“As I see it,” Ray Stanley said, “leaving aside the murder of an American citizen at the almost certain direction of President Sidi—”

  “But you have no real proof of that,” she interrupted.

  He frowned.

  “Enough. Leaving that aside, there is the threat posed by the aggressive ambitions of Greater Lolómé toward its weaker neighbor Lesser Lolómé—”

  “Which involves oil,” she said.

  “—and the stability of the region and, in a broader sense, of the world community. Leaving aside those two factors, there is finally the greatest problem of all, and that is President Sidi’s announcement that he has four A-bombs and the missiles to deliver them, and, by implication, that he plans to use them—”

  “He hasn’t said that,” she noted.

  This time he simply ignored the interruption and went on.

  “—which poses an enormous threat to world stability, whose consequences would be vast and far-reaching and perhaps could not be contained.

  “Therefore we have begun consultations with fellow members of the United Nations to find a solution, which may extend to sanctions—” he paused and then concluded quietly, “but may not necessarily end there.”

  “The Secretary of Defense?” Sally inquired.

  Arlie McGregor looked both earnest and good-natured, a combination he had mastered at an early age and always found helpful.

  “From where we sit in the Pentagon,” he said, “this of course presents a strategic as well as political situation. I leave the latter to my good friend and colleague the Secretary of State, who always handles such matters with great skill in coordination with the President, whose expertise in foreign policy continues to grow and amaze those of us who work most closely with him.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Secretary!” Sally said with a laugh. “How many more billions do you want in your next year’s budget? Just ask!”

  “Well, he is amazing,” Arlie said, looking a little nonplussed. “Isn’t he, Ray?”

  “Sui generis,” the Secretary of State agreed blandly. “Unique.”

  “Right!” Arlie said with satisfaction. “So, we have the strategic worry, which I hope we will always discharge as efficiently as we have in the past—”

  “Watch it, Arlie,” Senator Wilson warned with a chuckle. “Might get an argument there. Might start a whole other debate.”

  “I know we have to watch out for you, Willie,” the Secretary of Defense rejoined with a slightly nervous laugh. “Always … Anyway, looked at strictly from a military standpoint, all I can say, or should say at this moment, is that the Pentagon is prepared for whatever may happen in Greater Lolómé.”

  “You ought to be,” Johnny Jones interjected in a tone that was not as friendly as the Secretary had obviously hoped. “You sold him the weapons.”

  “But not the bombs!” Arlie said quickly. “Not the bombs or the missiles, which pose the biggest problems. But those, too, we are confident we can handle. Greater Lolómé is under constant surveillance by satellites so sophisticated that they can literally distinguish from orbit the hairs in his ears, so to speak, so we know what he’s doing—”

  “Yes,” Willie murmured, “but will you do anything about it? That, as they say, is the question.”

  “In coordination with our allies in the United Nations and NATO,” the Secretary of Defense said rather stiffly, “we will do whatever the situation requires.”

  “Will you send American troops?” Sally inquired.

  “There is no intention to do that,” Arlie said. “We do not contemplate that it would be necessary at any point in the future, under any circumstances.”

  “But if the circumstances were there?” she persisted.

  The Secretary began to look a little annoyed, the chipmunky cheeriness a bit frazzled.

  “I do not believe the President, or I, could conceive of a situation in which circumstances should prompt such an action,” he said flatly.

  “It would be air strikes only, then,” Sally suggested.

  Arlie’s footing slipped a bit, as Ray Stanley, concerned, had known it would.

  “Air strikes might be a possibility,” he said; then added hastily, “except, as I say, we cannot conceive of such a circumstance.” And added further Washington Mantra No. 1: “Air strikes alone can’t win a war.”

  “Anything can win a war if there’s enough of it,” Willie said. “Send in a couple of bombers for a ridiculous pinprick predesigned to fail, it’s nonsense. Send in two hundred determined to kill, it’s over. It’s a matter of mass. Anything can win a war if you send in enough of it and have the will to prevail. Neither element can stand alone, however, I grant you that. The massive strike without the will or the will without the massive strike are fruitless.”

  “That’s a fascinating subject right there, Senator,” Sally said, and meant it. “Will you come back and help us with a discussion of that?”

  “With pleasure,” Willie said. “But excuse me, Arlie. I didn’t mean to get us off the track. You were saying about Sidi?”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” the Secretary of Defense said with a rueful smile. “Whoever said Senator Wilson’s purpose in life was to make people comfortable? You always were a hard man to keep on the subject.… As I said, Sally, if I had to sum it up I’d say Sidi has presented us with an awkward diplomatic problem, maybe, but not with a strategic one. We can handle him.”

  “I can see the headlines,” she said, knowing they would be exactly as she predicted. “MCGREGOR THREATENS AIR STRIKES ON SIDI. ‘WE CAN HANDLE HIM.’ Is that fair enough?”

  “Not quite,” Arlie McGregor said with an uncomfortable smile. “But you’re probably right, that’s how they’ll be.”

  “Most likely,” she agreed, with an impersonal, that’s-your-problem smile. “Congressman?”

  “I’ve said what I think,” Johnny Jones said. “Bomb the bastard to hell.”

  “With how many bombers?”

  He shrugged.

  “As many as it takes. If the Senator’s right, let’s use two hundred. Or three hundred or five hundred or whatever it takes. But let’s get it done.”

  “Succinct and to the point,” she said. “When will you hold your hearings?

  “Haven’t said I’d hold any,” he said. “Let’s see what happens next.”

  “You will,” she said. “How about yours, Senator?”

  “I had thought we might have some right away,” Willie said, “but on reflection I think we, too, will wait a bit to see how things develop. They may not be necessary.”

  “When was a Foreign Relations Committee hearing not necessary?” she chided. “You folks are into everything.”

  “And so we should be,” he said comfortably. “It’s a big world out there. Do you want to know what I think about Sidi?”

  She smiled.

  “Please.”

  “I think the President’s course so far is the correct one—as far as it goes. He has issued his statement, he has put Sidi on notice, he has decided to take the matter to the United Nations, with which I assume you and he have already been in contact, Ray—”

  “I have,” the Secretary said. “He’ll be talking to heads of state very shortly, I believe.”

  “Good,” Willie said. “The administration is going through the chairs. So far, so good. So we come back to the possibilities, which seem to me to be three: either Sidi backs down—or he doesn’t—or we do. I do not like to contemplate the third possibility, but I think it has to be taken into account. Not, I hope, by Sidi. Assuming all goes well and we are able to muster sufficient support from our allies—and enough spirit and determination from within the presidential heart and others most directly involved—then possibility No. 1, a Sidi back-down, should be in the works and will lead to a peaceable disposal of the issue. Which do you think is most likely, Mr. Secretary?” And he turned to Ray Stanley with an earnest air whose basic sincerity the Secretary couldn’t gauge but knew he must answer effectively.

  “I think I can assure you, Senator,” he said firmly, “that all our efforts are directed toward achieving possibility No. 1. I am sure neither the President, nor I, nor Secretary McGregor, nor anyone else in this administration ‘most directly involved,’ as you put it, is prepared to accept any less.”

  “I am glad to accept that assurance,” Senator Wilson said. “I am pleased with it. And I assume it wipes out all chance of possibility No. 3, a back-down by us.”

  “Absolutely,” Ray Stanley said, sending up a small silent prayer inside that it would be so. “I think you and I are in complete agreement on that.”

  “Another headline for you, Sally,” Willie said, “to follow Arlie’s two you predicted: STANLEY SURE OF US SUCCESS IN NEW MIDEAST CRISIS.”

  “It may not have the right letter-count to fit the space, Senator,” she said with a smile, “but I certainly hope it fits the facts. Now if I could just get somebody to say ‘peaceful success,’ I’d be happy.”

  “That goes without saying,” Arlie McGregor said.

  “It had better,” Senator Wilson said with a rather grim smile.

  The Secretary of State nodded and smiled also, but in the quick glance they exchanged as the cameras focused on Sally preparing to end the show, it was apparent that neither he nor Willie was overly sanguine.

  “That wraps it up,” she said. “I want to thank you all very much. It’s been a real contribution.”

  “I hope so,” Ray Stanley said, smiling, as they faded from the screen. “A lot is at stake.”

  * * *

  And so it was, he reflected as he drove back through Sunday’s deserted streets to Washington Harbor to join Mary, Bets and Samir, and Joanie and Boo Bourassa, to watch the President on Able Montague’s show and have a small pickup supper on the terrace. Sally had succeeded quite well, he thought, in emphasizing it.

  “I simply won’t stand for another ridiculous and foredoomed use of American military force!” she had told him at Dolly Munson’s party. “I just won’t have it!”

  She hadn’t been that openly arrogant on her show, of course, but he was sure her sentiments were quite clear to her viewers. He expected she had carried millions of them with her; probably almost all, for it was a sane objective and all sane Americans were in favor of it. Everybody wanted peace, that was a given. It was a very simple proposition except for two questions: (1) how do you get it? and (2) how do you keep it after you’ve got it? Nobody yet, in ten millennia of increasingly “civilized” society, had found the answers, though every generation had to keep trying. And now it was his turn, and the President’s and the administration’s, and the path was no clearer than it had ever been.

  At the apartment he found Mary alone. Bets and Samir had been delayed by the last-minute defection of a baby-sitter; a substitute had been found and they were on their way. Joanie and Boo were expected momentarily.

  “You did very well,” she said, “as did everybody but that obnoxious Jones. What a travesty and a tragedy he is, to hold the power he does in the House!”

  “The voters send him,” he remarked in the old, exasperated Washington cliché, “and we have to take him, right down to the last lovely shoelace, barring some truly egregious malfeasance. Are Bets and Samir speaking? And Joanie and Boo?”

  She laughed.

  “Barely, I gather. Why don’t you see if you can sound out the boys privately? I’ll have the girls help me in the kitchen and you three can talk.”

  “The Middle East,” he observed, “doesn’t talk unless it wants to, as you know very well. Samir has never been the most forthcoming of young men, and Boo sometimes obfuscates by being too forthcoming, and it means nothing.”

  “Samir’s the weak link in Boo’s chain,” she said, “whatever it may be. Go after them! After all, that’s why you asked me to invite them here together, isn’t it?”

  “It never occurred to me,” he said solemnly. “Never occurred to me.”

  Fifteen minutes later, everybody having arrived, and Boo and Samir circling him a bit warily, Mary said brightly, “Come on, girls, help me with supper. These men want to talk.”

  “We do?” Boo inquired with a humorous air. “I didn’t know that, did you, Samir?”

  Samir, his normally frank dark eyes looking withdrawn and clouded, his thin, wiry frame held even more tensely than usual, managed an uneasy smile.

  “I wasn’t aware of it,” he said.

  “Well,” the Secretary said comfortably, “let’s go out on the terrace and think about it. Anything to drink, anybody? The usual orange juice and soda, Boo? Tea, Samir?”

  “Nothing, thank you, Ray,” Samir said politely.

  Boo grinned.

  “You’re really going to make me lose all my inhibitions, aren’t you, Ray? Orange juice and soda will be fine.”

  “I,” the Secretary said firmly after he had served Boo, “am going to be a dissolute infidel and have a gin and tonic. Light, though. I don’t want you outsmarting me, Boo.”

  “That will be the day,” Boo said, chuckling. “Now,” he said seriously when they were seated, the river at their feet, Virginia and the Pentagon beyond, “what’s all this about, Ray?”

  “You know,” the Secretary said, stretching out comfortably in one of the chaise lounges, Boo facing him in another, Samir perched stiffly on one of the white plastic straight-backed chairs. “Bets is very worried about you, Samir. And Joanie’s concerned about you, Boo. It seems you’re going out on the town too much.” He smiled at them with an easy humor that relieved his next words of insult. “More than good little Arabs should.”

  “I didn’t know there were any ‘good little Arabs,’” Boo said with a smile. “Maybe Samir’s one. I never claimed it.”

  “Oh, come,” Ray Stanley said. “Don’t be disingenuous, Boo. Lots of people at State think Arabs are great and side with them all the time. I’ve been known to, myself. Anyway, the girls are concerned.”

  “Did they appoint you their spokesman?” Boo inquired, a slight edge in his voice but still amicable, easygoing Boo. “I think Joanie can speak for herself.” He gave a sudden wry grin. “She certainly has on this one.”

  “So’s Bets,” Samir echoed with a shy smile that seemed to break his tension a bit. It returned instantly at his father-in-law’s next remark.

  “Tell me about your little discussion group, Boo,” the Secretary suggested. Samir shot a suddenly worried glance at his older friend and tried to cover it, unsuccessfully, by glancing quickly across the river. “What are you plotting?”

  “How to blow up Washington,” Boo said with amiable scorn. “You know that, Ray.”

  Samir managed a loud, startled laugh and shook his head as if to say, What a joker this Boo is.

  “I’m sure,” the Secretary said, amused but not quite entirely, looking thoughtfully at his son-in-law. “Nothing would surprise me in this day and age. Aside from that, what?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Boo inquired with an easy grin. “No,” he said, suddenly serious, “we’re just talking, as I’ve repeatedly told Joanie, and as I’m sure Samir has told Bets.” Samir nodded emphatically. “It’s quite innocent. After all, there’s so much going on in the Middle East—I mean, there always is, but now, what with Sidi and all, it’s an even bigger mess than usual.” His grin returned. “Us Ay-rabs, we are a mess. Aren’t we, Samir?”

  “That’s right,” Samir said, nodding vigorously. “A real mess.”

  “And the visits to the embassy afterwards?” the Secretary inquired casually, watching his son-in-law, who had begun to look increasingly tense again. Samir almost visibly jumped at his words. Boo, as always, remained calm, unruffled, and in command.

  “We have our concerns about Sidi, too,” he said smoothly, ignoring the fact that their meetings had apparently begun before Sidi’s latest eruption on the scene. “He’s a bad one, that man. We have to keep an eye on him. We talk about that too.”

  “And this embassy is planning some anti-Sidi move?” the Secretary inquired, sounding genuinely intrigued and not skeptical at all, though he was, entirely. “That’s interesting.”

  “I’m sure they’ll let you know,” Boo said seriously. “Isn’t that right, Samir?”

  “Oh, yes,” Samir said earnestly. “Oh, yes, that’s right.”

  “Well, I thank you for clearing that up,” the Secretary said, apparently convinced. “It’s good to know there’s some support being developed for our position on Sidi.” He gave them both a confidential smile. “We’re going to need it.”

  “Yes,” Boo agreed with an answering, rueful smile. “It shouldn’t be that way, it should be easy, he’s a bad man, but, yes, I think you will need a lot of support. I’m glad we can help,” he concluded earnestly. “Right, Samir?”

  “Oh, yes,” Samir said. “Oh, yes.”

  “Mary!” the Secretary called. “What’s holding you girls up? We’re hungry!”

  “Coming,” she said, as they appeared carrying table settings and the beginnings of food, and the conversation turned general and innocuous. “We want to listen to the man on a full stomach.”

  At nine PM Eastern time, six Pacific, they returned to the living room, turned on the set, settled down with a vast segment of their countrymen and the world’s population into the all-embracing arms of CNN. Into focus came an earnest Able Montague, a seemingly relaxed and easy President.

  “He looks good,” the Secretary noted. “Give ’em hell, partner!”

  And by and large, he did.

  * * *

  “Mr. President,” Able said, “thank you for being with us. Would you like to make a general statement first, or shall I just plow ahead?”

  “‘Plow’ is not the word for you, Able,” the President said with an expansive smile. “First of all, thank you very much for having me on your most distinguished and valuable show. One of our great national treasures, in my estimation.”

  “As if I would object,” Able said with an answering grin. “It’s always the thrill of a lifetime to have you on my show.”

  “The kindness is all yours,” the President assured him, passing smoothly over Able’s implicit indication that he had asked to be on the program. “It’s a great honor for me, a great opportunity to talk to all your vast audience in this country and your vast audience of concerned citizens throughout the world, and to have a chance to put this new crisis in perspective on your justly famous forum.”