ‘proper place,’ it seems to me.”

  “What about Sidi’s destiny?” Senator Wilson inquired with an amiable smile upon them all. “I thought we were supposed to be concerned about that this morning?”

  “We are,” Sally said, “but I find it hard to separate the two, particularly if the President is contemplating a major military strike against Greater Lolómé.”

  “I would be interested to know that, too,” Willie said in the same amiable way, “particularly since it may be necessary for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to get involved sooner or later.” His smile increased. “We always do.”

  “My House Appropriations subcommittee is going to want to know a few things, too,” Johnny Jones remarked with an ominous scowl. “Somebody’s going to have to answer for it.”

  “For what?” the Secretary of State demanded with his first show of real annoyance. “Nobody’s done anything so far, except issue a statement of US intentions to try to persuade Sidi to adhere to international standards of behavior, if possible. Surely you don’t object to that.”

  “I don’t object to it,” Johnny retorted, “but I sure don’t see anybody doing anything.”

  “It’s just beginning,” Ray Stanley said shortly. “Give us a little time, please, Congressman.”

  “Speaking of time,” Sally said, “I think we’d better try to summarize some points of view here. Suppose you two gentlemen from the Cabinet tell us how you see this. Then you can give us your view, Congressman, and you can wrap it up if you like, Senator.”

  “I may say nothing at all,” Willie Wilson said. “But,” he added with a smile, “don’t count on it.”

  “No,” Sally said, not sounding very amused. “Mr. Secretary of State?”